Kidnapped by Her Husbands

  Kidnapped by Her Husbands

  Wings of Artemis, Book 1

  Rebecca Royce

  Published: 2016

  ISBN: 978-1-62210-350-8

  Published by Liquid Silver Books. Copyright © 2016, Rebecca Royce.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.

  This is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents and dialogues in this book are of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is completely coincidental.

  Manufactured in the USA

  Email [email protected] with questions, or inquiries about Liquid Silver Books.

  Blurb

  Alone in prison.

  No recollection of the past.

  A baby growing inside her.

  In a futuristic world where women are scarce and only the wealthy can afford a wife, Melissa Alexander is trapped in a prison rehabilitation center with no memory of who she is. The unborn child growing inside her is all that keeps them from making her pay for the sins she's committed—sins she cannot recall. But when five sexy strangers claiming to be her husbands kidnap her and bring her to safety, Melissa fears she can’t trust them. All she can remember is what she was taught under the prison’s watchful, vengeful eye: to hate them. But how can she hate—or love—what she can't remember?

  Chapter 1

  The Master’s Center for the Betterment of Sinful Women

  RAIN pounded on the windows, shattering the nothingness feasting on my mind. The water striking the glass constituted the first recognizable sound I’d heard in hours. The racket beyond my room—screaming, crying, and pleading—remained foreign. I didn’t know who called, whose pain invaded my five-by-five space, and I could do nothing about any of it anyway. The rain was familiar, somehow safe. The gentle pitter-patter prompted me to sit up, then swing my legs over the edge of the bed.

  My bare feet hit a cold concrete floor when I stood, sliding ice up my spine. My legs wobbled, and I almost immediately sat again before I righted myself. I couldn’t stay in bed all day, and wouldn’t tolerate one more minute of endlessness. Stomach lurching, I stumbled rather than walked toward the window. I needed to see the rain. No, perhaps my desire surpassed even a requirement to put a visual image to the audible stimulus filling the room. For reasons I couldn’t fathom, the sound compelled me forward. Seeing the rain seemed the most important thing in the world, and I had no idea why.

  A chair leaned against the wall. Balanced on two legs, it looked as though someone had been sitting on it recently, like a person had casually pushed backwards in it, regarding me from the small space between the bed and the wall. Yet no one had been there. No one ever joined me. From the moment I’d woken in the bed, I’d had no idea where I found myself, how I had gotten there, or even who I was. I’d been alone.

  Three meals a day came through a hole in the door. A long stick pushed the tray through, and later a longer stick with a hook on the end poked through again. It had taken me a full day to realize the few seconds the hooked-stick remained were for me to attach the tray that held my dishes on the catch. I’d lived with a real mess of dishes until I’d worked it out. Dinner, later, would mark my fourth round of daily feedings.

  Other than eating and wiping myself with water, which came in a soap-filled bowl on one of the trays, I hadn’t done anything but sleep and lay flat on my back staring at the ceiling. I contemplated my nothingness, what could have caused such utter lack of a life to remember, and, when I could fathom the thought, I gave some effort to the other element to my mysterious circumstances.

  Unless I had something else very wrong making my belly look rounded, I was obviously pregnant. I stroked a hand over the small mound. How had a baby gotten inside me? Despite my memory nothingness, the mechanics of how babies were made remained in my mind. Sex wasn’t lost in my mess of a brain. But whose attentions had left me carrying a child?

  My musings left me exhausted. Even eating lunch required a nap afterwards. Had I always been low energy? How had I gotten into this room?

  I pushed the chair onto four legs and, although my muscles objected to being used at all, I hoisted myself on top of the base to look through the window. Steel bars marred some of my view but didn’t deter my overwhelming compulsion to peer outside. I pressed as far as I could against the icy metal to complete my task. Desperation to witness the rain left goosebumps breaking out on my skin. Maybe I was crazy. Perhaps I’d been locked in a room, being fed through a hole, using the bathroom through a small sucking device in the corner, because I was an actual, certifiable lunatic. What else could explain my need for the rain? It wasn’t as though viewing it could save me from my life within the four walls of my—room, cell—where I had no name, no past, no future, no idea whatsoever about what was going on either inside myself or beyond the door I might never see open.

  The drops pelted the ground way below the spot where it partially hit the pane of my window. I’d guess the time to be late afternoon. The sky was dark, and it wasn’t even dinnertime yet. How early did nighttime begin?

  I stepped off the chair. The rain hadn’t seemed to have provided the comfort I’d been seeking. A tear slipped down my cheek and, before I could even attempt to stop, I doubled over, gripping my stomach, while I wept like my heart was breaking. Was it? I didn’t know. Could my heart break over…nothingness?

  The door swung open with a bang. I jumped, falling backwards and knocking over the chair in the process. It crashed to the floor, one of the legs breaking. I gasped, desperate to stop weeping, as I stared at the women in the doorway. My visitor drank a white-colored liquid from a see-through plastic cup. She had a round face, huge brown eyes, and freckles, which covered every visible spot of her body.

