Page 138 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Camila

Thorin started speaking in a low voice, white lines bracketing his mouth, showing his pain and tension.

“I need to tell you something,” he said, his hand reaching out to curl around mine.

“After that, you can decide for yourself what to think of me. I didn’t want you to keep wondering, not after you saw how those females treated me, after what Drameil called me. ”

Ah, so that’s who that freaky bastard had been.

I had a feeling that had been the case, but his name had never been said.

I clenched my hand tightly around his fingers, silently urging him to go on.

I didn’t think anything he could say would change my mind about him; actions spoke louder than words, after all.

He didn’t have to free those girls; he hadn’t needed to give them money, but he had, despite the way they treated him.

A brief pause, in which he gathered his thoughts—or maybe his courage—and then he started explaining, telling me about his family and how proud they’d been when he’d made detective despite his issues following orders.

That earned him a chuckle, and I’d seen his bright eyes flash at me in the dark, a spark of amusement filling them.

“Your mom probably hates all your tattoos, doesn’t she?” I asked. My own mother had, more than once, threatened to disown a kid of hers if they showed up with one in her house. Of course, it was a well-known secret that at least two of my brothers had a few, and she still loved them anyway.

“You have no idea,” Thorin said with a grin, sharp canines peeking out over his lip and clicking against the rings in that lush bottom one.

“But they were proud of my detective status, and I really admired the detective they partnered me with. Sahina was fierce and beautiful, and she had a mind as sharp as a knife.”

I tried not to wince at the admiration that colored his voice as he spoke of his partner.

I didn’t like feeling jealous, and she was obviously in his past now.

His voice turned sour when he next spoke: “I was too green to see what she was doing, and she strung me along, playing on my infatuation. It was pathetic.”

There was a lot of self-loathing packed into those words, so I squeezed his fingers firmly. “How old were you?”

I felt him shrug against my shoulder. “Fresh out of school, I must have been twenty-three at the most.” So young, and, like he’d described himself once, so fresh and naive. He could hardly blame himself for being infatuated with his capable superior.

He talked a little about his first few cases, describing how this Sahina had encouraged him to make certain assumptions, how she’d played with his feelings by offering him a date and flirting.

Then, one day, she’d shown up at his door crying, saying that someone had raped her and that she’d shot him afterward, when he’d let her go.

“I didn’t even once think that she was lying.

I told her it was self-defense and that she should call it in, that it would get sorted out.

It never crossed my mind that it was strange she’d come to me for help; I was so flattered that she sought my protection…

” He made a snarling, angry sound. “She had a gun with her, which she suddenly pulled out of her pocket. She just handed it over, just like that. It was instinct to take it, to put my hand around that grip.”

I had a sick feeling in my stomach, suspecting what was coming next.

“She had the sickest, proudest smirk when she told me what an idiot I was. Then she pulled her gun on me and called for backup. Next thing I knew, I was prosecuted for the murder of a male she’d been sleeping with.

Supposedly, I’d come in and killed the man out of jealousy, and she’d gone to confront me in my own home.

Somehow, that gun she’d used for the killing was registered in my name, and of course, it now had my prints all over it, too. ”

Sitting up, I scooted closer so I could look him straight in the face when I filled in the rest. “The prosecution was a slam dunk, you were framed and exiled for it. God, Thorin, that’s so unfair!

” His eyes glowed blue and green in the dark, his expression—for once—open, vulnerable.

My heart went out to him, and something settled in my chest, knowing that he was choosing to trust me with this part of him.

“As is custom, I was banished for it: my Caratan chain stripped of all its medallions, my naming sigils, my family sigils, my tribe—everything. And in return, I can only wear the sign of the pariah.” He indicated the small round disk dangling from the chain across his cheek.

The small rune-like symbol on it meant nothing to me, but it must be a heavy weight for him.

“Why do you still wear it?” It seemed to me like there was nothing stopping him from taking it off, at least, not when we’d been aboard the Vagabond.

