Beloved Stranger: Gaian Series, Book 5 Read online

  The oldest, and therefore the one who’d feel most responsible. Roan had a bad feeling about what he was going to hear. “What happened, Sonja?”

  She stared at her mug and the steam lifting from the hot javi, and when she spoke, her voice seemed to come from far away. “It was late at night and everyone was asleep when they came.”

  “Who came?” Roan prompted.

  “Men came. Slavers. They landed a shuttle in our field, painted black and very quiet, and then they snuck into the house. They used some kind of gas on us. Sprayed it into the air of the house and knocked everyone out while they slept.”

  “If you were asleep, how do you know that’s what happened?”

  She pulled her attention away from the steam and stared at him. “I saw them. I wasn’t in the house at the time. It was hot that night and I had a tree house outside my bedroom window that the breezes kept cool. I was sleeping out there.”

  Roan remembered her saying she’d had a tree house and heard again the pain in her voice when she’d mentioned it. The same pain was there when she continued her story.

  “I woke up to see them moving around inside the house, and I saw the shuttle out in the field. I should have been smarter, stayed hidden and gone for help from one of the neighbors. Or even grabbed a pitchfork from the barn.”

  Roan wondered how successful she would have been hiding or running away, and the thought of her taking on armed men with a pitchfork nearly made him shudder.

  “But I wasn’t that smart. I didn’t know who they were so I climbed down the tree to see who’d come visiting in the middle of the night. One came out of the house carrying Sulla.” Sonja’s voice caught. “She lay so still I thought she was dead. I screamed, and another man came out and he had what looked like one of the sprayers we used on the crops. I tried to run for help, but he aimed it at me, and I smelled something sickly sweet. I lost consciousness.”

  Her hand reached up and rubbed her upper arm. “When I woke up I was on a ship, and they were injecting a tracking device.”

  Roan stared at her. “But you don’t have a tracking device.”

  There was something fierce in her expression as she stared at him. “I don’t anymore.”

  He wanted to ask what had happened to it, but the enormity of what she was saying hit him. “You’re saying that you and your sisters were kidnapped by slavers and brought here for a marriage meet? That’s ridiculous!”

  Her eyes flashed angrily. “Is it? Well, it’s the truth.”

  Roan sipped from his mug, his mind whirling. Could it be true, that the women he’d been told were refugees were really stolen and shipped unwillingly to the prison’s marriage meets? The more he thought about it the more it explained things. “How is it possible to keep something like that quiet? The women know the truth, and they must tell their husbands.”

  Sonja shrugged. “You tell me. Would a man desperate to have a wife volunteer that the woman he’d married had been brought here as a slave? Or would he keep it to himself?”

  He might keep it to himself, Roan decided. “Even so, it’s a big secret to keep. Big secrets have a tendency to not be kept for long.”

  “Maybe those who know don’t want to tell the truth.” She seemed to stifle a yawn. “I don’t know. All I know is that my sisters are here, married to men they met at a marriage meet.”

  “And so that’s why you came, because you want to find them? But how do you know it was here and not one of the other mining colonies?”

  “Because I’ve already looked at the other colonies. Besides…” She hesitated. “When I went into the meeting room I recognized it. This is where the men attached to them.”

  “So you were here six years ago?”

  She nodded. “But no one attached to me. After a while the slavers got impatient with me. I couldn’t be sold at a marriage meet so they threatened to sell me to a brothel instead.”

  Roan imagined the men who would send a beautiful, vibrant woman like Sonja to a place like that, and his hands clenched into fists. “How did you get away from them?”

  For the first time since beginning her story, Sonja smiled. “One of the other women knew how to pick locks with a hair clip. She taught me before she was attached to at one of the meets. I used her technique to get out of my room on the ship and hid in a life pod when we took off. When we were out in the space lanes, I freed the pod just before they went into hyperspace. I drifted for a number of days before I was rescued.”

  This time Roan couldn’t help his shudder. “You were lucky you were found.” Space was a big place, and she could have easily drifted until her supplies ran out or life support failed.

  “Yes, lucky. But I’d rather be dead than what they’d planned for me. I don’t like to be confined, and I don’t like to be controlled. That might be why I wasn’t receptive to the men before.” Her voice broke off. “I’m a little surprised you attached to me this time.”

  “I’m not. A woman has to be ready to marry for a man to attach. Apparently you weren’t when you were younger. Also, she needs to find the right man.”

  Sonja’s eyes crinkled with amusement. “And you think I’m ready now, because you’re the right man for me?”

  Roan finished his javi. She might laugh at the idea, but he knew he was the right man for her. “It makes sense. So, you are here to make sure your sisters are okay?”

  She shook her head. “I’m here to rescue them.”

  That he hadn’t expected. “Rescue them? From what? Your sisters don’t need rescuing. They are Gaian wives.”

  Sonja’s eyes narrowed. “They were gassed in their beds, stolen from their home, had tracking devices inserted into their arms and were taken on a long ship ride locked in a cabin. When they arrived here each one was shoved into a corridor filled with men she couldn’t see the faces of and one took her home that night. None of this was their choice.”

