Taken by the Admiral Read Online Free Page A

answers to this mystery.
    She’d studied hard. She should’ve passed. Maybe she could’ve helped thwart this most recent attack against the Varishans. Maybe she could’ve prevented the other forty-five women from being taken as reparations .
    A chill went through her and she wrapped her arms around her center.
    Admiral Cavvik viewed her as a war prize. His war prize.
    On this Varishan ship, she was a prisoner and would be for the rest of her days, unless she managed to escape. None of the missing women had ever found their way back to the Constantina , but she refused to believe escape was impossible.
    The door to Admiral Cavvik’s quarters opened with a faint whooshing sound. The admiral’s strong presence filled the room, and Lia tensed but didn’t turn around. Her heart raced and her stomach flipped at the memory of his promise to punish her. Her arms fell to her sides and she curled her hands into fists, vowing not to submit to his brutality without a fight.
    “Lia. Turn around.”
    To her shock, his voice held a tender note. She turned to face him, thinking he had changed his mind about punishing her. A burning lump formed in her throat as she met his firm gaze. Though he’d spoken in a gentle tone, he looked stern as ever. Her insides tightened with fear.
    He held out a hand and gestured for her to approach. “Come here, little human.”
    Her feet became one with the floor. She couldn’t have moved one step had her life depended on it. Terror churned within her and she struggled to take in breaths.
    “Please send me back to the Constantina .” She cringed at her words and her shaky, desperate voice. God, she couldn’t have sounded more pathetic if she had tried.
    “Your captain knows you have been taken. In fact, every time he surrenders to us in battle, he cowers in fear and tells us to take another woman.”
    Tendrils of hair that had escaped her braid fell across her face as she lowered her gaze. She shook her head and prayed none of what he’d told her held true. Though she didn’t wish to experience brutality at the hands of the Varishans, she would rather go on believing the rumors about them were true and that Captain Renard hadn’t willingly handed over human women during surrender.
    “No, no. The captain would never do that. No captain of the Constantina would knowingly venture into Varishan territories either. You are all beasts and you’ve been hunting us for decades.” Even as she uttered the denial, a tightening in her gut warned her that the admiral spoke the truth. Beneath his firm expression, his eyes gleamed with sincerity.
    “None of the women we’ve taken have been underage or married. Haven’t you ever wondered why that is?” He took a few steps in her direction, his heavy footfalls echoing throughout the vast space of his quarters.
    Lia could only stare as she considered his question. She felt foolish. Why hadn’t she ever realized no married women had been taken? Or girls too young for marriage?
    “All the captains of the Constantina have provided us updated reports about the female members of your crew, per the terms negotiated after our first battle with the Constantina . Each human aboard the Constantina has a unique tracking device embedded in their arm, a device security officers can use to locate anyone who has gone missing or has landed in some kind of trouble. But my people can also use the tracking devices to our advantage. It’s only a matter of honing in on one of the tracking numbers of an available female when it’s time to claim our reparations.”
    “I refuse to believe it,” she whispered. Hot tears welled in her eyes and she blinked hard, not wanting to appear weak in front of her enemy. Pretending she was strong and ready to fight him was difficult though, when her legs felt like jelly and her feet still wouldn’t budge to take a single step.
    Fear froze her from head to toe, and an intense sense of hopelessness swept down upon her, choking her