2. Owned Mates

"I'll take you to Owned Mates, and we will see what we can do about getting you out of the mess you've got yourself in."

I've been ravaged to perfection. I feel so damn good I almost think I didn't make any kind of a mistake at all when I sold myself multiple times over. Raz is hot, and charming, and he knows how to pleasure me. He also has the ability to blend in, and to help me blend in whenever I need to. He and I could run forever, staying ahead of all the terrible things that are chasing me.

The last three guys I annoyed are the least of my worries. There're worse things out there hunting me. I need someone who can protect me. I need someone who can hide me and keep me safe. Raz is perfect. Sometimes you find what you're looking for after you sell yourself multiple times. There's probably a moral in that story. I could write a book about that later. Make even more money.

For the first time in a very, very long time, things are actually working out for me. I feel like I've fallen on my feet. I've found the love of my life, maybe. I don't really believe in loves of my life. If anything, life has taught me that love is easy come, easy go, and normally a lie. But hell if there isn't part of me that insists on believing it anyway.

"Settle in," Raz says, holding me close in his lap. "It'll be a few hours before we can sort this out, but you may as well rest."

I curl up in Raz's arms and doze off as we're on our way to the closest Owned Mates office. It means going back into civilized space, but he'll keep me well hidden, I'm sure of it. There's more than a little thrill in knowing I am passing beneath the noses of all the many law enforcement agencies who would have a bone to pick with me.

The Owned Mates head office is located on a small commercial asteroid that hurtles around a planet that hurtles around a sun somewhere or other. Companies set their offices up on asteroids for tax purposes, and this barren rock is absolutely bristling with buildings and storefronts for companies who operate throughout the galaxy and probably even further afield. Space used to be the final frontier. Now, with teleportation and other space folding technologies I won't even pretend to understand, it's more like a bit of an inconvenience.

A main strip of buildings runs along either side of a road which runs the entire circumference of the asteroid. Some of the buildings are dark and quiet, but a lot of them are lit up like nightclubs. Music pulses into the cool, empty night. This is not a place where a lot of people come, but it is a place where companies like to imagine people might come. Bass-heavy music thuds in a compelling way that almost makes me feel like I might be having a good time. Almost.

It's hard to tell what the local time is. It feels like perpetual dusk. I suppose it doesn't really matter. We won't be here long. I've just got to sort out this little administrative matter and I can get back to Raz's ship.

Finding the office I'm looking for isn't hard because there's a glowing naked human woman displayed above it rotating slowly. Underneath it is a big plate glass window adorned with images of hot human women in various states of undress.

The glowing red, similarly rotating letters above the door read: OWNED MATES. There's a little tagline below it too: A mate to own for life.

They don't say specifically whose life the mate is owned for, but that's probably a deliberate oversight. I can imagine many human mates don't last long with their alien owners. The anatomical challenges alone could cause lethal results.

I know how lucky I am to have been purchased by someone who enjoys my brand of disobedience and chaos. If any of the others who bought me were to take possession of me, I am sure their displeasure would be known, and their punishments intense. Fortunately for me, Raz seems to find everything I do very funny.

There's a digital catalog outside too, labelled: Human Accessories.

I flip through the pages, which are nothing but light and air, and see all sorts of things advertised for the aliens who buy humans to use with and on their owned mates.

"Paddles. Cuffs. Cages. Restraints," I read the categories aloud. ‘Human mates' seems like a positive spin on what's clearly something else entirely. Human fuck-slaves, more like it. I guess that would be more letters to put on a sign.

Raz is somewhere behind me, watching me. He's the sort to do reconnaissance of an entire area. It's smart, and it makes me feel like I have eyes in the back of my head.

"You don't have endless amounts of time," he reminds me. "They will be coming."

That's enough to get me through the front door and into a lobby sort of situation where a very bored human woman is sitting chained behind a very beige desk. There's a gold collar around her neck, and two cuffs around her wrists. All three of these accoutrements have chains attached to them which appear to be fastened around her keyboard. That's some very old tech, but hey, so's the wheel and we don't complain about that.

Her dark hair is cut in a severe bob. She has big brown eyes and thin lips, though I suspect they would look less thin if they were not pressed together in obvious annoyance. I get the awkward feeling I have interrupted something, though I cannot imagine what. She is wearing what people in the late twentieth century would have described as business casual. A beige blazer adorns her shoulders and a pink blouse beneath hints at what might once have been a personality, before that personality was limited to blouse colors. I've come to save myself, but I'm very tempted to try to save her.

"Hi," I say.