  She regarded the chair on the ground for a moment. “Makes me concerned that chair broke so easily. I mean, I’d hate to sit on it and have it break apart like that.” Her voice sounded raspy, low for a female, which I still apparently knew about, if nothing else.

  “W-what?” I coughed as much as spoke my response. I wiped at my eyes. My mind seemed thick, foggy, and my brief stint of weeping hadn’t improved my pea-soup concentration. I struggled to my feet.

  My visitor was a large woman. She filled most of the doorframe. Angling the cup, she managed to get the straw back in her mouth. After she pursed her lips, she took a deep draw. Her gaze finally landed on me. We both stood in silence while she finished her drink.

  “The chair broke. Seems pretty poorly made.” She shrugged. “I guess we shouldn’t expect much better. Furnishing women’s rehabilitation centers are not exactly high on the Nobles’ agenda. Although we are better than most.”

  I wiped at my face until I’d dried my tears. “Rehabilitation?”

  “Yes.” She pointed at me with her straw. “The Master’s Center for the Betterment of Sinful Women. It’s where we are. You’d have no way of knowing that, though. We’ve been watching you closely since your mind wipe. Never had a pregnant woman here before. Well, not one whose baby they didn’t terminate.” She shrugged. “Wasn’t sure if it would have an adverse effect on you, but you seem fine. The chair.”

  She stepped further into the room, and I backed away until I hit the wall. What did she want? She still hadn’t said, and what she did say filled me with a sense of dread from the pit of my stomach to the tips of my fingers.

  The strange woman stopped as if she awaited a response. I didn’t have one for her. There were huge portions of things missing from my brain. I had n
o choice but to trust my gut, and it told me silence served me best.

  Finally, she continued, her eyebrows raised and her lips pursed like something smelled bad. “We wait until you head for the chair. It’s a psychological test. The doctors say it means your will to live has returned, and you’re ready to rejoin the population. Then, we come and get you. I’m glad I got in here to see you myself. That’s a first for me, too. Most of you girls curl up and wait. What were you hoping to see through the bars? There’s nothing out there on Master’s—that’s the name of this planet—for thousands of miles. It’s just an outpost and not even one where you can get any decent food.”

  She sure did like to talk. I wanted to tell her to shut her trap or to at least get to some kind of point. I didn’t care about what food she could buy or how far away a store I knew nothing about could be found. Shouldn’t she be helping me? All she did was go on and on.

  Instead, I stayed still, and listened. Like it or not, I found myself at her mercy. Since I’d already wept and felt anything but steady on my feet, I didn’t think I could count on being the kind of person who would win in any kind of battle, verbal or otherwise.

  “You don’t know who you are,” she went on. “Because we erased your mind. You’ll understand more later. Better than I can explain it, that’s for sure. Come with me. Time to get you moving toward your new destiny.”

  I didn’t like any of what she said. She stepped out of the room, then indicated with a wave of her hand that I should come through the doorway. I obeyed quickly. I wanted out of my room so badly, anywhere else seemed preferable. My tour guide slash commentator slash person telling me nothing useful walked at a slow gait. She didn’t bend her knees when she walked and I wondered if they pained her. Of course, then I had to try to guess why a—I noticed and b—I cared.

  “Your name is Melissa Alexander. We used to change your names but that was a paperwork nightmare. No one comes looking for you girls anyway. Easier to keep track of who is who. You’re twenty-two years old. That’s all you need to know.”

  “No,” I answered her, and then wished I hadn’t.

  Her shoulders stiffened before she stopped moving and turned to stare at me. “No? There’s something else you think you need information about? You’re in a rehab center for sinful women. You’ll know what I need you to know when I want you to and not a moment before.”

  I’d really stepped in it. She’d finally given me my name, Melissa, and I’d gone and made her mad. Keeping my mouth shut wasn’t one of my strongest suits, apparently.

  “The baby.” I had to know. “Whose baby is this? Where is the father?”

  She made a face, pursing her lips while she looked briefly at my stomach. “Damned if I know. Maybe my husband does. I do what I’m told. It’s what obedient wives do. Come on, then.”

  We moved again. There were doors on all sides of the hallway. I could hear the sounds I’d barely made out from inside my room more clearly in the hallway. Whoever the occupants of those spaces were, they must be in a lot of pain.

  I shuddered, and rubbed at my arms.

  “My name is Wanda. My husband runs this place. He’s is the minister in charge here.”

  She certainly liked to emphasize the word husband when she said it. “Why are they all screaming, Wanda?”

  “Because they’re in pain.” Wanda gave me the obvious answer and told me nothing at the same time. “You shouted like that, too, when you first got here. Everyone does.”

  I had? My heart rate kicked up and my hands shook. I shoved them to my sides. Why had I been in so much pain? “What is going on here?”

  Wanda stopped in front of a room and waved me inside by flapping her hands like a duck. “Sit. The instruction will start soon.”

  I slid past her, scooting through the small space she left me into the room. One couch faced a large screen in the center of the wall across the room. With nowhere else to go, and not wanting to upset Wanda as she constituted the only person I’d seen for days, I made my way to the couch.

  “Sit,” she repeated, and I did as she told me. Following orders seemed easier than not, at least for the moment.

