Queen's Ransom: The Golden Bulls of Minos Read online

  Queen's Ransom

  The Golden Bulls of Minos

  Isabel Wroth

  Copyright © 2018 Isabel Wroth

  All rights reserved.

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  For my Wully Bully Girls, y'all are the horny best!

  More Books By Isabel Wroth

  Queen’s Ransom | The Labyrinth’s and their Locations

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  For my Wully Bully Girls, y'all are the horny best!

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher and/or author is unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  More Books By Isabel Wroth

  The Sarazen Saga

  Sarazen’s Claim

  Sarazen’s Vengeance

  Sarazen’s Betrayal

  Sarazen’s Hunt

  Sarazen Saga Anthologies

  Awakening

  Perdition MC

  Never Ever

  Athena’s Raid

  Ripley’s Saint

  Dillon’s Universe- Coming Soon!

  The Valos Of Sonhadra

  Shadowed

  Queen’s Ransom

  The Labyrinth’s and their Locations

  Letau/The King's Palace—Home to the Maze of Stars, the Stepwell Labyrinth, and the Maze of Cups

  Islingrane—Home to the Labyrinth of Thorns

  Kaetonia—Home to the Vanishing Labyrinth

  Antaeus—Home to the Red Labyrinth

  Ephidon—Home to the Labyrinth of Mirrors

  Myonaea—Home to the Labyrinth of Tears

  Dymigona—Home to the Maze of Two Souls

  Iros—Home to the Labyrinth of Darkness

  CHAPTER ONE

  Joy suffused every molecule in her body as she possessively stroked her hands over the flight console of her new, beautiful LUX32.

  The indulgent, indecently appointed cruiser had been custom built with ultimate pleasure in mind.

  Every one of the personnel decks was lined with plush carpets of fur, the cold metal walls covered in glossy wood from real trees, each opulent bathroom equipped with the choice of an enzyme or an actual steam shower.

  It would cost a mint to fill up the water tanks, but between she and Angel Eyes, a real shower once every other week would be alright.

  The crew quarters were immaculate and far more luxurious than anything she had ever stayed in, the med-bay was equipped with the latest and greatest automated systems guaranteed to treat any illness or injury in hours.

  It was powered by a gravimetric pulse engine, top of the line and powerful enough to reach speeds capable of inter-dimensional travel. The LUX32 was fully stocked, fully weaponized, fully shielded, and allllllllll hers.

  Her over-achieving siblings all claimed Jalia was wasting her talents, but Jalia couldn't agree less.

  So she wasn't some military genius like her oldest brother Jared, or a galactically recognized doctor who created cures for incurable diseases like Jade, or terraforming moguls like Jeremy and Jacob. She might be the baby of the family, but Jalia was doing very well for herself.

  Jalia chuckled as she settled into the decadently soft leather of the flight chair, victoriously wallowing in the memory of Baviel's expression when the game ended, and Jalia's name had been displayed as the high score winner. Her screams of disbelief would keep Jalia laughing for months.

  The fight Baviel had gotten into with the Fruja who ran the gaming hall—the one holding the pass codes and transfer credentials to Baviel's LUX32—had resulted in the poor princess being banned from every gaming establishment on Sasilli Theta.

  It didn't pay to try and renege on one’s bets!

  If anyone ever found out Jalia had cheated by practicing on a pirated feed, on conning the system by counting code, she too would be banned from the gaming halls. Cheaters never prospered...if they got caught.

  "This LUX is insane! There's a holo-room dedicated to pleasure sims! Like, top of the line, sensation stimulating programs to make you feel like you're being waited on hand and foot by nude, nubile...holy farking trionic blasters! Is that a neural flight interface!?"

  Angel Eyes ran for the co-pilot's station, salivating over the control nodes set in their special niche. Smack those two pads to your temples, and the LUX could literally read your mind, interface with it, and you wouldn't even have to touch the console to input navigation destinations.

  Hell, Angel Eyes could program a ten-course banquet, set the bath water to the perfect temp, and schedule a visit to the on-board beauty salon for all the treatments she could imagine, all from that seat with her hands tied behind her back.

  Jalia smiled at the wild, blue haired waif she ran around the bridge like a child set loose in her favorite toy store.

  "Looks like it. I call dibs on the princess's cabin. Don't blow us up or send us through some wormhole while you're getting all up in my new ship."

  "Uh hu, yeah, no boom-holes." Angel Eyes agreed, giving a distracted wave of her dainty, destructive little hand.

  Jalia rolled her eyes as she became invisible and left the bridge to take a wander around her new home. She made it all the way to the stern where an enormous viewing window looked out on the space they left behind. Jalia stood tall and proud on the metaphorical spoils of her victory.

  This ship was the largest, most expensive prize she had ever won.

  This ship was going to change her life. Take her far, far away from the reputation of her genius family. Somewhere she could be her own person, somewhere the Justus family name would no longer haunt her.