She looks at me, and I know instantly that my presence here annoys her. She is one of the many humans who seek out customer-facing positions because they inexplicably believe themselves to be people persons in spite of the fact they loathe almost all of humanity.

"Hello," she says, the two syllables forced out between barely gritted teeth.

I decide to just lay it all on the line up front. I already have a very bad feeling about this, but there's no point in waffling around and trying to make conversation.

"How are you?"

Fuck. I accidentally made conversation.

"Good," she says, in a tone that strongly suggests she wishes both of us were dead. "How can I help you?"

This is grim.

"Are you okay?" I lower my voice to a conspiratorial whisper. "Do you need…"

"How can I help you?" Her tone is sharper this time.

Fine. Apparently, she's not looking for help. I guess we'll deal with my problems then.

"So, I accidentally sold myself to multiple mates. Can we please refund everyone so they can stop chasing me to the ends of the universe, tracking me through the nanobots that are…"

"No refunds," she says, pursing her lips in a way that makes it clear that the fact I'm even asking the question is insulting to her personally.

"Well, there have to be refunds. I just want to give the money in my account back to…"

"No refunds," she repeats. "If you're not happy with your purchase…"

"I didn't purchase anything. I sold myself. Are you listening?"

"How can I help you?" She asks the question with a malevolent little grin. She knows exactly what I am saying, she just doesn't have any intention of lifting a finger to help me. She has been put in this position of power, but she doesn't seem to be terribly interested in using it for good.

"What's your problem, lady? I'm trying to stop some very bad things from happening. All I need is the account numbers, and maybe then you could contact the buyers and let them know that there was some kind of system-wide glitch that allowed the same human to be sold…"

She leans forward across the counter, and for a moment I feel a spark of hope. Women have to help other women. She can't just let me be pursued and devoured by a small pack of horny alien males, all of whom want to make me exclusively theirs.

"Maybe you shouldn't have tried to game the system. Maybe these are the consequences of your actions,"she hisses at me with the intense, fiscally-protective malevolence that only ever comes from an employee who has literally no financial stake in a company at all and stands to gain absolutely nothing from saving the corporation a cent.

"The fuck?" I question her attitude, but there's not really any point because once again, events are overtaking me in a very dramatic way.

SMASH! SMASH! SMASH!

The sound of the plate glass window shattering into a billion pieces does get her attention, as a whirling dervish of scythkin violence comes bursting through in a display that is as dramatic as it is terrifying.

Bits of man-suit hang off the creature, who I know has the intellect of a sentient person, but he looks like the contents of a drug-addled nightmare. He absolutely shines with violence. There is no part of him from which a blade does not extend. Big ones, small ones, smooth ones, serrated ones. He is a living incarnation of a knife, and he is not happy.

"MINE!"

He intones the word with passion, speaking through a mouth of razor sharp teeth set in a shiny maw. It would be sweet, if not for the fact that there is no way he could possibly touch me without turning me into the ingredients for barbecue skewers.

I back up against the counter, holding my hands palms out in a gesture of surrender.

"I'm sorry," I say. "I didn't mean to…"

The creature reaches for me, massive, black shiny hand gripping my wrist in a hold that I know I could never hope to break in a thousand years. It is a great mercy that the blades on his hand have retracted, or he would be slitting my wrist right now.

"I own you," he says. "You belong to me, Taylor."

"My name's not Taylor," I mumble under my breath. I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. When faced with a beast like this, there's no way to fight. I am going to have to submit to whatever he wants.

He drags me out of the office by my wrist. I am forced to trot after him as fast as my legs will take me, back up and out through the broken window. There is glass everywhere, but that is truly the least of my concerns. I'm glad he did some damage to the Owned Mates premises. The company deserves to take some losses for what they've done to me. All I did was scam them slightly, and now I've been cut off.

Of course, I made them some money too. They took transaction fees from every single one of the sales. I suppose losing all those to refunds doesn't appeal. Better I get torn apart in some cruel and unusual alien fuck competition than they lose a single cent.

"Uhm, Mister Knives?"

The scythkin stops and looks down at me. "Yes, mate?"

"Where are we going?"

"I'm taking you to…

PING!

A shot rings out, catching him dead center of his chest. The massive, bladed alien staggers back a moment and drops to the ground. There's only one creature in this vicinity who carries weapons capable of downing a scythkin.

I speak first in the aftermath of the shot.

"I've been wondering when you'd show up." My voice shakes a little, even though I'm trying to be brave.

A languid drawl emanates from the shadows. "Little lady, you've led me on quite a chase."

