Barbarian Brides. Cecily Royce

the hell is this?" a female voice demanded, her tone strident and blurry. "I'm gonna have somebody's head, you just wait and see if I don't!" Her tongue was sharp but her words weren't nearly as tough sounding as she intended.

      Casi looked over to where the voice had come from, seeing the member of the rowdy group she'd had words with in the dining room about the loud music. The girl sat on her pallet almost the same way Casi did, and her two friends were up and looking around just as she was doing. Linira was also awake and sitting, but with her legs together and bent to the right as she tried to cover herself with her arms and looked in Casi's direction.

      "We've been taken prisoner by someone," Casi said to Linira with a sigh. "But let's not panic until we find out what's going on. It could be a joke or something." She didn't feel as though it were a joke, but there was no reason to startle or scare anyone.

      "Even if it is a joke, I'm not laughing," the brat who'd spoken earlier snarled, giving Linira no chance to answer. "My father will cut the balls off whoever is involved in this, and I'll laugh while I watch. Now, I want my clothes back and a way out of here!"

      The girl's last demand had been screamed at the top of her lungs, the kind of spoiled-brat tantrum a child would throw, and then her friends got in on the act. They began to chant, "We want out! We want out!" and the first girl joined their chant with vengeful enthusiasm. Linira looked questioningly at Casi, but she just shook her head. Casi wasn't sure of much, but she knew with dead certainty that joining whatever the troublesome group did would not be a good idea.

      And a couple of minutes later that conviction proved itself correct. A big man with dark hair and eyes came through one of the curtains, followed by four other men. All five were dressed in slacks and shirts and comfortable shoes, and not one of them seemed amused by the continuing chanting. They all appeared to be only a little older than the women they'd taken captive, which Casi found to be distantly odd. None of them looked the least bit barbarian, like the men who had attacked them in the resort.

      "All right, that's enough," the man in the lead said mildly. The noise stopped immediately, even though it was perfectly clear to Casi that the girls hadn't stopped their noise voluntarily. The restraints the girls wore were doing their job, which made the girls furious and outraged.

      "That kind of behavior won't be tolerated," the man in the lead said to the girls, his voice just as mild as it had been. "Now that you're all awake, you can be told what your new situation is, and my advice would be to adapt to the changes as quickly as possible. Refusal and misbehavior will be punished, and that goes for all of you."

      The man turned his head to include Casi and Linira in what had been said, then he returned most of his attention to the three obnoxious girls.

      "What's happening is perfectly simple," he went on. "You young ladies will become the wives or the slaves of some of the savages of this world. Which position you qualify for will depend on how you respond to the training you'll be given. No one knows that we've captured you, so no one will come looking for you. If anyone tries to check on your whereabouts, they'll discover that you left our home planet, Cosimia, and then disappeared. Other young ladies have been paid to pretend to be you, and since they know nothing about your actual fate, even if one of them is caught, she can't tell anyone anything that would help you."

      Linira looked at Casi with wide-eyed alarm, but Casi just shook her head again. Taking everything they were told as gospel would be stupid, but arguing would probably be worse than a waste of time.

      "I refuse to be anyone's wife, and I sure as hell won't be a slave," the first girl stated, staring straight at the big man. "My father won't ever give up looking for me, and when he finds me, you and your buddies are dead. Be smart and let me and my friends go right now, and maybe we won't press charges."

      The two other pack members added their agreement to what the first had said, all of them just as brash as they'd been at the resort. They knew nothing bad would ever happen to them, and if something bad did happen then their parents would certainly get them out of it. They showed not a hint of fear.

      "You've been all but ruined for normal life, haven't you?" the man responded quietly, looking at the three girls. "You expect to get your own way forever, meaning you've never grown up beyond the age of four or five. I'd say it's a lucky thing we took you, otherwise your lives would end up being very lonely ones. Well, the savages won't let you be lonely, especially once you're properly trained. Let's start the training with you."

      The girl he pointed to was the one who had done most of the talking. She was a blue-eyed blonde like Linira and quite beautiful, but her attitude turned the beauty into something close to ugliness. When the man pointed to her she shook her hair back in what looked to Casi like a practiced gesture, then she showed a nasty smile.

      "Go screw yourself," she pronounced clearly. "Not only do I not take orders from members of the common herd, I don't even see them."

      And with that she deliberately looked away from the man and toward her friends, the two other girls snickering at their leader's behavior. They all thought that what the girl had said and done was clever, but a moment later they were taught better.

      "Get to your feet and walk over to stand in front of me," the man barked out to the girls, the words a clear order. Casi could see that the girl expected to be able to ignore him, and the horde member was more outraged than shocked when she began to obey. She was also furiously confused, and when she stopped to stand in front of the man he smiled faintly.

      "Those bands you're wearing are an aid to proper behavior," he explained to the angry girl. "By the time we're finished with you the bands won't be needed, but right now they are. We'll start by giving all of you names, but not ones that will interfere with the ones you'll eventually be given by the savages. Who you were before no longer matters. Forget that life."

      He then turned and pointed to Casi as he said, "One," then he designated Linira as, "Two." The next horde girls were named Three and Four, and the girl standing in front of him became Five.

      "If you forget the name you were given or fail to respond to it, you'll be punished," the man concluded. "Now, Five, get on your knees in front of me."

      "My name isn't Five!" the blonde girl snarled, her fists clenched as she glared up at the man. "My name is Five."

      It took a moment for the girl to realize what she'd said, and then she became furious.

      "I gave you an order and you failed to obey," the man observed, still calm and unruffled. "It's time you learned what kind of punishment you've earned. Turn to your right and bend over with your hands on your knees."

      As the girl turned in the direction Casi was sitting and bent over, it was perfectly obvious that another buried order had been found. The girl was even angrier now, but the man she stood near wasn't paying attention to her anger. Instead he was taking what looked like a thin branch from one of the other men, and when he had the branch, he used it to strike the girl across her seat. The girl gasped as her eyes widened in shock, but she didn't scream, and she certainly didn't straighten up again.

      "All of us who train you will be carrying switches like this one," the man said as the girl he'd struck bounced a little where she stood. "If you do something wrong you'll be given a single taste of the switch. If you disobey, you get three strokes. If you do something that's completely unacceptable, you'll find five strokes going across your pretty bottoms even if you were given other strokes earlier. From time to time one of us may use a hand rather than the switch, but don't expect that to be any easier to take."

      The next stroke of the switch across Five's bottom made her gasp again and widen her eyes even more, and after a short delay she was given a third stroke. That one made her bounce harder where she stood, even more shock to be seen in her light eyes.

      "You can straighten up now," the man told her, making no effort to give the switch back to the man he'd gotten it from. "As you can probably tell, you aren't being allowed to rub at the ache in your bottom. That's part of the punishment, of course, the punishment for disobeying. Go to your knees in front of me."

      The girl called Five looked up at him and the switch he still held, her expression telling