Imprisoned
Brides of the Kindred, Book 22
Evangeline Anderson
www.evangelineanderson.com
Imprisoned, 1st Edition,
Book Twenty-Two of The Brides of the Kindred
Copyright © 2018 by Evangeline Anderson
All rights reserved.
Cover Art Design © 2018 by Reese Dante
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writers’ imagination or have been used factiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
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Cover content is for illustrative purposes only.
Any person depicted on the cover is a model.
Contents
Imprisoned
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Epilogue
The End?
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About the Author
Imprisoned
Brides of the Kindred, Book 22
A girl dressed as a boy
In a Triple Max prison full of savage predators
A Kindred warrior undercover, trying to protect
What he thinks is an innocent boy.
Lathe can't understand why he is so drawn to Ari
But when her secret comes out, will it kill them both?
You'll have to read Imprisoned to find out...
Lady Arianna Blackthorn is a woman on a mission—she intends to rescue her brother, Jak, from the infamous BleakHall prison. BleakHall is a Triple Max Penitentiary where only the worst of the worst are sent--a males-only facility where not even female prison guards are allowed. So how can Ari infiltrate this fortress? With the use of a holo-projector that makes her look male (the important parts anyway) she's determined to get in and she has a foolproof plan for getting both herself and Jak out...or so she thinks.
Commander Lathe is a Blood Kindred who lost his younger brother to the horrors of BleakHall. He is on a mission to go undercover and collect evidence against the cruel and ruthless prison guards who run it and the Yonnite Mistresses who own it. He also has a plan to get out but it's going to take some time and while he's waiting, a strange new inmate comes to BleakHall—a boy called Ari.
Ari is in over her head from the minute she steps through the prison gates. She is immediately singled out by Tapper, BleakHall's most ruthless sexual predator, as his next conquest. Only Lathe's timely intervention saves her from a fate worse than death...and death itself. Lathe moves Ari into his cell to keep her safe but he has no idea she is really a female and Ari doesn't dare to tell him.
Can Ari keep her secret from the big Kindred? Can Lathe sort through his confusing feelings for the "boy" he has taken under his wing? (Why does he smell like a female? Why can't Lathe stop thinking about him...stop wanting to touch him?) Can the two of them rescue Ari's brother and escape from the maze of sadistic guards, psychopathic prisoners, and ravenous lashers—the huge carnivorous cats that roam the corridors of BleakHall at night waiting to devour any inmates attempting to get away?
You'll have to read Imprisoned, Brides of the Kindred 22, to find out…s
Author’s Note
A large part of this book is set in a prison and there are some scenes which may be disturbing to anyone who has experienced sexual abuse in the past. Please read responsibly.
Prologue
“My Lady Blackthorn, you cannot be serious—you must not do this thing!”
Arianna took a firmer grip on the shears and prepared to make the first cut.
“I am sorry, Hanna,” she told her maid, “But I must. There is no other way to rescue Jak. Where he is, I must go.”
“But not to BleakHall, my Lady! Surely not there!” Hanna protested. Her wrinkled hands fluttered about her face like distraught moths. “Tis said no one ever comes out of it alive! The Yonnites make sure of it.”
“Don’t speak to me of those evil shivaths,” Ari snapped, though she knew that swearing would only upset her kindly old maid even more. “They are the reason Jak is imprisoned in the first place!”
Her brother had been taking their latest crop to market when his ship had been overtaken by pirates just outside the orbit of Yonnie Six, a planet ruled by cruel and heartless women. The pirates—greedy bastards that they were—hadn’t been content just to steal Jak’s ship and the crop—they had also sold him at the Yonnite slave market where he had been bought by one of the Yonnite mistresses.
She might have been able to save him if she had found out his whereabouts at once, Ari mused grimly. But by the time she was able to locate her older brother, his Yonnite mistress had grown angry with him and had sent him to BleakHall.
BleakHall Penitentiary was a Triple Max security prison located on one of Yonnie Six’s small moons. It took up almost the entire moon and was a males only facility where the wealthy Yonnite mistresses sent their most dangerous, murderous, and deadly slaves—the ones so intractable even they could not tame them. And that was saying something since the Yonnites prided themselves on taking on even the largest and most homicidal males and breaking them down to make them the perfect body slaves.