  Roan had to admit he didn’t like the way that sounded. Still he argued. “Even so, they have a life here.”

  “They’re living in a prison on a mining planet. That can’t be a good thing.”

  “I know they are married to Gaians, and we treat our wives well.”

  “And I know nothing about the men who chose them. For all I know they could be like the man you fought for me.”

  That gave Roan pause. There were very few men like that brute in the prison, but there were some, and those did sometimes get wives. Also, she had a point about her sisters living in a prison. After nine and a half years he rarely thought about the universe outside, the feel of sunlight on his face or the sound of the sea. But when he did think of those things he was caught in a yearning for freedom that hurt in its intensity.

  He tried to imagine a young woman in that situation, someone who’d committed no crime at all deserving of being here. Taken from everyone and everything she’d known and loved, and married to a man she knew nothing about except that he had committed a crime.

  Suppose it had been one of his sisters stolen? He’d be as angry as Sonja was. He at least knew why he was here and it was his crime that had landed him here. Sonja’s sisters were here to satisfy the greed of the slavers who’d taken them and the company officials who ran the illegal marriage meets and benefited from the import of wives.

  He looked at Sonja and almost agreed to help her right then. But then again…

  She was his wife. Whether or not Sonja accepted it they were legally a married couple according to the rules of his society. Clearly she didn’t accept it at this point since she was ready to take advantage of the grace period and leave him.

  He didn’t want her to leave at all. From the first, he’d been struck by her bearing, by the woman she clearly was even dressed in the concealing marriage meet robes. Now that he could see her, now that she’d been in his arms, now that he’d kissed her, tasted, smelled and loved her, he couldn’t help wanting to keep her as his wife.

  She’d probably say he’d just wanted her for sex, but that was hardly true.
He wanted a partner in his life, and she was the woman he knew had been selected for that purpose. The trouble was that she didn’t see it that way.

  Gaians grew up knowing their life partners would be picked at a marriage meet, in darkness and based on something barely definable. He trusted that fate had brought her to him, but Sonja held no convictions similar to his. She would need time to trust the bond he felt between them.

  Roan contemplated his little wife, already so important to him. Whether or not she knew it, she needed his help. Maybe he could take advantage of that to buy himself the time he needed to keep her for good.

  Chapter Seven

  So how best to get her dependent on his help? “Your plan was to get into the prison by marrying a prisoner. Okay, that’s done. But why did you leave tonight? You broke in to every public building in the bubble. What were you searching for?”

  She leaned back on the stool and contemplated him. “I was looking for a public data terminal. I thought I could use the directory to look up their names.”

  “There aren’t any public data terminals in the residence buildings.”

  The javi had clearly helped restore her spirits. Sonja even laughed, although there was a rueful twist to her lips. “So I found out.”

  “You should have tried my terminal first.”

  She sighed. “I looked at yours but its access was secured, and I couldn’t get past its security.”

  Roan couldn’t help but feel satisfied at that. Allan had designed his security program, and if there was one thing Allan knew, it was security systems, how to get past most of them and how to make them better as a result. It was that first talent that had sent him to prison, but it was the second that made him so valuable to Roan.

  “Besides, any search on your terminal would have left traces you could use to track me down. Much safer to use a public terminal.”

  Roan tried not to take offense at her wanting to avoid him finding her. “Good reasoning. I would have looked for you, and that would have made it easier. But there is a bigger problem.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The big problem is that wives aren’t usually listed in the prison directory you’d find on one of our datastores.”

  She blinked at him. “They aren’t?”

  Roan shook his head. “The official prison directory is only made up of prisoners because it is a listing of who is assigned to live in the residences. That’s done by prisoner number. A wife wouldn’t have a number and so wouldn’t be listed.” He gave her a grim smile. “You see, officially the wives aren’t really here in the prison.”

  “The wives aren’t here?” Sonja said in disbelief. “Then where are they? Suppose they need medical care, have children, or want to work…”

  “All that is covered by the Ares Company, who runs the mines. They have their own bureaucracy, separate from the prison officials. Even the marriage meets are run by them,” he added. And of course they were the ones who profited from the meets, and if they were buying women from slavers as they apparently were…

  Roan suddenly had an uneasy feeling about the role the Ares Company was playing. Could a Gaian company really be encouraging the kidnapping of women in the Outer Colonies? It was difficult to believe.

  “So there are two parallel administrations here,” Sonja said. “One run by the prison and the other the Ares Company. The company brings in the women, mostly purchasing them from slavers, runs the marriage meets and collects the marriage fees. Women are then kept on their lists.” Her voice turned hard. “As what, I wonder—employees or assets? And what happens to the children?”

  She sounded bitter, and he didn’t blame her given what had happened. “It isn’t as bad as you make it sound, Sonja. The women and children are taken care of, the men are happier than if they were living alone, and overall everyone benefits.”

