Page 170 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

When the Doc nodded, she shrugged. “Can someone point me in the direction of some pots and soil or something? I need to get these plants situated before they die.” She pointed at my bag, which was overflowing with slate gray vines and pale pink blooms. I tried to feel happy that, at least, she was taking my gift, that she was obviously pleased with it.

“I have an idea for that, if you’ll permit me to guide you,” Sunder offered politely.

He made a small bow to her, which earned a sweet smile in return.

Abby stepped into my line of sight then and gave me a nod.

I had almost forgotten she was there, and I suddenly feared she’d picked up on more of the undercurrents than any of the males had.

When I nodded back at her, she gave me a smirk and trotted after Hina and Sunder.

I didn’t need to say anything to Snarl or the Riho; both creatures already followed my female.

I knew Fluffy did so because she had bonded tightly with Hina, more than she had with me over the past weeks.

Snarl gave me a rumbling assurance that he’d watch over my mate.

I was grateful I had bonded with the Ferai beast; he’d kept me sane on this ship, and we’d kept each other sane.

Now he was my greatest ally. If anything, Snarl was going to do his damnedest to keep males away from her and push her in my direction at every opportunity.

I eyed the Doc. “Got anything else you want from me?” He shook his head slowly, long sleek black hair sliding forward over his shoulder.

I thought that meant I could go, so I slid off the cot and went to follow my female from a distance.

My curiosity was getting the better of me already; I wanted to know just where Sunder was taking her.

Except the door slid open again, and Thorin and Ziame entered the med bay, the feisty Camila following them.

This time, I noted that Thorin was walking with a slight limp, and I felt a pang of worry for my brother.

He had issues with his leg, but I thought they’d cured it.

Had he relapsed while I was down on that planet? Or had he gotten injured after all?

“Don’t worry, Doc and I are still working on figuring out the right dosage for my injections.

Today’s wasn’t enough,” Thorin explained with a wave of his hand and a cocky smirk.

His female tucked her compact, muscular body under his arm and smiled up at him before leveling me with a glare that could singe hair. Oof, what had I done to deserve that?

Chills slid down my spine. Had they discovered more about Fluffy?

About that night in the corridor with Meian?

I hoped not. Now that Hina was here, I had even more reason to stay aboard the Vagabond.

If they had found out, would they send Snarl and me away?

It was my constant fear, the only reason I hadn’t come forward after it had happened.

Ziame waved his tail in my direction. “I think you need to explain a few things, brother.” His voice was filled with a kind of censure I wasn’t used to hearing.

He was displeased with me. I fought my natural instincts to bristle and posture in defense, to slide my skin into camouflaging colors so I was less of a target.

When I was stolen from the Mother planet, I wasn’t the only one, just the youngest. My older tribe members had warned me not to give away that trick; it was our chance at freedom.

We could use it to escape when the time came.

Only, one after the other, they had died in captivity, too fierce, too wild, too feral.

In the arena, as a young boy, it had been hard to keep from camouflaging, but I’d done it.

I’d lain in wait all this time, hoping that, like my tribe members had said, one day my camouflage would be my ticket to freedom.

It hadn’t turned out that way, but the instinct to hide the skill was still strong.

Only down on the planet with Hina had I freely used it.

“What do you want me to explain?” I asked, lifting my free arm in a shrug while protectively tucking Fellow closer to my body. He was fast asleep and had rolled over in the crook of my elbow, exposing his pudgy, downy belly for the world to see.

Camila pointed at a camera lens in the corner of the medbay.

“Like how you confused the cameras so the ship’s logs thought you were sleeping when you were really skulking about.

” I flinched; “skulking” made it sound like I was up to no good, when all I’d done was walk the corridors of the ship when I was too antsy to rest. It had become a game to use my camouflage when I did so, as I didn’t get much chance to practice it at other times.

I wanted to bite my tongue and hide this skill, that was the first impulse.

But these were my gladiator brothers; we’d been through a lot together, and they had stuck around to find Hina and me.

They had trusted my judgment when I said that Snarl was safe to take out of his cage, and they hadn’t once suggested dumping him on a planet since then.

So I lifted my arm and held it out for them to see, then shifted the skin into the white, metallic texture that paneled the med bay.

At the sound of their surprise, I moved my arm over the edge of the cot, allowing it to match those colors and textures instead.

When Camila made an impressed oohing sound, I found myself smirking, a little pleased at her reaction, even if my brothers remained stoically quiet.

Then I winked and slid my entire body into camouflage, aware that it would now almost appear as if Fellow were floating in the air.

The most visible parts of me would be my weapon kilt and my boots.

When I wanted full invisibility, I usually stripped down.

Now Ziame snorted, a tiny curl of fire coming from one nostril, his mobile ears flicking forward as if he were trying to better pinpoint my location by ear.

Thorin’s eyes went wide, and Luka lifted his arm with his medical scanner and started scanning.

“Wow, you have all kinds of chemical reactions happening in your skin; I’ve never seen anything like it,” the Doc exclaimed, approaching eagerly to take more detailed scans.

It made me nervous, as if I was giving away the secrets of my people, though I knew that Luka was a trustworthy male.

Returning to my natural skin tone, I eyed the medical scanner with some distrust, unable to curb the instinct to lift my lip in a snarl.