Apparently Jak couldn’t be broken.
Ari didn’t know if she ought to feel proud or regretful about that. It would have been so much easier to rescue him from the clutches of the Yonnite mistress. She could simply have posed as a mistress herse
lf and bought him. Instead, she was going to risk her life to save him from the prison.
But what else can I do? I can’t just leave him there, Ari thought as she positioned the shears under a thick hank of her long, straight black hair and began to cut.
Hair as dark as a rook’s wing…you’re my little rook, Ari, she heard her big brother whisper in her memory. And your hair is so long—take care that you don’t just fly away one day.
Jak had always liked to tease her when their parents were alive—when the four of them were still a family. That had been when the crumbling estate on Phobos, the tiny planetoid that orbited between Yonnite Six and Zetta Prime, had felt most like a home.
But after their parents were gone—taken in a shuttle explosion when Ari was only fourteen—Jak had become more than a big brother. In the ten cycles that had passed since their parents’ death, he had become almost a father, caring for her and making certain she was provided for. He even let Ari spend her time tinkering in her lab while he oversaw the hydroponic garden where their crops of rare, heirloom tulsa fruit grew. Tulsa was a luxury item—the plump, juicy bright orange berries were their claim to fame and the basis of their wealth but Jak never forced the family business on her.
“You please yourself, little rook,” he would tell her. “Who knows—maybe someday you’ll invent something amazing.”
Well, his words had come true, Ari reflected as she cut away more of her long, blue-black tresses. She had invented a way to get him out of prison—but she had to get to him first. And in order to get to him, she had to infiltrate the prison.
And in order to do that, I must look like a man, Ari told herself, remorselessly shearing away more of her long, silky hair. She was making a ragged job of it—her hair was short and choppy on one side now, looking like a haircut someone had done in the dark.
I look like a beggar boy, Ari thought. Well, so much the better if she looked poor and ragged—who ever heard of a prisoner from one of the Great Houses?
Not that the Great Houses of Phobos amounted to much. Phobos was a quiet, unassuming little planetoid but its people were happy. They were a true democracy where men and women were equal, unlike Yonnie Six where males were enslaved and Zetta Prime where they were outlawed. The citizens of Phobos were happy to live differently from their neighbors—happy to live in peace.
I doubt I’ll have peace for some time, once I get where I’m going, Ari thought grimly. Aloud she said, “There, finished,” as she made the final cut and the last long strands fluttered to the flagstones at her feet.
“Your hair,” Hanna mourned, her wrinkled face creased with regret. “Oh my Lady, all your lovely hair…”
“It’ll grow back when Jak and I come home,” Ari said firmly.
Putting down the shears, she rubbed a hand over her shorn head, rumpling her hair which wanted to stand up in cowlicks and corkscrews now that the weight of its length was no longer holding it down.
I look very boyish, she decided, watching herself in the viewer. Well…boyish enough.
She had dark eyes to match her hair, a sharp nose and a wide, mobile mouth that didn’t look in the least ladylike. Her skin was a little pale and soft perhaps, since she spent so much time in her lab, but without her long hair, there were no other clues that definitely marked her as female. Well, other than her height. She was barely five foot four—a definite disadvantage. But that would only add to the illusion that she was a ragged boy who hadn’t gotten his full growth—or his beard—in yet.
I’ll pass, Ari told herself firmly. Especially with the look/touch field in place.
The look/touch was her own invention—well partly anyway. She had modified a holo projection field so that it produced tangible effects as well as visual ones. It was hidden in the fake prison ID she’d paid to have implanted in her skin so the metal of the ID would mask it completely. Her other failsafe—the one she was counting on to get both herself and Jak out of BleakHall once she found him—was hidden there as well.
Of course she had to get to him first, before she could use it.
“My Lady,” Hanna begged again. “Please, please reconsider! BleakHall is full of big, violent males and you are female. What will they do to you when they find out what you are?”
“They’re not going to find out,” Ari said firmly. “Believe me, Hanna—I have a foolproof disguise.”