  "We're going places, you and I," she promised her LUX softly, "Exotic, far off places."

  "Hey, Jalia?" Angel Eyes voice filled her ear, breathless excitement painting every word, "You better get back up here. I think I found us our next big score!"

  *****

  Angel Eyes was so excited she was visibly sweating, bouncing in her flight chair, pointing to the holo-screen at the gilded page floating in the air between them.

  It seemed Baviel hadn't opened her mail yet, or the princess would have never put the title to her LUX in the pot. No one in their right mind would turn down an invitation to Minos!

  "I checked it out and it's totally legit, Jalia! The invitation says six females and their entourage will meet at a pre-determined location and be picked up by a Minoan ship, then transported to the planet surface.

  “You have to prove you're a female of consenting age, do a med check to make sure the atmo isn't poisonous to humans, and solve nine labyrinths. Puzzles. Probably a
riddle or two, but that's no problem for you!

  “All you need is an entourage; I'll create a royal pedigree so solid it would take your brothers months to unravel it...farking hell, this is IT! You win this, and we're on our way to Rysor 12!"

  Rysor 12. Jalia looked away from the holo-screen to an ancient pamphlet tacked to the wall. She took that piece of decaying paper everywhere with her. The dream of dreams.

  Her father had been too proud to admit he had a daughter with such a distasteful disregard for his rules. He'd sent her to a hellish reform academy on another planet, cut her off from all friends and family, and no one had raised so much as an eyebrow in protest.

  None of her friends had tried to communicate with her, not her brothers, not her sister, not even her mother.

  They had all abandoned Jalia to the fate she apparently deserved, her father informing her via his eldest son, she could come home when she'd grown up. It was as though Jalia had never existed.

  Alone, feelings of abandonment and pain burrowing through her, Jalia had lay awake at night in the narrow bed of her dormitory at the Telantes School for Girls, huddled under the scratchy blankets that smelled of burnt hair and acrid detergent, making secret plans to escape the cruel matrons trying to shape her into a proper lady. One too traumatized to ever consider disobeying orders.

  Jalia hadn't been able to imagine a worse fate, and until she'd come across a box of contraband in the Head Matron's office with the pamphlet tucked inside, Jalia had despaired of ever finding a way out.

  Rysor 12, a planet at the very edge of the Anrion Galaxy, with white sand beaches, private islands where someone with enough money could live like a queen for the rest of their lives in absolute luxury.

  A place where it didn't matter if you were the screw up of the family, or the embarrassment no one wanted to speak of, or the shameful, willfully disobedient child who escaped curfew, gambled with recruits, and partied with low-lifes.

  On Rysor 12, if you could pay, you could stay. No questions asked.

  "What do you think?" Angel Eyes squealed, her cybernetic eyes glowing brightly with eagerness.

  Visions of her dream within reach, Jalia was suddenly full to bursting with energy. Labyrinths? Puzzles? Riddles? Child's play.

  "What about the entourage?"

  "Boudreaux and his crew! You know them, they know you, you could have the advantage of a small entourage and bodyguards all in one!"

  Jalia screwed up her face at the idea of roughneck mercenaries following her around, but Bloody Boudreaux was good about keeping his word. Their contract would have to be airtight to keep him from squirming through every loophole there was...the pamphlet caught her eye again, and she couldn't say no.

  "What the hell, let's do this!"

  *****

  "This was such a bad idea," Jalia moaned under her breath. "Why didn't I read the fine print?"

  If she had bothered to read it, she would have realized she had signed up to become queen.

  Queen of farking Minos!

  In her presentation, Angel Eyes had reported 'the winner receives a Queen's Ransom.' No mention of becoming an actual queen, or the fact that once having signed her consent to participate, dropping out would cost Jalia the equivalent of a billion credits.

  A consequence in the fine print she hadn't bothered to read until after she'd signed the digital line in the waiting room about to undergo a med check.

  Only it wasn't a standard med check to ascertain whether she would be able to survive the atmosphere and conditions of Minos.

  Oh no, too easy.

  The med check was to ensure her farking fertility! Jalia had come out of the exam room walking funny and aching from the instruments used to confirm she was physically able to couple with a Minoan male, and safely carry his demon spawn to term without dying in the process.

  Oh, lucky day, wouldn't you know, humans were compatible with Minoan bulls!

  And it got even better!

  The fine print she had so hastily overlooked also stated she waved any rights to declare war should she die during the contest or be murdered by one of the other female contestants. But the winner? She got to be the Queen of Minos.

  QUEEN!

  As in, contractually obligated to marry the king of this tropical, beautiful, rich, amazingly isolated planet.

  Finding out she was here as a prospective bride, one who could potentially be murdered by the other prospects was not what she'd agreed to, but it was apparently what Jalia had rashly signed on for, and there was no escaping it unless she found a billion credits stashed somewhere on the LUX.

  Which of course, there wasn't. And yes, Jalia had looked.