I understood better now that, for his former Master, making him wear it had been a bit of mental torture.

But why was he still inflicting that on himself?

He shrugged, his eyes going distant as he thought about it.

“Because I was angry, and I told myself that I was wearing it by choice. Because I wanted to think that they didn’t have any power over me.

” His green eyes lowered as he settled them on my face.

“Because I was lying to myself, saying it didn’t hurt, that I’d proudly be the pariah they wanted me to be.

You gotta understand, my parents... my brothers and sisters, the rest of my tribe, they didn’t even try to fight for me.

Because I’d always acted out, because I was the rebel of the family, they actually believed I had murdered that guy. So fuck them. I don’t need them.”

That made sense; I understood all of that.

And I ached for him, knowing how alone he must have been—how angry and scared—when he’d been wrongly sentenced.

I half expected him to hide behind a little anger, something we were both good at, when I hugged him tightly in comfort.

He turned his body into mine, arms hugging me tight as he sighed.

“I worked as a security guard in a few disreputable places on Yengar Spaceport for a while. Then the news came that Sahina had gotten herself killed by some gangster in a deal gone south, and all her shady shit came to light. Including the truth about owning that gun…”

He sounded sad and resigned, contrary to what I expected him to feel about such news.

Though that might have to do with how his family had reacted to his conviction, who would want to return to that?

I felt angry on his behalf; I couldn’t imagine my family ever believing whatever nonsense the UAR was bound to spew out about my disappearance.

I was probably now listed as AWOL, a traitor, but I knew they would always have my back and believe in my innocence.

“So you could go home and clear your name?” I asked, because even if he didn’t want anything to do with his family or tribe, he could still be missing his planet.

But he laughed softly. “I wanted to. At the time, I was so angry, it felt like the biggest fuck-you to my family to clear my name and then refuse their sigils.” I laughed with him, imagining that.

That was so Thorin, but it clearly hadn’t gone down that way.

“I went to celebrate, got blind drunk, and the next thing I knew, I woke up aboard a Krektar slave ship. I spent the next four years bouncing around from gladiator stable to stable, just good enough to stay alive. Then Drameil bought me, found out about my past, and returned that damn pariah sigil and my Caratan chain to me. That sure as hell lit a fire in me, enough to survive the medical experiments, to become a Prime fighter.”

What he’d been through was horrible; I couldn’t imagine what those stables he talked about were like, or the medical experiments that had made him so fast, heal so quickly.

I only knew that they’d broken the bones in one of his legs so often that he now stood to lose it.

And that bastard had done it again. Rage filled me at the injustice, and a desire to kill that bastard once and for all.

I should have aimed for his damn throat, not his heart, when I threw that knife.

I didn’t regret doing it for a second, hoping that he was hurting a good while over it.

I said as much in an angry whisper and was happy when that made him laugh.

“My fierce, fierce female.” Then he curled his hand in my loose hair and pulled me close for a kiss.

There was no braid, but that soft tug on my scalp felt good anyway.

I surrendered to him fully, wanting him to know my entire heart was in this.

That I would never turn on him the way his family had.

When he pulled back, he only went so far, pressing his forehead against mine. “I wanted to help you because you do have a family to go home to. I just… Camila… I don’t want you to leave me.”

I felt those words all the way down to my toes.

His confession about his past had stirred my anger, my sense of justice, and my empathy.

This stirred my heart as nothing else could.

Tears sprang to my eyes as I grabbed this fierce, wild bad boy by the back of his neck so he knew I had him.

“Thorin, I’m not going anywhere. I love you. ”

His entire body shuddered in reaction, his breath rasping out of his throat, and those beautiful, luminous green eyes turned teary with emotion.

“You mean that?” I didn’t take offense at the disbelief in his tone; he’d gone so many years knowing his own family and tribe hadn’t wanted him that it was probably going to take him a minute to accept that I did.