Free Beloved Stranger: Gaian Series, Book 5 by Janet Miller Page B

No, she wasn’t escaping a bad situation. But she hadn’t brought what a normal woman heading to a marriage meet would have, either. The few women who came here from Gaia generally had at least one or two trunks of clothes.
    Certainly they wouldn’t have a single duffle bag and a lock pick, not to mention the stunner and dart. He needed to take a good look at that bag of hers to see how she’d managed to smuggle those past the officials.
    Sonja looked so innocent drinking her javi. Except for the fact she was wearing clothes suited for working under cover of darkness and had been carrying a small arsenal in her pockets. Oddly enough, Roan thought the clothes she wore now suited her better than the simple skirt and blouse she’d been wearing earlier.
    Even her hair was different, coiled into a tight bun at the back of her neck. He liked her hair better down, though. Roan considered making her undo the bun, or maybe even do it for her if she didn’t start talking soon.
    “I tell you what,” he said. “I think you need someone to trust. I want you to trust me, so I promise to listen to the problem. If it is something I feel I can help with, I’ll do anything in my power to do so.” He forced a grin. “Remember, I’m the Dealer, and believe me, that can be a lot of help.”
    Sonja watched him, suspicion in her eyes. “Why would you do that?”
    “Because you are my wife. That hasn’t changed.”
    “And if I don’t want to stay your wife?”
    Roan schooled his face and avoided a grimace. “We’ll face that later. In the meantime, tell me what is going on.”
    She seemed to think a moment. Then her light blue eyes studied him for a long time. “It starts several years ago.”
    “How many years?”
    “A little over six. I’m from Camalin Eight in the deep Outer Colonies. I don’t expect that you’ve heard of it.”
    “No,” Roan admitted. “But there are a lot of places I’ve not heard of. I’ve been stuck here for quite a while.”
    Her lips twitched in what could almost have been a smile. “That wouldn’t make any difference. It isn’t like my home planet is on the main trade routes. Camalin Eight is what they call a garden planet. Lots of fertile soil, good water, plenty of sunlight and air.”
    “Sounds nice.”
    “It was. It was my family’s home. We had a farm there.”
    “A farm?” Roan could have laughed at the irony. He’d thought his new wife was a farm girl and it turned out he was right. Or she had been, at least.
    She nodded. “I lived there with my parents, my younger brothers, and my sisters, Suna and Sulla.”
    A tickling sensation woke on the back of Roan’s neck. “Your sisters? Younger or older?”
    “Younger. Suna was just short of eighteen, Sulla twenty. I was twenty-one and the oldest.”
    The oldest, and therefore the one who’d feel most responsible. Roan had a bad feeling about what he was going to hear. “What happened, Sonja?”
    She stared at her mug and the steam lifting from the hot javi, and when she spoke, her voice seemed to come from far away. “It was late at night and everyone was asleep when they came.”
    “Who came?” Roan prompted.
    “Men came. Slavers. They landed a shuttle in our field, painted black and very quiet, and then they snuck into the house. They used some kind of gas on us. Sprayed it into the air of the house and knocked everyone out while they slept.”
    “If you were asleep, how do you know that’s what happened?”
    She pulled her attention away from the steam and stared at him. “I saw them. I wasn’t in the house at the time. It was hot that night and I had a tree house outside my bedroom window that the breezes kept cool. I was sleeping out there.”
    Roan remembered her saying she’d had a tree house and heard again the pain in her voice when she’d mentioned it. The same pain was there when she continued her story.
    “I woke up to see them moving around inside the house, and I saw the shuttle out in the field. I