  “Women and children benefit from living in a prison on a mining colony? I can see how the men profit from it, but most of the men here return to Gaia after a few years. Even you will be back there in six months. Why not wait to take a wife when you return to Gaia?”

  For a moment he considered not telling her. Unfortunately the question wasn’t going to go away and Sonja was too smart not to realize the truth.

  Roan took a deep breath. “The reason is that criminals are usually banned from marriage meets on Gaia. For most of the men, if they don’t get a wife here they won’t ever have one.”

  Sonja stared. “Would that mean you, as well?”

  “Yes,” he said quietly. “That would include me.”

  “No wonder you’re so desperate to keep me.”

  A flash of anger swept through him. “I want to keep you as my wife because you are my wife. There is no question about that. I attached to you and you accepted me. That makes us married by Gaian law.”

  He reached out to touch her face, stroking her cheek with the back of his hand. “Last night we made love for the first time, and it was good. Very good, and I think that was true for both of us.”

  He was happy to see that she didn’t immediately argue with him on that point. He’d thought she’d enjoyed their time together, and apparently that was true.

  “But I still have three days to dissolve our marriage.”

  Much as he hated to admit it, he nodded. “However, you need something from me. You’ll need my help in tracking down your sisters.”

  Surprised, Sonja stared. “You’ll help me find them?”

  “I promised to listen to the problem and if I could help then I would. I’m not about to break up anyone’s marriage, which I’m worried you intend to do. So I’m going to make you a deal.”

  She looked apprehensive. “What kind of deal?”

  “As you’ve already pointed out, you can leave me anytime in the next three days. If I help you, I want you to stay all three of those days.”

  “What will that prove? I already know I don’t want to stay married to you.”

  Roan suppressed his anger at her callous words. “It gives us time to discover how good it is for us to be together. It gives me time to prove to you that I make a good husband. It gives you time to decide that you want to continue to be my wife.”

  She contemplated him. “If I say no?”

  “Then I take you back to the spaceport and tell the authorities that you changed your mind. They’ll hold you there until you can be sent back to whatever ship you came on.”

  Sonja scowled. “I’d have gained nothing if you do that.”

  “That’s why my option is better. After all, it was good between us. And I’ll help you find your sisters.”

  “But you won’t help rescue them.”

  Roan shook his head. “I think when you talk to them you’ll find they are more than happy to be here with their husbands.”

  “But if they aren’t happy?” she persisted. “If they want to leave?”

  Roan was torn. It was against his principles to break up a marriage, even one created the way Sonja had described, with women stolen from their homes, abused by their captors and sent to one of their marriage meets without any preparation. But he knew that Sonja didn’t share his beliefs. She simply wanted her sisters back regardless of what kinds of lives they had now.

  He was certain Sonja would find that her sisters were happily married. Possibly they might even convince her that she had nothing to lose and everything to gain by staying his wife. Finding them might actually work in his favor.

  “I can’t help break up a happy marriage, Sonja. But if your sisters need my help, I promise to give it. Will that work for you?”

  “You will help them to escape?”

  “I will do everything in my power to assist them. I’ve never tried to get someone out of the prison, but I suppose that could be done.” He grinned. “Actually it’s pretty easy if you know how to do it.”

  Sonja looked skeptical. “If it’s so easy, why are you still here?”

  Roan shook his head. “I’m here to serve my time, just like ev
eryone else. No one tries to escape.”

  She stared. “You haven’t tried to escape?”

  “It’s complicated.” The answer to that question was too much to deal with for this late at night—in spite of the javi, weariness threatened to overwhelm him. “You’d have to understand a lot more about Gaian society for me to explain. Just know that prisoners here don’t try to escape, and there are reasons why.”

  She didn’t look convinced. “But you will help me find my sisters, and if they want to leave…” Her voice trailed off.

  “If they really want to leave then I’ll help them do it.”

  “And in exchange? What do I have to do?”

  “In exchange you will continue as my wife for the next three days. Traditionally, the prison gives a newly married man time off for his honeymoon. It’s to help us get to know each other and make our marriage stronger. So we’ll spend that time doing just that. We’ll eat together, sleep together…”

  “Make love?”

  He couldn’t help but grin. “Yes, make love.”

  Sonja nodded, apparently satisfied. “That’s all you’re asking. Three days. It doesn’t sound like a lot for the help your offering. And there is the marriage fee,” she said thoughtfully. “Thirty-one thousand credits.” She shook her head as if in disbelief.

  Was she still obsessing over that? Roan started to tell her not to worry about the money. But then he realized it must seem a fortune to her. In any other economy it probably was.

  To him it was a fair price for something as precious as she was to him. But she was clearly feeling guilty about the money so he might as well take advantage of it.

  Roan cleared his throat. “With respect to the money, if you stay my wife after the three days, then I’ll consider it a bargain. If you decide to leave me later, then you can pay me back. In fact I’ll take off five thousand for each day you stay, that way you’ll only owe me sixteen thousand in the end.”

  “It’s worth five thousand credits a day to you for me to be your wife?” Sonja sounded more than a little skeptical.