Daughters of Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary

Daughters of
Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary

Princess Miali,
one of the beautiful and strong daughters of Lyra, is an ambassador
for Lyra. Her true identity is kept secret to protect her but it’s
her beauty that puts her in danger when slavers attack her ship
while she’s in cryo-sleep. When she wakes, she finds herself
heading for the markets, her only company the ship’s handsome young
Minervan doctor. Kosen makes Miali’s body react like no man before
him, sending her hair floating with her positive emotions and
making her wonder if she might just be falling for her
captor.

Kosen has been
part of Nostra’s crew since his two sisters were sold into slavery.
His only desire is to gain enough money to buy them back, and
Miali’s sale will get him just that. But the more time he spends
with her, the more he realises that the path he chose was a mistake
and the life he’s led is a shameful one. When he discovers Miali’s
secret, he agrees to help her escape, and not just because she
promises him the money he needs. Miali fascinates him with her
beauty and the way her body reacts to him, and he can’t help
believing that they might have a chance with each other, and he
might have a chance at a better life.

Can Kosen help
Miali escape the slaver vessel and the terrible future that awaits
her at the markets? Will he be able to save his sisters and change
the course of his life? And will Miali be able to convince Kosen to
stay with her?

Daughters of
Lyra: Heart of a Mercenary

Felicity
Heaton

Smashwords
Edition

Copyright 2009
by Felicity Heaton

All rights reserved. No
part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or
by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying,
recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without written permission from the author, except for the
inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

****

Chapter
1

Miali walked along the
corridor between the bridge and her room, her thoughts miles away
and running through her schedule and recent events. They were
safely en route to Dliaer. She glanced out of the oval windows
running alongside the corridor and stopped when she saw Sekaria
Prime slowly disappearing into the distance. Its bright blue orb
was dazzling under the light of the twin suns.

It was
beautiful.

The backdrop of the
Andromeda galaxy only made it more stunning. A smile touched her
lips and she gave herself a moment away from her duties as an
ambassador to take it all in. All of her life she had dreamed of
seeing space as her father and mother had. Now she was finally able
to travel amongst the stars whose names she had memorised,
following ancient shipping routes that predated her
grandparents.

Sometimes she missed her
parents and their home on the Nebula-Lyra II, the ship her father,
Remi, captained. Her mother, Emmanuelle, had told Miali that her
father had always been homesick when in space. Perhaps she had
picked up this trait from him. Her long silver hair floated
upwards. Miali frowned and smoothed it back down again.

That was definitely
something she had inherited from her mother. It was a Dazkaran
trait that she wished she didn’t have. It made it impossible to
keep some things secret.

If she liked a male, her
hair would betray her feelings, rising and swaying with them. If
she was happy, it floated in the air as though she was underwater.
They had tormented her in school about it, so much so that, much to
her annoyance, her father had pulled her from lessons and had her
privately tutored instead. He had only been protecting her, but she
had wanted to spend time with the children of the other officers on
the ship. She had wanted to be normal.

The communicator bracelet
around her wrist bleeped. Miali looked down at it. It was time to
turn in. Soon, the ship would drop into sub-space and it always
made her feel sick if she was awake when it happened. The other
ambassadors on the ship understood her need to be in cryo-sleep
when they travelled in sub-space but didn’t know the reason for it.
The ship’s doctor had explained to her that her sensitivity to her
feelings amplified her fear and the reverberations of the ship.
Those combined to make her nauseas and gave her panic
attacks.

It was a nice change to
have someone treat her as an adult and a normal person for once.
The doctor hadn’t picked on her because of her part-Dazkaran roots,
or fussed over her because of her royal blood. In fact, no one here
did.

That was probably because
no one here knew that she was born of Lyran royalty.

Her father had agreed that
it was best to keep that fact about her hidden. He had spoken to
parliament and the military, and had arranged a new identity for
her under the same name. Her uncle, Sebastian, the king of Lyra,
had issued her the position of Lyran ambassador.

They had pulled so many
strings to make her safe and give her this chance of living her
dream of a normal life. She thanked them so often that they were
probably sick of hearing it now. Whenever she wrote to them about a
planet that they had agreed a new treaty with or a new species they
had made contact with, she always thanked them for giving her this
wonderful opportunity.

The universe was a
fascinating place full of so many kind and generous species. It was
more incredible than she ever could have dreamed.

Making her way to the
cryo-sleep chamber, Miali read the files stored on the small
computer pad that she held. The other ambassadors on the ship had
all filed their reports on the meeting on Sekaria Prime and their
thoughts on the topics they would broach at the meeting on Dliaer.
She hadn’t had the time to write hers yet. She had spent the
remainder of her time on the planet seeing the central
city.

All of the other
ambassadors on the ship were male and often teased her because of
her desire to see the cities they visited. She didn’t mind if they
thought it was a female thing to do. She loved to see them. Once,
she had even managed to convince a few of the men to join her.
After that, the others had teased her less, turning their taunts
towards those men instead.

Miali giggled to herself
about the constant torment those men had been given since their
tour of the city. It had been on Minerva Four. Months had passed
since then.

