Page 136 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Thorin

I woke with pain searing my shoulder and leg, my belly a slash of fire.

I kept my eyes closed and tried to keep my muscles from tensing as I assessed where I was and how bad a state I was in.

Where was Camila? Had she gotten away, or had they captured her too?

My heart started pounding in fear, had they killed her?

Struggling to open my eyes, I could at least conclude that I’d had worse.

My enhanced healing would take care of the gash across my belly, and the wound in my shoulder felt like a through-and-through, cauterized enough that I wasn’t bleeding out.

My leg, however… that was a serious mess.

The bones ached, the muscles burned, and the shot burn to my thigh was only making things worse.

For the first time, I had to admit to myself that it was extremely unlikely that the leg could ever be saved.

When my eyelids finally cooperated, I blinked a dark metal ceiling into focus, lit only by some diffuse light coming from a faint source further away.

I could move my head, and when I did, there was a gasping sound.

Then Camila came into focus, a huge egg-sized bruise over one eyebrow dramatically shaded in purple and blue.

Her face lit up with a smile, though her dark brown eyes were shiny with unshed tears. “Oh, thank God! You’re awake.”

Lifting a palm, I pressed it against one of her cheeks.

“I told you to fucking leave. Now we’re both caught, aren’t we?

” They’d already tried to kill her, damn it!

What were they going to do now? They wouldn’t let her go—now that they had her.

With the news out, she’d have been safe on Earth, being visible and all that.

Here, they could just make her disappear, and no one would know. Except me.

She just smiled wider. “How are you feeling? How bad is your leg?” The concern infuriated me; I hated being weak.

But I knew I would be a liability if I didn’t tell her just how bad it was.

For a brief moment, I considered it anyway, but then I shook off the notion.

No matter what, getting her to safety was going to be my number one goal.

With a glare down my body at the array of injuries that covered me, I said through clenched teeth, “Bad. Shoulder and belly are okay, though.” When she gestured with her hand, as if to urge me on, I added, “The leg is so bad that I don’t think I can stand on it.

Maybe not ever again.” I expected sympathy and pity, but she just nodded firmly, as if she’d already thought as much.

“This is the brig aboard the UAR battleship. I can’t believe they took us here…

” She sounded calm and collected, but when I looked a little closer, I realized that she was just hiding her panic and fear really well, masking it with a fake calmness.

She was clad only in her undersuit once again, her feet bare, and her braid had come undone.

She probably didn’t have the tie anymore, or she’d have already fixed it.

A more thorough—and slower—inspection of my own body told me I had lost all my weapons, even the lock pick I kept tucked away in the back of my belt.

So I was sans knives, my chain, or any of the smaller blades I kept in various spots on my body, and they’d taken my low-tech tools to get me out of here.

At least they hadn’t put any kind of pain-collar on our necks, that was a sure win in my book.

I was a little worried about what my response would have been had they done that.

Camila helped me into a sitting position, propped up against one of the walls.

This brig wasn’t anything like the one aboard the Vagabond, which had two cots and a decent place to piss.

This was just a bare, square little room with a door that had a tiny window through which a little light came in, that was it.

If she had said to me that they’d locked us in a supply closet, I would have believed it too, although they hadn’t even had the decency to leave us a bucket.

She came to sit at my side, cuddling close for a moment and pressing her head to an uninjured part of my body.

“It’s going to be all right. We’ll get out of this,” she was saying softly, but her voice had lost its confidence.

It sounded like she was trying to reassure herself—and failing.

I could get one arm up and around her, hugging her tightly to me.

The other was a struggle, but I got there.

Then the two of us tried to get some more rest, hoping our injuries would heal a little more.

I knew mine would, but I wasn’t sure how fast a human healed.

When I came out of the light slumber I’d put myself in, my shoulder and belly were almost fully healed.

Tissue damage was always far easier to handle than bone breaks or fractures, and I wasn’t back to full strength—barring my leg—but it was certainly a better spot to be in than where I’d been a few hours ago.

