Ensnared Bride Read Online Free Page A

shifted her focus to him.  
    He stood.   “Come.   I’ll show you some of the ship.”
    Monica shoveled the last heaping bite of food in her mouth, and then washed it down with her punch.   She hopped up to follow him.  
    She was still unable to keep her footing in the elevator as it careened them through the ship.   Monica braced her body against the wall.   Javintore, like the robot, had no trouble standing.
    “You tried to blow yourself up yesterday,” Javintore said.   “Do you still want to die?”
    No, I fricking didn ’t!   She held her tongue.   Javintore thought she was someone different right now, someone with the courage to destroy herself just to kill two Hax-Rah in the process.   Would he respect her as much if he new she was just a cowardly slave struggling to get by without getting tr ’sark zaps?
    “I don’t want to die,” she said.
    Javintore glanced at her.
    “I mean…”   She paused to clear her throat.   “Everything has been great so far, but, I just don’t think it’s going to stay that way.”
    “Why not?   Tell me the truth—always tell me the truth.   That’s my first rule for you.   If you can’t tell the truth, then just be quiet instead of lying.”
    She hesitated.   “You don’t expect me to trust you this soon into it.”
    He tipped up his head in realization.   “No.   I don’t.”   Then he gave an rancorous laugh.  
    Monica looked at him.  
    “I don’t trust you either.”
    Her shoulders rose and fell with a sigh.  
    “You’re going to prove yourself to me.”
    Her eyes lifted toward him.
    “I’m not interested in a war concubine who considers me a target.   I need someone I can trust.”
    The second bit caused a pang deep in her middle.   There was a tremor in his lush baritone voice.   Something compelling.  
    The elevator opened to a metal grate bridge.   Javintore led her onto it.   They were in a room with as much floor space as the bay they ’d first landed in, but with a tiled ceiling only a few inches higher than Javintore’s head.   Below the bridge, and filling every foot of the floor, were the big-shouldered robots.   Thousands of them were   lined up too tightly to be able to move.   Their red eyes weren’t glowing.  
    Javintore gestured to the silent metal crowd.   “What you see here is almost fifty percent of the ship.   Not this floor, but floors like it.   There’s eighteen stories exactly like this one, filled to bursting with war-bots.”
    “Oh,” Monica said softly.   She continued staring, but there really wasn’t much to see.   It was a massive robot storage room.
    “The other ten floors you’ve basically already seen.   They’re filled with the drones that were in the landing bay.”
    Monica looked at him while recalling the bomb covered ships in the bay.
    “That’s it.   That’s my ship.”   He shrugged.   “Of course, there’s a control room, too.   Repair chutes.   An energy chamber.   A few other things.   But this is what I’m all about as Mek-lord.   I rule the robots and the drones.”
    “What about a crew?”
    He tipped his nose at the robots.   “My crew is made of robots.   We’re the only people on this ship.”
    Monica ’s eyes widened.   “You were all by yourself?”
    He bowed his head in affirmation.  
    She tried to wrap her mind around this.
    Javintore headed back toward the elevator.   “Most Hax-Rah live for the joy of destroying an enemy.”   He pressed a panel to open the elevator door.   “I was more interested in what our slaves were doing.   The ones who built our ships and weapons.   Circuits, wires, transistors, microchips—that’s what fascinated me.”  
    He entered the elevator.   Monica braced herself against the wall again.
    “But I won’t bore you with my history.”
    “Are you kidding?”
    His brows rose as he looked at her.
    She recoiled after her outburst, but then forced herself to continue.   “I want to know about