Page 29 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

THEY brOUGHT Emmeline to the platform like a prize they didn’t deserve, chains tight enough to mark her wrists, chin forced high by a guard’s hand so the cameras could drink in her beautiful face.

She was more petite than Hannah, her features both delicate and elegant with brown hair streaked with gold and eyes the same hazel-green shade as her mother’s.

Hannah went rigid beside Locus. Her fingers curled, nails whitening, then she folded her arms hard across her ribs as if she could hold herself together by force. The light hit her eyes and turned them wet. She blinked until they cleared. She refused to cry forthem.

She pressed closer and his mind filled in the truth of what those chains meant. He knew she was remembering her past. He saw it in her eyes, and the images from that past clashed with this moment, of Emmy displayed like livestock.

The roar of the crowd hammered at Hannah, metallic and deafening, and he recognized the fight in her body to keep from screaming. There was a spark of vows in her silence, her anxiety not to lose her sister forever, her determination to survive long enough to find her again.

She leaned into Locus without realizing it, her trembling pressed into the unyielding muscle of his side.

The hard line of his thigh brushed against hers, every shift reminding her she wasn’t alone.

Her skin prickled where his heat bled into her, and the more the crowd crowed, the more her body betrayed her—pressing closer, clutching at him for both safety and something far more dangerous.

The yard had changed for spectacle. The headman had ordered a taller dais, rough-hewn planks hammered over sawhorses and oil drums, cables snaking to nearby poles, drones buzzing in restless orbits.

Floodlamps burned white, washing the dirt to chalk, lifting dust into a glitter that stuck to tongues.

Men pressed close. Some sober. Most not.

Currency chips clicked in a woman’s metal bowl like teeth.

The headman stood at the center with a microphone that didn’t need the volume, his voice already trained to cut through riot.

“Voss,” he called with a smile that was thin and cutting, more scar than grin.

“You said you wanted to see her before the hunters took their fun, and here she is. Front of the line. Prime. So far, untouched.”

The guards hauled Emmy to the edge rail.

She stumbled and recovered fast, stubborn pride where strength should’ve been.

Her light brown hair was tangled, her mouth split at one corner.

She bled a little where the chain had bitten her wrists.

She didn’t bow her head. She looked for Hannah first, as if the yard didn’t contain a single face that mattered exceptone.

Hannah shifted to be seen without stepping forward. Locus moved with her, always the wall between. Emmy’s throat fluttered when she found her sister. She took a breath as if that one breath had to carry everything she couldn’tsay.

Locus measured the distance. Thirty paces to the dais.

Twelve men between. Two on the steps, one on the mic line, three with rifles high.

The rest carried knives and swagger. Drones circled, lenses flaring.

Aportable energy barrier unit hung above the platform, its faint shimmer betraying the edge of its field.

If he reached Emmy, they would trigger it like an electric storm.

That was the trap. The yard dared him to spring it.

The headman’s grin said he would love the attempt.

Locus let the calculation finish, then let itgo.

He spoke low for Hannah alone. “Do not move forward.”

“You think I’m going to rush them?”

“Affirmative.”

Her mouth opened, then shut. “Then stand closer. Keep me from doing something stupid.”

He moved until her shoulder brushed his chest. Heat pressed through the thin scraps they’d been forced into again—the halter and skirt that barely covered Hannah, the loincloth at his own hips. The coarse fabric did little to hide the press of her body againsthis.

Every time she breathed, he felt it. Every shift of her weight slid soft skin against his thigh.

Her scent lifted with fear and stubbornness, threaded with something sweeter that set his blood humming.

He absorbed the tremor of her breasts brushing his side, the line of her hip fitting too neatly into his palm when he steadied her.

Each taunt from the crowd made her cling harder, and with every heartbeat his need to shield—and to claim—intensified.

It cut him clean and low, need threading through discipline.

He kept his voice level. “You will not be stupid. You will be brave.”

The headman raised his hands. The yard went quiet with the quick silence of men who loved a show more than they craved blood. He turned to the nearest camera, smile growing theatrical. “For those of you watching from home and elsewhere, this is a rare thing. Amatched piece. Sisters.”

