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I meet Lord Oblog’s glistening glare. For a moment, all pretense is abandoned. I speak to him with a tone of voice that would never be tolerated from a real slave.

“You Toads are all the same.”

Oblog’s disgusting, flabby lips stretch into an obscene smile. His bulbous eyes stay locked on mine – dead and cold.

“No, child. That is where you’re wrong.” Oblog’s thick tongue wets his already-dripping lips. “My sweet, young girl – every species has its weak, and its strong. Aurelians have strong bodies, for example, but their minds are weakened by pride and their delusion of justice. Humanity is physically weak, but your kind took to the stars of their own volition. You have your own strength, greater even than that of the Aurelians.” Then, his eyes flash. “My species? We have only one consistent weakness: Greed.”

Then, Oblog steps closer to me. He’s barely five feet away, now – still too far to use this splinter against him, but so achingly close that it intimidates me.

His huge, wet tongue paints a glistening trail across his thick, green lips.

“The answer to weakness is to recognize it. For example, I know my nature, Jamie. I know I’m greedy, so I am mindful not to let it cloud my judgement. For example, I never commit to a plan unless I know the outcome is a certainty.”

His bulbous eyes narrow into glistening slits.

“Do you knowyournature, Jamie?”

He’s speaking in the common tongue, and his mastery of it is flawless. He doesn’t even have the lisp and gurgle that makes most Toads speaking Common so difficult to understand.

Lord Oblog is clearly educated – and I’ve got the creeping suspicion that he’s significantly smarter than me, as well.

But that won’t matter when I have his eye out. Oblog tells me he has a plan, but everybody’s got a plan until some scrappy girl in a pleasure dress drives eight inches of splintered timber through your eye-socket.

But I don’t have what he thinks he does – a certain outcome. At best, I’ve got a fifty-fifty chance of getting us all off this ship alive – and certain death, or worse, if I fail.

Oblog watches me, as if trying to read my mind. As he does so, he continues speaking:

“Those Aurelians care about you, Jamie – or they will right up until the moment they fuck you. When they find out you’re just like every other woman they’ve ever fucked in their search for their Fated Mate, you’ll be of as much value to them as trash.”

The sadistic Toad gurgles.

“But, by then, it will be too late. I’ll have video evidence of them raping a slave – the most egregious crime in Aurelian society. They’ll ever after be forced to do my bidding – or those video files will be transmitted to the Aurelian Law Enforcement agency, and their names will be forever added to the Kill List. Then, that little sanctuary of theirs – the notion that they cling to, that they’re not truly Rogue – will be as nothing.”

I gulp.

I see now that Lord Oblog is playing a complex game of chess, and he’s three moves ahead of us. He never intended to let the Aurelians go free. In fact, he manipulated me into begging them to claim me precisely for this reason. Marcel, Lucius, and Quint would never have crossed that line unless I’d pleaded for them to do so.

But, more than that… I fear Oblog’s words. They hang over my head like a prophecy. It’s no secret that Aurelians spend their lives scouring the universe in search of their Fated Mate – and fuck countless human woman hoping each time that she’ll be the one. The moment they sink their cocks into a female, though, it becomes clear whether she’s that one-in-a-trillion Bonded female, or just a woman who smelt right at the time.

If Oblog’s right, and the Aurelians stop caring about me the instant they determine I’m not their Fated Mate, who knows what will happen to me. I like to think the three warriors are noble and honorable – that they wouldn’t just abandon Tessa or me…

…but ever since I first met them, I’ve had questions that have remained unanswered. If they’re working for the Priesthood, and trading with the Toad confederacy, who knows where their true loyalties lie. Who knows if I can trust them?

Would they have just let Tessa be dragged off by that Bullfrog, if I hadn’t begged for them to spare her?

If Oblog speaks the truth, then I might be sold off to a Bullfrog the moment this spectacle is over – when the Aurelians find they have no more use for me.

But even worse – if theydocare about me, whether or not I’m their Fated Mate – I’ll then be used as leverage against them, just like that video footage will be. For the rest of their lives, or at least until the end of mine, I’ll be a tool that Lord Oblog can use to manipulate the triad.

I realize that if I don’t act now, we’ll lose everything.

Unknowingly, Lord Oblog steps closer to my trap. He’s waddled forward until he stands just four feet in front of me. The odds are shifting in my favor. If I can maintain the element of surprise…

My muscles tense. I ready myself, steeling my nerves.

To distract him, I demand: “Why are you telling me this?”

My voice is barely a rasp, taut from adrenaline. I summon up my courage, readying myself to make that single thrust that could determine my freedom, or my fate.