Craving Captivity by RK Munin

Sick and dying, Lasha is suddenly plucked from her horrific circumstances by Tamerin, a badly scarred Talin male. She recovers under his gentle care, but she knows he’s keeping a secret from her. She wants to demand he tell her, but what if it’s something she can’t live with?

Lasha
Lasha Chandra has always struggled. Unlike most, learning to read and write proved impossible for her. Math wasn’t any easier because the numbers liked to jumble around and refused to keep any type of order. More often than not, she’d been reduced to tears as first she tried to learn to read and then later looked for work.
Being human was already a strike against her. Because they had no homeworld, humans had a reputation for being emotional, destructive, and stupid. That made it difficult for a human to find employment anywhere. With her added issues, she found it nearly insurmountable. That led her to sign a contract that put her in a position barely better than a slave. Working for nothing more than room and board, she had toiled for her merciless employer. She missed her family and small human community on Wimol, but at least she wasn’t a burden to them any longer.
Then she got sick.
Employees who didn’t work weren’t fed. She couldn’t keep up with the pace and eventually succumbed to her illness. Unwilling to waste any resources on her, they tossed her into an unused storage room so someone more productive could have her bunk. She lay there in the gloom, dazed from fever and expecting to die.

Tamerin
Badly wounded while in the military, Tamerin was used to other Talins sounding rumbles of pity when they saw him. When he randomly ran into his cousin, Palforma, he’s overjoyed to not only reconnect, but to meet his cousin’s human, Zia. When he helped them escape a nasty situation, he was rewarded when Zia asked him to rescue a friend she hadn’t heard from in a long time.
Determined, Tamerin set off to find Zia’s friend, Lasha. It didn’t take him long to track down the poor girl and buy her contract. She recovered slowly and suffered from fearful anxiety as she got better. He worked hard to gain her trust as she recovered. She might have even been developing feelings for him.
He had a problem, though. Zia made him promise one thing. He would explain to Lasha that once they’re in the Talin Empire, she would be classified as a pet. Property. Owned by him.
He would never go back on his word, but did that mean he’d lose his songbird?