I thought I was afraid when I was in Emrys' grip. Now I am reminded of the meaning of true fear. The devil you know isn't always better than the vamp you don't. This alien is silhouetted as a tall, lean figure against the lights of Owned Mates. I know his face already. I know that his eyes will be filled with a mocking kind of laughter. I know…

I know that it takes more than one shot, even a good one, to put a scythkin down for long.

The scythkin rises from the ground, having been momentarily put down by the bullet. It didn't even seem to make a dent. Instead, it's probably still ricocheting down the strip. Hard to say, because all my attention is being taken up by the probably inevitable but still very unwelcome convergence of alien males. Emrys strides out of the shadows, his expression grim as the grave. I see a flash of blue about the edges of my vision and I know that Raz is nearby. Thank god. Hopefully he'll help me escape again. He's staying out of sight, blending into the shadows and using his natural abilities to remain undetected.

Kronos the barbarian makes his presence known by walking into the zone of combat. He looks only vaguely perturbed, as if chasing his mate through the universe with a squad of other aliens he just met is something he does every other day.

"Shoot first, ask questions later, lawman?" The scythkin is also remarkably relaxed for someone who was just shot. I'm impressed with his restraint. He is the most dangerous creature in the galaxy and I have no doubt he could destroy the Sheriff in a matter of seconds if he wanted to. It's a testament to his temperament that he's so relaxed.

The assembled alien males all eye one another, the vamp, the barbarian, the spy, the scythkin, and the sheriff. One might think that the authority of the law is the only thing stopping this from being an absolute massacre, but I think this could easily turn into a blood bath at absolutely any moment.

"There aren't any questions worth asking about this one," Sheriff says. "That bullet was a favor to you. I'm afraid you boys have all been scammed."

"That had occurred to us," Emrys growls.

I shrink away from Sheriff, even though it takes me toward Emrys. It says a lot about the way I feel about that guy that the malevolence coming from the valker is like a warm bath compared to the lawman's energy.

"I've been chasing this young lady longer than any of you might care to imagine. She's wily, alright. Had to purchase a share myself in order to track her down," Sheriff says.

"So she's a criminal," Emrys says.

Raz smirks from the shadows. He is my closest ally, the only one who does not seem confused or angry or intent on making me do everything he says forever and ever. I got lucky with that guy. I glance at him in the hopes he'll catch my eye and offer something reassuring. He doesn't. He's looking at Sheriff, but that makes sense. I'd bet that Raz has some warrants of his own to worry about.

The scythkin doesn't care about any of these revelations, probably because the scythkin has no intention of giving me up no matter what I've done. I can already tell how intent he is on having me regardless of whatever Sheriff says. An alien who is prepared to burst through a plate glass window to abduct me from a shop is not overly concerned with my criminality.

Sheriff is nevertheless triumphant. He might be a crack hand with a gun, but right now he is choosing to twist the knife instead.

"There's no chance of getting your funds back, because she owes more than the contents of whatever account she's put your hard-won earnings into, I can guarantee you that. I picked up that pad of hers back at the diner. Those accounts have been closed, and the funds have been reintegrated into the payouts for her many creditors."

"So the only value we have is her." Emrys gestures toward me with a pointed, accusatory finger.

"A fifth of her each," Kronos says.

"She is mine," the scythkin replies.

As they discuss their ownership, I am looking for a way out. There are not a lot of ways to go. If I so much as move a muscle, I'd have all of them on me in an instant. How did some of the most intense alien males in the universe end up buying me? The odds of every single one of them tracking me down and finding me seem astronomical. I would have thought that the type of alien to purchase a mate would be an ineffectual, undesirable, weak sort of creature unable to pull from the limited pool of available females of his own species.

The scythkin, I understand. A scythkin matriarch devours her mate after she has been fertilized, so it's understandable to want to kick that particular can down the road. The males are the most dangerous creatures you'll encounter, striking terror into those they cross. That's why they wear the suits. Posing as other aliens only to come bursting out of very lifelike disguises in a flurry of carapace and blades also adds a certain je ne sais quoi to the whole affair.

"Why don't we go to my ship and talk about sharing her there?" Kronos speaks up. "I've got cells that'll keep her contained. Maybe some of us are prepared to sell our shares."

"I already overpaid for the lying little wench," Emrys hisses. "If you think I will spend another deep space cent on her, you are out of your mind."

"Aw, you're already attached," I smirk. Probably shouldn't be teasing him this way. He's malevolence incarnate. But I am also not having a particularly great day right now, and I like to start shit sometimes. If I can put them off taking me, that might save me a whole lot of pain. Hell, if I'm enough of a pain in the ass, maybe they'll all forfeit their shares and I'll go free.