  "Jalia, I swear I didn't know about the whole crown or death, thing. I wouldn't set you up to die." Angel Eyes passionately promised in her ear, safely tucked away in orbit around the nebula with a veritable army of nubile holo-sim pleasure slaves.

  She believed Angel, but Jalia wasn't exactly in a mood to be forgiving.

  Bloody Boudreaux had been busy cooling his heels in a UC prison for having gotten caught smuggling a shipment of bootleg Zoilarian wine, thereby unable to join her with as an entourage slash bodyguard.

  It just so happened two of his crew—who had not been caught and subsequently arrested—were in need of a place to lie low to escape the authorities, and wouldn't you know it, Minos wasn't a UC affiliated planet. No extradition, as the UC hadn't been able to even get past the Minoan nebula.

  Tom 'Phantom' Brone and Prowling Bancroft aka Croft, had jumped at the opportunity to escape the law for a while. Croft was a ladies man, blonde, blue-eyed, slender as a whip and drop dead gorgeous.

  A master thief, and all around fool. She liked him well enough, but Tom...Tom had always given her the shivers.

  He was half human, and half something else. No one had any idea what the something else was, and Tom had never offered to share.

  Physically, there was nothing to suggest he was anything other than human, with hair blacker than space, eyes to match, and skin so pale he almost appeared devoid of life. But there was most definitely something about him that screamed, other.

  One might not guess simply by looking at him, but Tom was an assassin.

  A really, really good one.

  Part of the deal she'd made with the two of them was to cut them in on whatever winnings she got, so long as they remained absolutely silent to her true origins, and unless they were asked a direct question, they weren't to speak.

  No bullshit, no charming lies, just stand there like a normal pair of bodyguards, do what she said, and no stealing anything.

  I bet Jared would have read the fine print. A dark, snarky part of her mind whispered tauntingly

  Angel Eyes interrupted Jalia's half-panicked thoughts with her overly cheerful voice, "But it's no problem, right? You said the test games they gave you already were child's play."

  "Shut up, Angel. If anyone figures out what we've done, I'm going to die before I can win anything."

  "Find out? Who'll find out? No one will find out. You'll be fine!" Angel insisted dramatically, but Jalia wasn't so sure.

  Jalia stood with her entourage on a gilded platform over the pink sand beach, surrounded by towering white walls and glistening blue water on all sides.

  The two suns ensured the kingdom of Minos shone so brightly it dazzled anyone who dared lay eyes on it.

  The entire solar system was protected by the asteroid studded veil of a nebula, untouched by invaders due to none of them ever reaching the planet in one piece.

  Only the pilots of Minos knew the ways in and out of the treacherous nebula, ensuring the wealth of the planet remained unspoiled.

  To be a queen of the most gorgeous planet she had ever set foot on? Sure. It sounded fantastic.

  Problem was, she was a fraud, and the king was rumored to be a monstrously brutal sonofabitch. He reportedly ordered entire bloodlines destroyed at his whim, threw traitors and trespassers into a maze designed to kill them in hell
ishly creative ways, and was mercilessly cruel to anyone who dared oppose his rule.

  She couldn't even imagine what he would do to a woman who'd lied her way into the contest to become his wife. And should she win? Jalia shuddered to think about what horrible fate she would suffer for her deception.

  She was distracted from imagining being creatively murdered by a monster as the rest of the passengers began to disembark behind her.

  Sequestered to her quarters with only Croft and Tom to keep her informed on the goings-on aboard the ancient transport vessel that had brought them all here, this was the first glance she got at the other potential queens.

  The first female to stomp down the ramp was a gargantuan Duggan. Jalia sized her up, having never met a Duggan in person before, but the stories of their mercenary forces were impressive.

  Hire a squad of the subterranean warriors, and you were guaranteed to win your war. Which naturally made their services insanely expensive.

  Her skin was a dull earthy brown, her thin black hair scraped into a tight braid, her fluffy tuft of bangs looked a bit like a mustache.

  Jalia could see the point on the female's tusks from here, her nose, lips, and eyes completely disproportionate in her blockish face.

  Too small for such a large, muscle strapped woman. She looked like she could take on an entire fleet of starships and rip them apart with her bare hands.

  The second female was as dainty and childlike as the Duggan was huge and masculine. Her silky black hair fluttered around her knees, framing her short little skirt and military style jacket dripping with jewels to proclaim her rank as a royal princess.

  The tufted ears situated high on her head and the flick of a white tipped tail peeking out from beneath her skirt, proclaimed her a Chentian.

  The only thing Jalia knew about them was they were extremely susceptible to human diseases, and the royal ones were touched.

  As in, psycho.

  Jalia almost groaned to see the crew of robotic servants following the third female. With vibrant violet skin and garish purple hair glittering beautifully, the alien woman sailed from within the ship like she was taking a stroll down the catwalk of some inter-galactically broadcasted fashion show.