The crowd loved that. Laughter rolled like stones down a hill. Some shouted offers before the ask. Others jeered cruelly: “Strip her!”

“Let’s see if she screams!”

A bidder’s voice from a screen mocked, “She looks too soft—she won’t last a night.”

Another cackled, “Pair them up, I’ll pay double to see them break together.”

The headman drank it in, then made a show of shame, palm down for calm he didn’twant.

“Emmy,” he said, using her name the way a man uses a key. “Step forward so the buyers can see your eyes.”

She did. The guard tried to touch her. She pulled away and forced herself the last half-step to the rail. The small defiance drew a hiss. The headman didn’t like it either, but he liked the cameramore.

“This female’s condition...” he said to the drones, like he was reading a label he had forged.

“Young. Unbroken. Untouched by the preserve. And she has documented ties that make her more valuable to collectors—her blood connection to the girl already inside the trials. Sisters. Arare matched set, one trapped in the preserve, one offered for sale. And when the final Challenge is done, perhaps the hunters will be promised the alien’s head as a trophy if they spare the girl, so she can be sold aswell.

“Imagine it—both sisters in the hands of bidders. That is a guarantee of scarcity. And, for those who like a story, imagine the content value, the returns, the frenzy when buyers can boast of owning both sisters. Emmy now, and Hannah later. Will one bidder claim them both, completing the set? Time will tell!”

Hannah made a sound in her throat that wasn’t a word.

Locus held her closer by choice, not force.

His palm found the line of her hip and lingered, thumb stroking unconsciously at the curve he wanted to memorize.

The warmth of her body seeped into his side, her trembling pressing her tighter into him.

Desire and fury tangled until he could barely separatethem.

He lifted his voice so the headman heard it. “You speak of value as if you understand the word.”

The headman’s gaze slid over. He lifted his chin a fraction, amused and wary. “I understand plenty.”

“You understand profit,” Locus said. “Value is different.”

“You going to teach me economics, alien?”

“I am going to finish this,” Locus said. “When I do, there will be no drones left in your sky.”

The headman’s smile thinned. “Try it. You take down a single drone and the footage alone will triple her price. Every replay means more credits for me. We both thrive on outsiders watching—but mine pay better And don’t forget all those people in Hannah’s neighborhood.

I can take them out with a snap of my fingers. ”

Hannah’s hand pressed against Locus’s abdomen, her palm hot against the ridges of muscle, steadying herself and him at once.

He didn’t look down, but heat surged at the contact.

He kept his eyes on the dais, his thoughts on not snapping the headman’s neck before the yard forced the last trial.

Discipline was a habit so old it came like breath.

He used it now as his body reacted to every tremor inhers.

“Let us begin,” Voss said from the base of the platform.

He had arrived without fanfare, atall man with a colder face than the others, jacket unzipped to show a vest lined with tech, boots without dust. He had the look of someone who didn’t sleep in camps.

He had come for a single purchase and didn’t intend to stay.

Men moved out of his way without knowing they did it.

He took the steps and stood one plank back from Emmy, not quite within reach.

“I don’t need a show, fool,” he told the headman. “Name your reserve—the minimum price you’ll take—and spare me your patter.”

“I enjoy my patter.”

Voss slid a look over him that stripped without touching. “I enjoy not being shot in the back while an auctioneer talks too long.”

That pulled a genuine laugh from several hard faces. The headman put a hand to his heart as if wounded. “Reserve is high.”

Voss drew a line on the ledger with the tip of a stylus. “Higher.”

The woman with the bowl shifted to a tablet and began entering figures.

Numbers stacked. The headman watched the rising total and forgot to perform for a moment.

Greed had a voice all its own. He swallowed and found his smile again.

“We have other buyers, Voss. You do not buy the whole show by breathing at it.”

“Bring them in,” Voss said. “Let them make it expensive.”

Screens on the pole uprights brightened.

Faces winked into life, most masked, some in shadow.

Bidders from outside the yard. Locus catalogued accents, languages, backgrounds in the fast rhythm of war, not commerce.

Ships. Ports. Houses. Credits. Names would come later.

He didn’t intend to need them. He intended to remember their faces long enough to endthem.