Page 9

O f course he locked the door. I should have expected to remain his prisoner, given how much Darax seems to like having property . It’s something I’m going to make him regret, the moment I get a chance anyway.

Admittedly, being clean, especially having clean hair, has given me a new lease on life.

Having done some digging around in the cabin, I managed to find a large red shirt.

It has the scent of smoke on it, so it clearly belongs to Darax, but otherwise it’s certainly cleaner and in better repair than the tattered hoody I feel like I’ve been wearing forever. My jeans, however, will have to do.

I scrabble at the door. There has to be a way of getting out of here.

The doors snap open and I’m looking directly at a scaled abdomen.

“Attempting to go somewhere?” Darax growls.

“I’m not your prisoner,” I retort.

He rumbles something under his breath. It could be Sarkarnii curses. I love the fact I’m getting to him.

“What are you wearing?”

“My clothing was beyond a quick dip in the bath. I found this.” I make the sleeves flop about over my hands. “I guessed as you don’t use it much, I can.”

The sound Darax makes in the back of his throat is not like anything I’ve heard before. For a second or two, I wonder if I’ve pushed things too far.

“I don’t wear it, not now we are no longer part of the Sarkarnii fleet,” he says eventually. “You should make use of it.”

My emotions churn. I wanted to annoy Darax, even if he could rip me limb from limb. I’m taking the fact he hasn’t just yet as a sign of things to come. But I also feel guilt. After all, he could have left me on the pirate ship and let me explode.

Although, given I’m considered plunder to him, maybe that’s not a positive I should attribute to my warlord.

“We’ve arrived on Vorostor. My warriors have located the pod, and it’s empty,” Darax says.

“I thought I said you needed to take me with you.”

“It has landed in an area which is unsafe. You and the other female are lucky it landed in my sector because if it was in one of the other warlords’, there would be greater issues,” he says, brow drawn low over his eyes. “There would most likely be death.”

I’d call him dramatic if he wasn’t well over seven foot, muscled, and with the ability, it seems, to produce fire. The chances of death around the Sarkarnii, it would appear, are relatively high.

After all, I had no love for the Bloar pirates, but they were killed when the ship exploded. The Sarkarnii have little regard for life as it is.

“I’m willing to risk it for my friend,” I respond.

Darax’s gaze rakes over me, smoke rolling from his nostrils.

“So be it,” he says. “Come with me.”

He leads me out of the room, down the passage outside, and I catch a scent, among the smoke, of heat and scorched metal.

Darax turns left, and I find myself back in the airlock area, the place I saw briefly when I was being towed through on the end of a chain.

Around eight large Sarkarnii line the walls. Not all of them are fully clothed, I note. Three of them do not wear pants and their anatomy is similar to Darax’s.

Darax snarls loudly. I see he is watching what I’m doing and obviously what I’m doing is looking at nude Sarkarnii. I mean, if they’re going to go around nude, I’m going to look. None of them quite match up to Darax’s size and bulk, admittedly, but they’re easy enough on the eye.

“My Lord,” a clothed warrior says hesitantly.

Darax turns with a growl which could curdle milk. “What?”

“There is a problem,” he says, keeping his distance. “The pod didn’t come down in our sector after all.”

“It is no matter, if the hoo-man is not inside,” Darax says dismissively. “Which sector did it land in?”

“In Admiral Dalox’s,” the warrior says.

Darax growls low in his chest, his long, sinuous tail thrashing behind him. The other Sarkarnii shift from foot to foot, their tails following his lead.

“How close are we to his sector?” Darax asks, finally.

“Within a kilick.”

“He’ll have targeted us by now.” Darax sets his shoulders. “We need to make this quick.”

He snatches a small square box from the other Sarkarnii and points it at me. A blue light shines in my eyes, and I hold my hand up to shield them.

“What are you doing?”

Darax shoves the box back into the hands of his crew member. “Scanning you. We can use your DNA signature to track the other hoo-man.”

“I don’t think DNA works like that. Hoo-mans…I mean humans are all different.”

“Darax.” The square box is held out to him. “There’s another problem.”

He takes it grudgingly, glaring at the Sarkarnii who is, admittedly, full of problems today, before looking down at it.

A smile, one which is both wicked and dangerous, quirks up the corners of his mouth.

“Is it a problem?” he asks. “It seems we have not only found your friend, but she has found hers too.”

“What do you mean?”

Darax holds out the square to me. I take it, knowing I know nothing about alien tech but I’m supposed to be pretending I do. It turns out the top of the box is a screen, and it’s showing something which looks like terrain in a 3-D form.

As I turn it one way and the other, the terrain changes, but the four blinking green dots in a cluster do not.

“I don’t understand.” I shove the box back at Darax.

“It means there are more than one hoo-man,” he says. “There are four.”

It feels like time slows down, contracting in on me as I process this new information.

“Four?”

“And they’re all in my sector,” Darax says. “Warriors!”

What was a shuffling mass of scales suddenly becomes a fighting force in the blink of an eye. Darax looks down at me.

“Are you ready, little snack? It’s time to go get your friends.”