Page 205 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

All right, I could do that, and I certainly wasn’t going to make trouble for these two.

So, I cooperated when washing up and getting dressed, only a little concerned when I realized this uniform was more formfitting, more revealing than the previous one.

Like the two pale blue ladies, I was meant to be put on display in this, sexualized.

I wasn’t just a part of the scenery now.

A woman waited for us in the kitchen, where the two brought me, and she started throwing out instructions.

It was familiar, I’d waited tables, worked in kitchens, and cleaned hotels even before I’d been stolen from my home.

I could fall into this pattern while I tried to figure things out.

My main worry was the monkey. Where did Pato go off to? Was he alright?

I hoped Luka was right to assure me that his mother wouldn’t want to hurt him, she needed him.

Or at least, she vainly wanted him to follow her directions, to marry this female she’d picked out for him.

I wasn’t jealous; I knew Luka didn’t want her.

His mother had had to resort to seeing him trapped in servitude in a hellish place to try to get him to do her bidding.

I understood that better now, even if I briefly wondered—once again—why Luka would bother with me if not just to pass the time.

Old insecurities rearing up, Luka was not like that.

Grabbing one of the trays of hors d’oeuvres, I filed out of the kitchen after the others, up a slender flight of stairs and out a service door into a large receiving room filled with people.

The contrast between the bare, empty downstairs—my captivity in the cold in a tiny closet—and this briefly made me pause in my steps.

It was a dizzying place of crystal chandeliers and golden picture frames, marbled floors and brightly clothed guests.

Most of these guests weren’t Aderian, but there were a few sprinkled throughout the room.

Some of these people were so alien-looking that I struggled to grasp their presence, while others looked far more familiar.

I even thought I saw a human man in a UAR uniform standing in a cluster of aliens, talking expansively and clearly a welcome guest.

As I started making my rounds through the crowd with the food, I felt anger rage and seethe inside me.

That human over there, he was part of why I was stuck here as a slave.

Maybe he’d even been directly involved in shipping me to the Aderian system.

I bee-lined for him as soon as I spotted him, making sure he saw me as I offered everyone in his circle food except for him, glaring at him the entire time.

It was a portly man in his forties, and he looked at me down a hooked nose as if I were vermin beneath his shiny boots.

Yeah, this bastard knew why I was pissed at him, and he didn’t care.

He didn’t think he’d done anything wrong at all; he thought I deserved this somehow.

So I pretended to stumble and dropped the remainder of the tray right down his front, making sure to smear it in nice and firmly.

Nobody ever said I was smart, and this probably proved it.

I shouldn’t have drawn this kind of attention, especially not from the Dragon.

She glided out of the crowd like an elegant swan, her skin shimmering, her dark blue dress cut to fit her slender body.

Gems glittered from her neck and wrists, but nothing was as sharp and piercing as the look in her eerie black eyes.

I saw the difference now between her eyes and those of Luka or any of the other friendly Aderians I’d met.

The coolness, the lack of that warm spark, I could never think Luka’s eyes were cold and mean like that. I didn’t believe he had it in him.

Heart pounding in fear, berating myself for impulsively acting out like this when I should have been looking for the one person I could trust, I watched as she swooped down on me.

She didn’t say a word to me, just flicked her hand in my direction, and pain lit up my system.

I held back my scream of pain through sheer determination, biting the inside of my cheek.

My knees trembled, then buckled, forcing me to sink to the ground while everyone around me laughed and pointed.

Above me, I saw the gloating, smug face of the UAR officer in his besmeared uniform.

He enjoyed watching me like this; he was as sadistic a bastard as Luka’s mother had become: a cold, cruel-hearted bitch.

I wasn’t going to give him the satisfaction of screaming, and with my anger running hot through my veins, it was easier to level a glare on his ugly face.

Luka’s voice pierced through my haze of anger and pain as he stepped in front of me.

“We had a deal here, Mother,” he said fiercely.

“Looks to me like you’re reneging on it.

” The pain dropped away, and I struggled to draw breath now that the focus of my anger was blocked from my sight.

Of Luka, I saw only his back. He was clad in a dark red tunic of some kind, highlighted with silver embroidery, snug black pants, and shiny boots.

He looked great, his broad shoulders filling my view, his arms bare so that I could see the deep silver glow of his skin.

“Pff,” his mother drawled, sounding bored.

“She overstepped her place; this is what she gets. If she behaved, she wouldn’t need to be punished.

” I scrambled ungracefully to my feet, just in time to see how mother and son shared a meaningful look.

I couldn’t decipher it, and an uneasy feeling crawled up my spine the next moment.

A beautiful woman had swept out of the crowd and claimed Luka’s hand, and he didn’t push her away.

While his mother turned and fussed over the UAR officer, taking him with her into the crowd, the new woman spoke to Luka.

“Lover mine, what are you up to?” she said, her voice all sultry, her body curving seductively into his, clad in a nearly sheer green dress.

Her skin had the same lustrous shimmer all Aderians had, but it matched the green tone of her clothing nearly perfectly, giving the impression she was nude.

I felt my heart sink into my stomach. This was the fiancée I’d heard about, the one Luka had adamantly claimed he didn’t want, had never wanted.

Here she was in the flesh, more beautiful than I could have ever imagined—the kind of polished beauty only money could create, with soft, pampered hands and perfectly straight teeth.

How could I ever compare to that? I couldn’t…

But Luka… I told myself not to doubt what he felt for me, what he’d told me.

He’d rescued me from Jihari. He’d been trapped himself.

I had to believe that what he’d told me of his captivity with Drameil was real.

I’d seen the way the Nerizana guard had treated him.

I’d seen the way Kertinal had knocked him out.

If it was all a lie, that wouldn’t have happened, would it?

Then Luka tilted his head down to look at the female clinging to his arm, a look on his face I’d only ever seen directed my way.

It was warm and caring; I couldn’t believe he was directing it at her.

“Koratalin, dearest, I was just making sure there’s no drama tonight,” he said.

Then his eyes flicked my way, turning colder than I’d ever seen them, the cold I’d just thought he couldn’t do.

The look I saw every time the Dragon looked my way.

I felt that look hit me like a blow, more painful than what that pain collar had done to me just moments before.

How could he look at me like that? Had it all been a lie?

Old memories and old hurts seemed to match this moment so perfectly, proving that I’d been right to mistrust him all along.

I flinched back, horrified that I’d given in—that I’d made love to him, that I’d started to lose my heart to him—when all along he’d been acting out a fantasy.

That whole pheromone thing was probably a lie too.

Now that he was done with me, I wasn’t feeling its effects.

Turning on my heel, I darted into the crowd, unwilling to look at him any longer.

Behind me, the noise of a commotion filled the room, shouts, shocked screams. I didn’t look back to see what was making people react like that.

It wasn’t as if they could be responding to my dashed exit.

Nobody ever really looked at their servants, their slaves. I was invisible.