I just really wanted some food; this always demanded a lot of resources from my body.

Camila was still curled against my side, her body looking deceptively small and fragile as she slept.

All my urges insisted that I make my claim on her permanent, to keep her at my side.

I gently ran a finger through the long tresses of wavy black hair draped over her shoulder.

I wished I could let her sleep longer, but the sound of approaching footsteps warned me that our solitary imprisonment was about to come to an end.

Like me, she woke and was immediately alert.

Her dark eyes opened wide as she searched around us, then settled them on my face.

“Someone’s coming.” She pulled back and got to her feet, straightening her clothes with decisive motions as she paced through the small, confined space.

I wished I could do the same, that I could be battle-ready and take down whatever fucker was about to come through that door.

My leg wasn’t about to play nice, but I got the other one—my good one—underneath me and made sure I was ready for a leap should a target present itself.

The footsteps got closer, the tapping of leather soles and the soft swish of fabric.

A shiver crawled down my spine. It couldn’t be…

could it? When the door to our cell opened, sliding back into the wall with a soft groan, I was faced with one of my nightmare figures—the very one who had taunted and imprisoned me for the past seven years.

I didn’t even notice the others present; my gaze was drawn to that wholly evil face of the master who had tortured and experimented on me.

Drameil. His eyes glowed like embers in his white, oval face, slits vertically opening up his jaw at will to threateningly display the many needle-sharp teeth in his mouth.

Then there was that hated horn jabbing from his chin, decadently decorated with gold.

Just the flash of it now had me fighting the urge to back away.

Drameil just studied me where he stood, slightly back from the door, draped elegantly in his fancy robes and his stupid leather shoes.

His hands were dripping with gold rings as he held them folded around the top of a black cane.

I knew that cane intimately, he’d used it to break my leg more than once.

If I could get my hands on that thing, I’d break his own damn legs with it.

Both of them. From the smirk on his face, he could tell just what I was thinking, but it wasn’t him who spoke first.

The man at his side was a human, dressed smartly in some kind of dark blue uniform with gold and red trimmings.

There were golden bars stuck to his collar, and even I could guess that probably meant he was someone high up in command.

From the way Camila had automatically straightened and how her hand had almost twitched into a salute, I was even more sure.

“You’ve been causing an awful lot of trouble, Sergeant Hernandez,” the man said, lips curled in dissatisfaction at my female.

I really wished I could get to my feet and put myself between her and these assholes, not that Camila couldn’t stand up for herself.

It galled me to be here, on my knees on the floor in front of Drameil, because my leg was too messed up.

It made everything inside me rebel, my skin crawl, my blood boil. I wanted to fight.

Camila was as cool as ever when she shrugged her shoulders and rolled her eyes.

“I would never have realized what sick things you were up to if you hadn’t panicked and tried to fucking kill me.

This mess is on you, not me.” She smirked when the face of the gray-haired human male started to mottle red—I took that as a sign of anger.

When she placed her hands on her hips and stared at the males with a challenging look, I even felt a stirring of desire for her.

She was so fierce; this lady never backed down.

The human male made a cutting motion with his hand.

“Doesn’t matter. You’re here now, and you’ve got to know this is going to end badly unless you cooperate.

” I snarled at him, but Camila just laughed.

“Oh, you mean if I tell you how to stop that footage from getting out, you’ll kill me without the planned torture part? That it?”

The male settled his hands on his hips and adopted what he likely thought was a very stern look.

Honestly, it just made him look constipated.

“Don’t try the sass, it won’t get you anywhere.

Be smart about this, Hernandez. You were a good Marine; you could have that again if you just cooperate.

” As if they’d ever let her work for them again after this.

They knew her loyalty wasn’t theirs anymore.

Likely, they’d always known she wouldn’t stand for this shit, or they would have offered her a promotion when they thought she’d found out.