“My Lady, just cutting your hair isn’t enough to hide your beauty!” her maid protested.
Ari laughed. “Oh Hanna—you always did look at me with a fond eye. I’m nothing special and believe me, right now I’m glad I’m not. But I’m not just talking about cutting my hair. Look…”
Reaching up to the hollow of her throat, she tapped lightly at the top of the triangular prison ID tag. The ID was coded to respond only to her DNA and inside it was the tiny bead which housed the look/touch projector. Ari felt rather than heard the hum and a prickling sensation ran down her body from her clavicles to her crotch.
“I don’t understand, My Lady.” Hanna looked at her blankly. “What do you mean? What should I be looking at?”
Ari looked at herself in the mirror but she was still wearing her dressing gown—dark blue silk, belted at the waist. It had been a present from Jak last Winter Solstice when the tulsa crop had been especially good.
“Oh, well of course you can’t tell with this on,” she said. Taking a deep breath, she unbelted the gown and shrugged it down around her waist. “Now look,” she told her old maid.
“My Lady?” Hanna stared at her blankly, her seamed and wrinkled face bewildered. Then her watery blue eyes widened and she gave a little gasp. “My Lady what have you done to yourself? Where are your breasts?”
Ari stared down at the flat, male chest the look/touch projected. Her breasts were nothing remarkable—they were teacup-sized with dark pink nipples that tended to be more puffy than Ari liked. But now they were completely invisible—hidden by the illusion of a scrawny male chest with nipples that were small copper disks, flat enough to make the walls jealous.
“They’re still there,” she assured her maid. “You just can’t see them.” Of course, if someone was to grab at her chest, they would be able to feel the soft, pillowy mounds of her breasts. Ari wished it wasn’t so but she hadn’t had time to perfect the top part of the projection as much as she’d wanted to—she’d been working too hard on the bottom half which was arguably the most important part.
She parted the robe further and looked into the viewer. There, plainly visible, was a male shaft. It was small and soft, curled like a sleeping worm against her thigh but it was there—and in more than just sight. The look/touch manifested an actual fleshy organ between her thighs which fit over her own pubic mound and hid her vagina from sight completely.
The organ wasn’t completely functional—it was mostly hollow for one thing and so was unable to become erect. That was fine with Ari, though—she didn’t need to get a hard-on—she just wanted to look like a male and she needed her disguise to be utterly believable. Which it was—she was certain. Since the fake shaft fit over her cleft so tightly, she could even urinate standing up if she had to—the shaft acted like a kind of funnel.
She had shaved her mound to make the fit perfect and tried it out only that morning—it definitely worked. The texture of the skin felt a little strange—too slick to be real since it was, after all, only a solid holo projection. But the look of it was perfect and that was all she needed.
“Oh, My Lady!” Hanna’s eyes grew so wide they looked likely to swallow her wrinkled face and she took a staggering step backward. “What…what have you done?” she gasped, her hands fluttering weakly. “You…you…this isn’t right! I used to change your nappies as a baby and I know you don’t…you can’t have a…a…”
“It’s all right, Hanna!” Seeing how upset the old maid was getting, Ari quickly tapped the prison ID and turned the look/touch off. At once her breasts and mound came into view, though she quickly covered them with her blue si
lk gown. “See? I’m fine,” she assured her maid who still looked like she didn’t know whether to scream or faint.
“How…what…?” Hanna shook her head, clearly bewildered. “How did you do that? Is it something you cooked up in that lab of yours?”
“It is.” Ari didn’t even try to keep the pride from her voice. “I call it a look/touch—it’s a solid holo projector. See, when you bend the light beam just the right way and treat it with a cadmium stream—”
“Please, My Lady, none of your science talk.” Hanna waved as though shooing a fly. “You know it only makes me confused. Well…so that’s how you plan to sneak into BleakHall. I must say, it’s awfully convincing.” She shuddered.
“Thank you—I thought so too.” Ari grinned. “So you see, Hanna, I’ll be perfectly safe.”
“How, My Lady?” the maid protested. “Just because you look like a male doesn’t mean you won’t be attacked. You’re so small and those awful males they keep locked up in that place are so big.”