Wait.
I hadn’t put two and two together yet.
“Why did we crash?”
He looks at me, and a slow smile spreads over his face.
“Well, dear. When a vessel doesn’t have shielding, and it slides through our territory like it owns the place, sometimes we take it down. Now, to be fair, most vessels are more resilient. I am not sure what yours was made of. Cardboard, perhaps, given the way the front fell off.”
“You killed nearly a thousand people.”
“Sweet thing, I have killed ten times that a hundred times over.”
I am not the greatest at math, but that is a lot of zeroes.
“You’re a monster,” I say, my pussy still throbbing from the ravaging he gave me, and leaking his seed.
“Yes. Probably,” he replies, sounding almost bored of the notion. “But it is less important what I am, and far more important what you are.”
“What am I?”
Drako looks down at me with gleaming eyes, a gaze lit with triumph. “You’re a captive,” he says. “And that means you’ve norights besides those I choose to give you, and I choose to give you none.”
I’m going to fucking kill him.
The glow of the orgasm has well and truly faded, and all that is left behind is loathing for someone who believes he can actually hold me captive.
Me.
Who never submits, never gives in. Me, the daughter of a founder. Me. The one who fled to the country and then to the stars to avoid this precise captivity?
“Come,” he says. “And stay at my feet at all times. If you are more than three paces from me, you will be beaten.”
He does not ask me my opinion on that order, and I do not give it because I am looking to escape, not to be thrashed.
As Drako and I leave the medicine shanty, he is accosted by one of his many underlings, a man with a scruffy beard and what looks like a healed axe wound in the middle of his face.
“We finished combing the crash site. We thought we’d have prisoners to execute, Jarl. But we’ve got nothing besides that scrap of a girl. Hardly a worthy sacrifice.”
“Collect the bodies, put them on a pyre, and burn them,” Drako orders. “Send their souls to whatever weak hell they deserve. We’ll feast and celebrate our victory. Another territory spared their wicked expansion.”
A cheer goes up from those nearby, and hasty preparations are made for what is obviously going to be a victory feast combinedwith what I can only describe as a sacrifice, because that’s what they called it.
I try not to think of the people I know who are going to end up on that fire. I try especially hard not to think of Thor, who was brave, strong, and who deserved a better end. They all did. The man who took me is the worst kind of demon. We had no intention of starting a fight, but they didn’t care. There was an opportunity for a shot and they took it.
It’s so unsettling to be the only one left out of a crew of a thousand. I feel a sense of solitude that I never experienced before, not even when I was alone for dozens of miles when tending my herds.
I traipse around at Drako’s heels, thoroughly exhausted. I just want to sit down. I try to keep up with him, but he has long legs and he moves quickly.
“What did I tell you would happen if you did not keep pace with me?”
“You’re going to beat me,” I yawn.
I half-expect him to lose his mind. I haven’t been the captive of a Vikar jarl before, but I have annoyed people in authority before, and generally speaking yawning when someone is threatening you is treated as an act of disrespect.
Instead of whipping my ass again, he gives me a hard look and comes to a decision. He wraps an arm around my waist and picks me up, putting me over his shoulder.
I am carried around like that for a few more stops, kept in close proximity by his strong arm and his even stronger back. It’s not the most comfortable situation, but it’s better than walking. Istart to get lulled into a half-sleep somewhere in the midst of everything, though I wake up every minute or so to overhear some more heinous talk and general celebration about the destruction of our vessel and crew.
