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There’s a picture of the guy. And yes, of course, it’s the same guy who is now standing six feet away from me, scanning the clientele of the diner as if he’s surrounded by sentient filth.
I curse under my breath and start putting my things away. How the hell is it possible for a buyer to get here so quickly? The odds of the purchase being made on the same station are vanishingly small. It’s actually basically impossible. Which means something is happening that I don’t understand. I don’t like it when that happens.
He hasn’t seen me. He hasn’t seen me.
Deep blood-red eyes swivel toward me and make direct contact.
Ah hell. He’s seen me.
Alright. Okay. I can handle this. I knew when I started this little scam there was a chance I’d run into someone who thought they owned me. Would have been better if it wasn’t a fucking valker, but you can’t pick who purchases you, that’s kind of the point.
I force a smile to my lips. As far as he knows, I sold myself to him willingly. The game isn’t up yet. I’ll make polite conversation, then I’ll excuse myself to go to the bathroom and then I’ll run the hell away. It’ll be fine.
“Sarah?” He says the name that I put in the field where they asked for it on the sales form. I never use my real name with anybody, mostly because I’ve never been sure what it is, but that’s a whole other thing.
“Yes?” I smile up into the shadow that falls over me. There’s a chill in the air, a strange pricking against my skin. It’s rare to encounter someone with so much dark charisma that you can physically feel it.
“What are you doing here?” His tone is reproachful. “I am supposed to be picking you up from the Owned Mates depot.”
Every word is laced with a certain amount of heavy alien judgement. He has the demeanor of someone who does not belong in a place like this, someone who resents being here. He must have come looking for me specifically. I wonder if he went to the depot first. Probably. He looks like the sort of guy who is never inconvenienced by anyone or anything for very long.
“You seem to have found me anyway.”
“In a den of iniquity,” he says. “In a place where my mate would never be permitted to set foot. I am worried I have purchased a female with no understanding of proper behavior.”
This poor big, mean guy. He has no idea what he has purchased.
I school my features into something composed. “Is this a bad place? The coffee seemed alright?”
He narrows his eyes at me slightly, trying to work out if I am being genuine or not. Aliens have a very hard time reading human expressions, and they tend to think that humans are desirable but stupid.
“This is a den of iniquity and a haven for crime.”
“I haven’t seen any crime,” I say. “But the sundaes are good.”
“Get up. Come with me.” He snaps his fingers at me as if I am a dog.
“I’m waiting for another ice cream sundae,” I explain. “And I have to go to the bathroom. I need to pee.”
Something is beginning to stir deep in my belly. Something like fear. It twists and winds around my spine. There’s a coldness to this alien, a sort of ruthlessness that seems to leak out of him and infect the space around him. When I look at him, it is almost as though there is a lack of color to the world itself. He is draining the very essence out of the place.
The aliens who had been inching steadily closer to me over the course of my meal have now moved way back. A perimeter has formed from the invisible field comprised entirely of the force of his personality. I am inside it, and I feel the chill of his strange displeasure.
I get the very intense feeling that something very bad is about to happen to me. The valker's anger is wrapping around me, gripping me almost like a physical force. He does not like being disobeyed. He does not care about my ice cream sundae. He doesn’t care about anything in this moment other than securing my obedience.
His hand comes down on the back of my neck. I let out a scream of terror. His vibe was bad enough to begin with, but now he is making contact with me, I feel a form of fear that starts right in the lizard part of my brain, runs down my spine, finds my knuckles and the very tips of my fingers and toes. I start to kick and twist in his grip, causing a scene that creates much consternation in those who are looking on. Nobody is going to come to my aid. They are going to watch him drag me out of here without saying a single word to him.
I start grabbing onto things. The table, for starters. Unfortunately, it’s not affixed to the floor and so there is a loud scraping sound as both the table and I start to be dragged toward the doorway, collecting furniture along the way. Aliens abandon their meals, so drinks and plates of food start to tip off tables as my table bangs into theirs and pulls it with me.
“Let go!”
The valker demands I stop trying to save myself, but that is not possible. Even if I wanted to, there’s no way I could. I am gripping the table for dear life. I may as well be hanging over an endless abyss for the way my brain insists on holding onto this cheap diner furniture.
He almost has me to the door, but he is taking so much of the interior of the diner with him that the bill is going to be exorbitant. A scene is well and truly being made, especially as I have now started to yell at the top of my lungs. There’s not a high chance that anybody will help me, but I may as well try to throw myself on the mercy of strangers. Someone here might have a bone to pick with the vampire aliens, or even this one in particular. Or someone might be possessed of a hero complex. I am a damsel in the utmost distress, and everybody knows about it.
The valker starts to peel my fingers off the table. He gets my first hand off, but the moment he then moves to the other hand, I grip with the first again. I have never, in my life, wanted to have prehensile toes as much as I do in this moment.
“You chose to sell yourself; I don’t see why you are putting up such a fuss now,” he growls. “You are breaching the terms of your sale. You are obliged to be obedient.”
