Alien Conquest: (The Warrior's Prize) An Alien SciFi Romance Read Online Free Page B

her less than being scrubbed. Alaina peeked around Yfia and saw there were three more slaves ahead of her in the line. So only five of them were being put up for bid for the high families, whatever those were.
    They were led into a room, and Alaina’s breath caught in her throat when she saw the window. As before, on Rua’s ship, just the sight of the universe turning all around her was astonishing. She didn’t think she’d ever get used to seeing it. And she’d almost been able to forget they were on a space station at all. But there it was, all that black and all those stars twinkling along, tiny pinpricks of light on the dark fabric of a galaxy Alaina had no name for. Except she knew that it was far away from the Milky Way. And far away from Earth.
    The attendants lined them up side by side in front of a long curtain separating
    one half of the room from another. The carpet was soft beneath Alaina’s bare feet, and other than the window and a pair of lamps attached to either wall, the room was empty save for whatever awaited them on the other side of the curtain. Alaina looked down the line to see Yfia, two more Jiayi, and one female Ankaa, judging by the faint outline of breasts and the smaller, stockier figure beneath the gauzy dress. She wondered if they had hair beneath those helmets.
    Then the attendants left and closed the door behind them. None of the slaves were bound, Alaina realized. No one expected them to fight back, or even to try to run. Which meant that they were so good at putting a stop to that kind of thing that it never happened. Or maybe nobody ever really tried. Alaina knew it wasn’t worth the effort yet. Even if she’d gotten out of this room, the space station itself was such a mystery to her, she’d never have been able to find a way off it. So she stood, hands at her sides, beside Yfia, and waited.
    After what felt like forever, but couldn’t have really been more than a few minutes, the curtain began to move, withdrawing to one side of the room and folding neatly up against the wall. About a dozen aliens lounged on low couches, and standing in front of them all was Captain Rua. He extended a hand, displaying the slaves, and smiled.
    “Welcome to the auction, your graces,” Rua said, flashing his white teeth at them. “We will begin with Amat Riglor, a fierce Ankaa warrior.”
    Alaina tuned him out as he began to describe the other aliens in the line. She looked from alien to alien, attempting to sort them out.
    There were several Jiayi like Yfia. But unlike Yfia, they all had tall, twisting, sharp-edged antlers instead of small ones. They seemed to be in pairs, and Alaina couldn’t tell if they were all of the same family or not. Probably different, because each couple wore different colors of purple, blue, or green.
    Then there were several Ankaa, and Alaina thought they must have been mostly interested in acquiring gladiators. They all wore armor like the Ankaa on Rua’s ship, but this armor was chrome and black, highly polished, and looked much better made. The Ankaa were there for fighters, Alaina decided, and likely wouldn’t spend their money on her unless they wanted someone to polish their armor, maybe.
    The last group of aliens, and the ones closest to where Alaina stood, were Errai. Several men Alaina thought must have been bodyguards of some kind, all in black and gold armor, standing behind one sofa where a girl lounged in a dress almost as sheer as Alaina’s. She sprawled with one arm on the back of the sofa, looking bored, watching as Rua moved down the line of slaves. She was beautiful, too. Her hair was a vivid red, not like the red of Earth’s humans, but fire engine red. She was pale-skinned, save for where evergreen scales wound over her arms, over her collar bone, disappearing beneath her shimmery-gold dress. While Alaina was staring at her, she looked right over, and their eyes met. Alaina blinked, surprised.
    The girl blinked back, an eyebrow arching