The ship’s doctor greeted
her at the door to the cryo-sleep chamber. She smiled at the
grey-haired man and finished reading the reports on her computer
pad as she stepped into the sleek curved white metal and glass pod
that the doctor had prepared.

“
I’ll take it
from here, Doc.” A familiar male voice made Miali look up and she
blushed with her smile when she saw it was Eryc, the Terran
ambassador. They had met as children on Lyra Five, her Uncle Balt
and Aunt Kayla’s planet. Her aunt was the last surviving member of
Terran royalty and had gathered all of her scattered people there
when she had married Balt. Eryc thought that she knew the royal
family because she was a friend of Renie, Balt and Kayla’s eldest
daughter.

“
You’re
thinking about Lyra Five again aren’t you?” Eryc said with a wide
smile, his chocolate brown eyes warm with it.

“
Maybe,” she
said and handed him the computer pad. “It’s been a while since I’ve
seen Renie. I bet her brother Rezic has her off in the wild depths
of space somewhere looking for ancient tat.”

Eryc laughed. “You know
Renie and Rezic. They’re inseparable. I’ll never understand why
they want to haul arse around the universe looking at dead
things.”

“
And they’ll
never understand why we travel from planet to planet forging new
peace treaties and maintaining relations with other species.” Miali
reached for the strap above her right shoulder at the same time as
Eryc. Their hands touched, hers covering his. She froze, her heart
beating a little harder, and then took her hand away. Eryc looked
at her for a moment before pulling the strap down and clicking it
into place with the array of other straps over her
stomach.

Miali willed her hair to
stay put. She wasn’t stupid. She had seen the way that Eryc had
been looking at her recently. In Iskara’s name, half of the men on
the ship had been looking at her that way. Considering that they
spent most of their time in space and that she was the only female
onboard, she could understand the flirting and the looks they gave
her. She was beginning to give a few of them looks in return but
that was where it stopped for her. She had never been the kind of
woman who could have flings. Her feelings were too strong and she
knew that she would want more than just a short romance. She wanted
love.

She hoped that the heated
looks that Eryc gave her weren’t just because it had been months
since they had spent longer than a day on any one
planet.

After all, the way that
things were going, she was starting to get the impression that she
might like him and, given enough time, that like might become
something else.

Something more than
friendship.

He clicked the last of the
straps into place and tugged them, checking that they were secure.
With a flash of a smile, he stepped back. The doctor checked her
vitals on the monitor beside the pod and then touched the panel
below them. As the door closed, the doctor walked away but Eryc
remained. He had done this the past few times that they had sent
her to sleep. It was comforting to see him there when she was sent
under and then to wake to see him still there, as though he had
been waiting for her the whole time that she had been
asleep.

“
See you when
you wake up, sleeping beauty.” Eryc held his hand up and smiled
again.

Miali nodded and then
everything went black.

***

Miali’s head ached when
she came around and she frowned when she found herself faced not
with the cryo-sleep room and Eryc, but with a tall, very broad and
ugly bald man in black. The man grinned to reveal twin rows of
pointed teeth. Her mind felt as though someone had scrambled it and
although she knew that those teeth meant something, she couldn’t
piece it together. He grabbed her around the throat, squeezing so
tight that she couldn’t breathe. She tried to push him away as
panic lanced through her but her arms wouldn’t work.

Dazedly, she looked over
at her right arm. She blinked when she saw a thick black metal band
encircling her wrist, holding her arm out horizontally. A metal bar
extended out from the band and joined it to a wall a foot behind
her.

Miali swallowed to clear
the dry sticky lump from her throat and quickly looked at her other
wrist. A similar cuff wrapped around it, the bar holding it rigid.
A glance at her feet revealed they were blurred. When her eyes
finally managed to focus, she saw that they were shackled to the
wall too, spread shoulder width apart. Her gaze tracked up her
legs.

Her heart jumped in her
chest when she saw that her deep blue and black skin-tight flight
suit was no longer done up to her neck.

Someone had opened it far
enough that her cleavage was on display. It must have been the man.
She wriggled in a desperate attempt to get free, afraid of what the
man might do to her and not caring that the metal cuffs bit into
her wrists where her flight suit ended. The man laughed at her,
deep and menacing, and tightened his grip on her throat.

“
This one has
spirit,” he said on a chuckle and shoved her head back towards the
wall.

Something clicked. His
hand left her throat. Cold steel pressed against it. She struggled
but couldn’t move her upper body. He had put a collar on her and
fixed it to the wall like her arms and legs.

“
What do you
want?” she said, her voice small and trembling. Her gaze darted
around the dim room. The only light was a tiny pinhole beam on the
ceiling. It pointed straight at her, dampening her vision. She
could only see the man in front of her. The rest of the room was in
shadow. She could hear others but couldn’t see them. The thought
that others were watching her, could see her so vulnerable and
exposed, made her skin crawl. “Where am I? Where is everyone
else?”

The man laughed again.
“All in good time. For now, shut your pretty trap. Slaves got to
learn to be quiet.”