  Wanda wasn’t done. “Someone else will meet you here when you’re done. I have things to do, and the gods know I can’t get off this planet fast enough.” She shook her head. “I can almost feel the stink getting on me the longer I stay here. I want you to remember, after you watch this, how lucky you are. I want you to know that in the past, before we got more civilized, before our Nobles made us reevaluate the barbaric ways of our Post-Nuclear War age, that whores like you would have been strung up until they were publicly stoned and eventually killed. This is your second chance, Melissa. Be a good girl, and don’t make us regret saving you.”

  Only one word out of what she said stuck with me. Whore? “Is that what I am?” I hadn’t known my own name when I woke, but I remembered what that slur meant. Did I take money for sex? My throat went dry. What had happened in my life? I rubbed my stomach and had a moment of comfort from the soothing action. Whose baby lived inside me? How low had I sunk?

  With Wanda’s exit, the lights dimmed and, with nothing to see other than the screen, I settled in for whatever video she wanted me to watch. I had no doubt things could and would get worse. The thought jarred me.

  Am I a pessimist?

  A man crossed onto the screen. He stared at me, or at least his recorded image did. He looked old, balding, and his nose was red.

  “My name is Rudolph Montgomery. You are in Master’s Rehabilitation.” That much I’d already been told. “Your mind has been wiped. In a few weeks’ time, you will thank me for doing so.”

  Doubt it. Since he wasn’t finished with his speech, I didn’t dwell on my lack of imaginary gratitude for very long.

  “You were brought here because you committed a crime. As we live in a civilized society, thanks to the leadership of our Noble class, we no longer execute or permanently imprison women who break the law.”

  Rudolph’s image faded and in its place appeared a building—a tall, black-bricked structure filled the whole screen. “One century ago, a plague ravaged our society. It was a different universe then.” Although his face was no longer on the screen, I still heard Rudolph’s rough voice as he narrated. “Our society barely survived a nuclear war. Fleeing a ravaged Earth, our people had lost most of our females. We wouldn’t get them back. Only one in two thousand babies born is a girl. Sometimes, we suspect that statistic is lower, although no one really wants to know. The Nobles rose and, even today, are a beacon of light in our world. We taught everyone how to treasure the women we have, how to live so that we might rise again.”

  A picture floated on the screen. Six men, six women and a bunch of children of various ages stared at me. All the kids were male except for one adolescent female. I did a quick headcount—sixty total people were pictured, including Rudolph, looking slightly less stout than he did in his initial video. Wanda was there, too, smiling brightly like she’d won some kind of award. But it wasn’t the two of them who held my attention. It was one of the grown up, but clearly second generation, men who I couldn’t look away from. Dark-haired and blue-eyed, he looked tall. His gaze could only be called…hostile. I blinked. What could have made him so mad when they’d been taking a picture?

  “The Nobles live and rule on Ochoa. We are a beacon of light to everyone.”

  Seemed kind of presumptuous for this guy to call himself a beacon of light. But what did I know? I barely knew my own name. Maybe people did this all the time.

  “All would be well in the universe, if not for the few, but deadly, rebels attacking our peace. They carry off our supplies, abuse our women, and they turn them into whores—” That word made me shudder.

  “But this your chance. You should consider yourself lucky because you were caught. You were saved. You were given a second chance to serve humanity and have a good life. Study hard, be a good girl, and we will find you a husband. When these years are behind us, a
nd the rebels have all been executed as they should be, you will be so glad you’ve been given this chance.”

  The lights raised slowly. They were offering me an opportunity. I’d been a whore; the rebels had made me thus. What was the life in my stomach if not proof of my bad decisions? I didn’t have a husband, and I was pregnant. I rubbed at my eyes. It was a lot to absorb.

  With a bump, the door to the room opened and a woman stood waiting. The newcomer was tall, slender, and had skin the color of caramel. She stepped forward with a small smile on her face. “It’s terrible, the video. I cried for a week. How could I have been the type of person who would side with rebels and let them turn me into a prostitute?”

  I didn’t care for her word any more than the w one. All of it made my stomach turn. How many men had I slept with?

  “But the good news is they aren’t kidding.” She put her hand on her chest, directly over her heart. “My name is Farrah. You’re Melissa. We can do this together. And, in time, there will be forgiveness. We’ll have a future.”

  I stood. “I’m…”

  She smiled before she embraced me. I stiffened in her grasp. What was she doing? Why had she decided to…hug me? “You’re overwhelmed, exhausted, and feeling sick. I can’t imagine doing it with the addition of the baby you’re growing. We’re going to get through this. I’ll be your guide. I’ve been assigned to you, as my friend Kate was to me some time ago. She’s moved on now. And some day you’ll help the next person. We’re sisters. Starting over. Being given a gift.”

  “I don’t know if I’ve ever had a sister.” I finally let myself hug her in return. The feeling seemed foreign. My muscles wanted to revolt from the movement, but I did it, because I needed a friend.

  “You probably didn’t, sweetie. There are so few women around. If you came from a family with more than one female, they’d have raised you on Ochoa like some kind of miracle, and you’d never have wound up here.”