Beloved Stranger: Gaian Series, Book 5 Read Online Free Page B

women here, she reasoned. And she wasn’t a woman without looks.
    He wasn’t so bad himself, she reflected, with his dark brown hair and eyes. He’d been right about the scar on his arm not being his first. A thin one bisected his left eyebrow, but rather than marring his looks, the scar, along with the slight bump of his broken nose, gave his otherwise handsome face a touch of rakishness she rather liked. Under normal circumstances, Roan would have been a man she might have really gone for.
    Unfortunately those weren’t the circumstances they were in, not that he knew that. Roan thought she really intended to be his wife. Too bad that wasn’t possible.
    “Perhaps we should go?” she said when it looked like they’d be standing there all night with him staring at her.
    He shook his head. “Yes, of course.” Turning to the man at the desk, he began reciting his name and number again, but the official held up his hand.
    “I got it the first time.” He held up a scanner to Roan’s arm. “Roan Duman.”
    Then he held it up to hers and after a moment frowned. “No tracking tag. You’ll have to take care of that later.”
    Sonja said nothing, but swore to herself that wasn’t going to happen.
    He entered their names on his p-tab. “Roan Duman, Sonja Deems. Married. Marriage fee, thirty-one thousand credits.”
    Sonja couldn’t help her gasp. “Thirty-one thousand? That’s a fortune!”
    The official seemed amused. “Costs a lot to bring women here. Not many are willing to come to a prison planet to be married.”
    And didn’t she know that already. Most women didn’t come here willingly at all. Years earlier she and her sisters had been stolen from their Outer Colony farm to furnish women for the Gaian miners’ marriage meets, and recently she’d been involved in an unofficial effort to end the practice of slaving in the Outer Colonies.
    She’d known there was money in it for the slavers who took the women, but she’d no idea how much. And they expected this prisoner to fork over a fortune like that just so he could have a wife? It was preposterous!
    She turned to Roan but he didn’t protest or even look surprised. He waved a small wand over the machine. “You can deduct it from this account.”
    He smiled at her shock. “Don’t worry, Sonja. If I couldn’t afford a wife I wouldn’t be here.”
    The man waved them through the heavy door that led into the mining complex. Sonja stepped through and inwardly rejoiced. She’d gotten what she’d come for.
    They were inside what looked like a locker room, with brown robes and a few white ones piled up as if people had left in a hurry. In a hurry to enjoy their wedding nights alone, Sonja decided.
    Roan reached for her robe. “You can take that off now.”
    And happy she’d be to take it off and never put it back on again. Sonja stripped off the robe and handed it to him. She hated the robes they made you wear. She hated wearing the stupid white dress as well, dressing herself as if she were to be offered up like some virgin—hah on that—sacrifice for the greater good.
    In this case though, the greater good was the solution to finding her sisters, and much as she’d hated it, she’d put the dress on willingly. She had a plan to rescue them, but it involved getting inside the mining complex, a place outsiders were strictly forbidden to go.
    She’d found the only way to do it was by getting one of the men to take her inside, hence her garments, the marriage meet and allowing one of their men to attach to and marry her.
    Which this unsuspecting man had done—costing him a small fortune in the process. Sonja cringed at that. She’d had no idea they charged the prisoners for their wives.
    Perhaps Roan thought the price was a bargain to get a wife, but what he didn’t know was that she had no intention of settling into housekeeping with him. Her plan was to find out who had married her sisters, locate them and get them off this rock as quickly as