Free Barbarian Prince by Kaitlyn O'Connor Page A

case, she thought it might not be pleasant to be a captive of these people and probably wouldn’t be, but she didn’t think they would try to kill her and short of that, she was determined to endure until she could find a way out!
    Of course, she couldn’t rule out the possibility of sacrifice, but it seemed a long way to go to get sacrifices!
    Which still didn’t rule it out, but given what she knew of the situation, it seemed more likely that the men had captured women for the usual purpose.
    Well, one of them. They didn’t seem like the type to particularly care whether they had a woman around to keep house!
    “ You like that these barbarian neetars have taken you?”
    Noelle felt the Prince stiffen at the comment or she wouldn’t have realized the observation was directed at her. Slowly, she twisted her head until she could see the speaker who, unlike the majority of the women, was settled before the warrior on the beast next to theirs as the Prince was holding her.
    The expression on the female’s face was contemptuous so it didn’t take a lot of brain power to grasp that, whatever a neetar was, likening the barbarians to it was intended as an insult. What she couldn’t decide was why the bitch had decided to insult her ! She didn’t recognize the female so she was reasonably certain she hadn’t done or said anything directly to make an enemy out of her.
    She debated, briefly, whether to simply ignore her provocative statement or not—maybe pretend she didn’t understand their damned language like they’d been pretending! But it was just too provoking to ignore considering what she’d endured at the hands of the alien females. “I can’t say I’m thrilled. On the other hand, I didn’t appreciate being taken prisoner by the barbarians in your village either.”
    Actually, although the long term situation was yet to be revealed, she rather thought she had been treated better by this group of barbarians.
    And there was no doubt in her mind that she liked the way he looked at her far better than she’d liked the way that she-male from the village had. She couldn’t have said why she felt that way—or wouldn’t acknowledge it, at any rate. But she knew that it wasn’t just because she wasn’t sure of whether the other was male or female!
    She rather thought it might be because the Prince was a damn fine specimen of male pulchritude, but she didn’t want to examine that any further. She thought it was sufficient to acknowledge that she preferred to be admired by males that she could and did admire. Lust in the eyes of a person that did not appeal was just plain scary!
    The woman gaped at her. “You are as stupid as these barbarian neetars ! We freed you!”
    It was Noelle’s turn to gape, to feel a rush of outrage. “Freed? You call locking me and my friend in a cage freeing us?”
    The female flicked a look at the man holding her, seemed to debate with herself and then continued. “You are brainwashed,” she muttered. “We were only holding you and the other until you had time to realize you were not with the males of your free will. It seems they have made you believe that you must stay, that you belong to them, but you do not need to on K’naiper . You have free will. You need not belong to any male!”
    Noelle blinked at the female, digesting the statements slowly—trying to free her mind of her own personal prejudices so that she could see what the alien woman believed she was seeing. It wasn’t entirely impossible to do, but she had her own preconceived notions to deal with. “You don’t know us! And you couldn’t be more wrong about the situation! Not only were we there because we wanted to be there, we were there because we worked damned hard to be chosen to come! I guess you were judging us by your own circumstances—a common mistake, believe me! But our circumstances are nothing at all like yours!”
    Drak terminated the conversation by urging the beast to move faster and they