The third man, after what Kes took to be a negotiation over price, purchased her and took her with him (again, thrown over his shoulder like a sack) to his resistance. Kes’s mind was hard at work trying to figure out a way to escape. She paid close attention to everything, but got no closer to a solution to her problem. Now that this man had purchased her, he undoubtedly meant to do something with her, use her for some purpose. What purpose, she didn’t care to think about, but she was determined to find a way of escape before she could learn of it, if at all possible. As she was carried into the man’s residence, she considered that she might even try to find a way to end her own life if it came to that. At least then she could deprive the man of whatever he thought to gain from her… unless his race were carnivores and he wanted her as food… A thought she promptly tried to forget that she’d just had.

This man’s house was bigger than the other man’s, but no one else seemed to live there. He took her to a bedroom and threw her on the bed. He looked at her in a way that set Kes on edge more than she had ever been in her life. It was an ugly look, but full of… lust, avarice. Those were rare emotions among her people, and certainly she’d never met anyone who had them anywhere near to this degree. He got on the bed and undid his pants. She could see… She’d never seen a male… aroused like that before. She’d seen males of her own kind without clothes before when she and her friends went swimming, but…

He was speaking to her. Her senses were heightened with fear and the start of real panic, and somehow that let her understand him better. He was saying that there were many fewer women than men here because it was a… bad place for them in some way. That he had a son, but he was a young man now and that his former mate had died somehow. That it was seen as a sign of weakness and ill-fortune among his people to be without a wife at his age. That it had been too long for him since he’d… done what he was about to do, and that… that she would enjoy it too if she were to be… pleasant to him. He said he was going to untie her feet, but not her arms. As he untied her feet though, she kicked him hard in the face, three times before he stopped her. She hadn’t even thought about it, she’d just acted because she couldn’t not act.