Emrys glares at me. "You are a criminal," he growls. "You are a human whose value lies in the heat of your meat and very little…"

One of the most satisfying things I have ever seen in my life is the hammer-like fist of a godly handsome barbarian meeting the chin and jaw of Emrys. The vamp goes sideways before turning with feline alacrity, his body twisting as if his spine were made of cooked spaghetti. His jaw hinges open, multiple fangs extending from the roof of his mouth. He has two prominent ones, but there are others on either side. They look like the inside of a particularly vicious predator's maw, the kind that once it bites you, you can't pull away without tearing off parts of your own flesh because they curve backwards and away.

The barbarian takes a step back — not as a matter of retreat, but because he needs the range in order to swing his sword. The weapon is off his shoulder in an instant, flashing with a blue electric field that I know is not for show. He doesn't have to actually make contact with the blade — though you wouldn't like it if he did. That sword has enough energy stored in it to drop a herd of almost any animal you might choose to name.

"ENOUGH!"

The scythkin — I really have to get his name — suddenly has them both in a big, shining hand. He grips Emrys by the back of the neck like a disobedient kitten, while his other hand is wrapped around the gauntlet of the barbarian. Neither one of them is able to move while he has them.

"Unhand me, insect!"

Of course it's Emrys who says something that fucking stupid to an alien who is entirely capable of popping a blade out of any particular piece of his anatomy and turning the vampire into cold, unappealing kebabs. I do admire the nerve, though. Emrys has the vibe of a villain who is accustomed to being the master of his domain. It must be humiliating for him to be stopped by a scythkin. Good. I hope he hates it. I hope it causes a deep sense of shame that sinks into his bones and he thinks about it at random times of day for years to come.

"Now, now, boys. I reckon we need to talk. See, I have my doubts we all want this little lady for the same purposes. If we share what our needs are, we might find she's more than enough to go around," Sheriff says.

"I don't owe any of you an explanation," Emrys hisses.

"Then we don't owe you any consideration," Sheriff replies.

"I need a mate for the valker homecoming," Emrys confesses. "I do not wish to bring a female of my own kind. She would lay claim to my lands and to my progeny. A human mate will satisfy the requirements of the homecoming while remaining property, owned and controlled."

"You're such a charmer, I can't believe a female vamp hasn't seduced you already," I mutter under my breath.

"I require a mate to tend my hearth and bear my young," Kronos says.

"And I need to hang her," Sheriff says. "But we can do that last."

Well, damn. I knew he was cruel, but that's a certain kind of ancient cruelty.

"Hang me?"

He looks me square in the eye. "Financial crimes are capital crimes. You know that."

Sheriff is almost human. So fucking close you could swear he has remnants of Neanderthal DNA. But he's not human at all. He's one of the species humans most fear — somehow we're not nearly as afraid of scythkins as we are of these guys. He's a numahn, a craggy, rough, man-like alien with a craggy, rough heart.

Numahns are what humans wish they were. Taller, smarter, stronger, more ruthless. Sheriff is a prime example of a numahn. He stands about eight feet tall, and he's faster with his weapon than any man could be. He's chased me across countless star systems on account of the crimes I've committed. I really thought he would have lost interest by now, but numahns are notoriously merciless to humans. They consider us not only lesser, but quite undeserving of life. We are like a stage of evolution they skipped entirely. I've made a lot of money scamming numahns who think a stupid human could never outsmart them.

"Anybody object to the fact he wants to kill me? No?" I look around the assembled aliens. I'm looking for an ally, either the scythkin or the barbarian. The scythkin won't allow harm to come to a human in his care — I think. And the barbarian seems honorable.

"I wouldn't mind killing you," Emrys says. "You have proved to be an irritant from the outset. Not worth the money I paid for you."

"Maybe someone will buy your share."

"I'm not attempting this ridiculous process again. You will come to my world and you will make an impression as my mate. You will perform the task I purchased you to perform, and when you are done, I will be glad to know that you have been dispatched with."

"I dislike you," I say.

"The feeling is mutual," he replies.

I glance back at Raz again. He is letting this play out, and I have to wonder if there's a reason why. Probably because his strength is stealth, and there's no way to stealth our way out of this. Yet.

Kronos is not looking happy. It is hard to say how the scythkin is looking, because his main expression is bristling with very sharp blades. It was easier to read him when he was wearing his human suit, but I guess he doesn't have a lot of spares of those.

Just as it seems my fate is to be bullied and then executed, the scythkin reaches for me, swings me up over his shoulder and starts carrying me off. I am fortunate that his body, which bristles with blades at almost every location and juncture, seems to easily retract those blades where I am pressed over the hard plating that covers his flesh.

"I am taking my mate," he declares. "I will not share."