Page 35 of The Erion Triad

He withdrew from her quickly and she jerked in pain. Her legs closed as he stood and pulled his pants up. “I… I’m a virgin. I haven’t slept with anyone.”

“That’s not what I’m gonna say. Who are they going to believe anyway? You? You better understand there’s two types of people in this world, Lucie, people like me who have parents with connections, and people like you—the losers of society. The fodder. You’re nobody. Just a little slut and not even a good one at that.”

He stormed away, leaving the girl to tug on her pants. She flinched and put a hand over her abdomen when she did her button up. She wiped her face, the expression too old for a girl of fourteen, and finger combed the dried grass from her hair before gingerly walking away.

“Gods, Lucie…” Juliran’s voice broke.

He went to reach for her, but she turned away. She didn’t want to see the pity she knew would be there in their eyes.

“Adam told everyone at school that he slept with me and everyone believed his story. I was known as the slut of the school and they didn’t care that he was the only boy that I’d had sex with. The thing was, I liked him. I thought he was different, but he knew. He saw what I was, and he acted on it. I can’t really blame him. He was right, though. There are two types of people and I’m the loser type. The type you really shouldn’t associate with.”

“Lucie, listen to us…” Kyel said, but she didn’t need to hear anything he would say. He would learn and understand. She let the whitewash take her away to another scene.

She was in her little red car turned house. She’d worked hard at a part-time job while she’d been at high school and had bought it before her eighteenth birthday. Just as well she did, because they day she’d turned eighteen, her foster parents had kicked her out. They didn’t get any more money after kids came of age. She could understand that. She had no intentions of being a financial drain. They’d made it clear what would happen and she hadn’t expected anything more.

She’d made friends with some of the people who lived on the street. She had it good. Not like some of them, the poor things. She had a car and some savings at least.

She sat in the back seat wrapped in a blanket she’d picked up at a secondhand store. Next to her was one of the street guys who had been nice to her. The snow had piled up on the windows. It was cold in the car, but she didn’t have the gas to keep on turning it on. They sat next to each other for warmth and it had kept most of the coldness at bay.

They’d talked about their future. She had plans to get a job and rent a condo somewhere. She had some savings, which she had with her, that she’d use for a bond. She’d already started looking and had yet to hear back from some of the places she’d applied to.

They’d fallen asleep with her head on his shoulder and she’d woken up to a chill blast through the open door. Her friend was gone, along with her meagre savings. He’d found it in the unoriginal hiding place of her glove box and left her with nothing. Not even a dime.

“That night I found dinner in a dumpster when my stomach was turning itself inside out with hunger until I discovered the local soup kitchen,” she said. “It was my own fault. I’d been told I was a loser, and I should have remembered.”

She lifted her tired gaze to settle on their slack faces. “You want to know why I never told you anything about myself? I have nothing to tell except this, one horrible thing after another horrible thing. How can I possibly have anything in common with you? How can you understand? I’m beneath you. So far, far beneath you. Now you know the woman you think is your mate. Lucie the Loser. Do you want to see more? I can show you lots of times this happened to me.”

Juliran was speechless. Zaen was pale and Kyel’s eyes bored into her. He uttered the words she knew were going to come. She knew because she expected them. “No, Lucie. We don’t need to see anymore.”

Chapter Fourteen

Lucie

She knew what they would say. What those in her life who knew her invariably knew. A hard rock settled in her gut and began to tear it to shreds.

She’d hoped they might be different.

She’d been wrong in the past and she was wrong again. Perhaps if she could read people better, she wouldn’t get herself into these positions, but they weren’t people. They were aliens. Royalty. They had standards too.

She sighed and took one last look at the three men who she would be overjoyed to spend the rest of her life with and offered them a smile. A weak smile, but at least she tried.

Kyel’s eyes gleamed dark and she stifled a shiver. Even with a look, he was a force. “We don’t need to see more of how you were the victim of ignorant and despicable people.”

Lucie frowned at him. “I don’t think…”

“You will let me finish.” His expression turned dark and he aimed a look at her she felt right in the center of her heart.

Words dried before they’d even left her mind. Her mouth eased shut.

“Now you will let us show you how we see you. Let us show you how you really are,” Kyel said.

White mist descended and thinned out to reveal all three of them pounding down a sleek metal corridor. What was happening? Every muscle in her body locked up in terror.

“Ease, mate. This is our memory. It cannot hurt you,” Juliran said.

The real Kyel, Zaen and Juliran stood to the side as they watched themselves in the scene. The real her stood opposite, while the action played out between them.

She knew where they were now. Even though she’d been half out of her head with pain and deprivation, this memory was etched into her brain. She wondered why they had to show it to her. Was it to show her how pathetic she was? How revolting she was after weeks spent locked in a cage without sanitation or enough food or water to feed a rabbit.

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