Page 35 of Colossal

“No flesh?”

“No flesh.” The woman chuckled and extended her wrist facing up, chip reader flashing.

Kaia hesitated, but pressed her wrist to the reader. A few chips would be a small sacrifice considering to what she had coming.

The long vibration indicated a declined transfer.

Fuck… did Loran empty her out before she left, or wasColossal’s tech incompatible with her implant?

“I… Uh, never mind.” Kaia began to back out of the place.

The woman’s wrist dipped under the bar without hesitation. “Don’t worry about that. Just take a seat.”

“What are you playing at? I’m not getting into debt here, lady.” Kaia knew this game all too well.

The woman’s posture hardened then, lean biceps shifting beneath her sleeveless shirt as she folded her arms across her chest. “We don’t talk to people like that around here.”

After a beat, she softened a little. “Take a seat. No debt. I’ll sort you out.”

CHAPTER19

ORION

“What do you mean, youlost her?” Orion glared at the squirming girl before him.

“She… she was supposed to chime me. I thought…”

“Are you shitting me?”

“I was never told…”

When the girl, Alina, chimed Orion to come to Kaia’s cabin because she was getting no response, he already knew what to expect. The stupid girl was meant to watch Kaia’s cabin, make sure she didn’t run off. Idiot. When they entered the cabin, they found no Kaia, and the comms bracelet that would track her sitting on the desk.

Orion ground his fingers into the bracelet, prickling metal on his tongue. He took a deep breath, visualizing a forest on a planet, tree leaves flickering in a warm breeze. Calm and easy. He exhaled.

But when he finally spoke, his voice was still lower and rawer than he’d have liked. “Find her.”

“Y-yes, sir.” The girl scurried from the cabin.

This was the last thing Orion wanted to deal with this morning. He already had a full agenda shoved on him by his mother. He was expected to be in the command center by 0800. Not that it mattered. He’d get there when he got there. But it was the goddamn principle of it all. He had shit to do, and this bitch was already making him change plans to run around after her.

He’d have to teach her some kind of lesson over this. Orion thought of all the ways he could do that, most of them involving very little clothes, as he began his search.

Orion didn’t bring her all the way toColossaljust to get his dick wet in a scrawny little scavenger. He wanted to fuck her back on Riker 109, sure, but that wasn’t why he brought her. She wasn’t even his type. But he was becoming increasingly preoccupied with the idea of bending her over and forcing some obedience into her. The princess needed to be taught a good, hard lesson.

Orion ignored the surprised greetings and deference in those he’d passed on his search. He hated that his return was even a big fucking deal. What did these people, these colonists, think would happen? Everyone knew he’d be back eventually. Surely Mother already had her well-oiled communications machine send out some story for why her good-for-nothing heir was returning to the fold.

She wouldn’t have told them about the cancer, of course. That would be idiotic and incite panic.

“We have to put up a united front, Orion,” Mare Halena had said the night of his arrival. “And that’s the only reason I don’t send your little whore back this instant. Consider it an olive branch.”

His olive branch was currently more like a stick in his ass.

Orion rounded a corner into a sub-passage and stopped when he glanced at the glass-paned storefront of a cafe.

There she was, sitting at a synthwood table. She had a foot propped on her chair, the other bouncing on the floor the way it had back at the bar on Riker 109, when she got excited about some story.

She had two empty plates before her and was tucking into something in a third. Orion scowled. This girl was just puking her guts out in front of him yesterday, and now she was plying herself with more shit her stomach wasn’t used to.

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