He halted and started chuckling, as if I’d done something funny, but apologized and asked if I’d be willing to do some tests later, as he’d never seen anything like it before in a humanoid like myself.

“So that’s how you did it!” Camila exclaimed when the Doc finally stopped hovering over me with an eager expression.

It had taken a poke of Ziame’s prehensile tail to make the male snap out of research mode and back off.

I nodded, unsure just what they had discovered that had made them realize I could move about the ship undetected.

I had asked the AI to delete what footage it had recovered of Meian’s death; it couldn’t be that.

Thorin stepped in front of me, arms crossed over his chest. “So when did you discover the Riho? Before or after the death of that pirate?” I had a feeling he already knew, so I didn’t deny it. “Before. When we were still locked in our cells. She crawled out of a vent one night.”

He sighed, pursing his lips so that the double rings piercing his bottom lip glinted brightly in the light.

“And you felt the need to hide her from me? When I asked you to look for her?” He wanted to know why I had done that, why I had hidden Fluffy from everyone on the ship.

It was hard to think of good reasons why, exactly, I had it was hard to articulate, just instinct.

What stood out most was the worry that they’d want to lock her up, in case she tried to harm another being.

“Fluffy is harmless,” I started. “You might have locked her up, but she poses no risk to anyone… She didn’t kill Meian.

” It was like a weight had lifted from my chest, coming clean about this.

Lying and hiding things from my brothers had always felt wrong.

I couldn’t let them think that Fluffy was a danger.

I wouldn’t let them take the Riho from Hina. They had bonded.

Thorin’s eyebrows went up. “What makes you say that? Riho venom was found in his system. That’s rather obvious evidence, don’t you think?

” My mind flashed back to that night almost immediately, going over the events that had led to my confrontation with the pirate.

I had been shocked to run into him because he was an unfamiliar male, one I’d never met before.

He’d smelled foul and had cursed at the Riho when she’d given him a merry chase across the ship.

He’d only been able to follow her because of a tracking device.

I’d stumbled onto them, watched as the bastard grabbed her by the scruff and shook her until she mewled in pain.

I’d been on him before I could curb the impulse.

I punched him until he turned toward me, then snatched Fluffy’s deadly tail from his grip and slammed that barb into his belly.

So yes, of course, there was Riho venom.

That’s what did him in, but it wasn’t Fluffy who stabbed him with her barb.

I explained this in a few short sentences, hoping at least they wouldn’t consider Fluffy dangerous now.

Even if they might think I was unhinged, unable to control my impulses, killing that pirate without hesitation.

The truth was, sometimes I thought I was a little out of control, more animal than man.

Look at how I’d already growled at the Doc just now, how I’d snarled at Jakar a bunch of times since my return, just because I knew he was eager for a mate.

“Hmm,” Thorin sighed. He shared a look with Ziame.

“Did the pirate say anything? Did you realize who he was?” I shrugged, unsure what information they were looking for, and, at this point, eager to get the conversation over with.

“Come on, Fierce, help us out here. Why didn’t you come forward and tell us what happened when we found the body? ”

Now that the secret of my camouflaging skill was out, it was even harder to control the instinctive shifts, especially now that I felt cornered.

The instinct to strike back was even stronger.

“What does it matter!? He was a pirate; he tried to harm a tiny, helpless creature!” I shoved away from the medical cot, ready to stalk out, my skin shifting to partial camouflage.

If any of the males present had tried to stop me, I feared it would have ended in a fight.

My instincts told me to strike before they struck me, but it was Camila.

No matter how angry and worried I was, I wasn’t about to harm Thorin’s female when one blow could kill her.

She stepped bravely into my path, her fists on her hips and her chin tilted sharply at an angle.

“Hold on, Fierce, we’re not mad about him being dead, you did what you had to. We just want to understand why.”

I fought to rein in the growl in my chest, the urge to push her aside, and leave this room.

Looking down at her, I noted how dark Camila’s eyes were, so similar to Hina’s, though the similarities ended there.

Hina was all delicate and small, with softly rounded edges and tiny, perky breasts, compared to Camila’s voluptuous curves.

I’d envied Thorin his female before because she was so strong and brave, and she seemed to fit with him just right.

Now I understood that bravery could come in many different forms, like facing a strange alien that you couldn’t understand, jumping into a raging river, following a stranger into the dark, or selflessly caring for others.

So I owed it to Hina to try and make this right—to myself, too—to salvage this damn mess I’d created.

“I thought you’d kick me off the ship,” was hard to say, though, to admit that I feared that I was the danger.

Camila shook her head. “Why would we do that?” She didn’t get it—obviously.

But when I looked over my shoulder at Ziame and Thorin, I saw their dark frowns.

They did. They worried. I’d broken the trust between my brothers and me.

A lifetime of hiding things I cared for and things I’d done wrong so that my slave owners wouldn’t punish me or take them away.

This was what I had created with that behavior.

I couldn’t blame them for not trusting me. Not at all.

So I shrugged, moved around Camila, and hurried from the med bay as fast as I could.

Behind me, I heard her call out, “What the hell is Fluffy for a name, anyway? Your naming skills suck.” I could tell it was meant to be a taunt, a tease to pull me out of this dark mood, but since it was Hina who’d called her Fluffy, I wasn’t about to admit I thought the name was silly too.

My instincts were to locate Hina, to stake my claim again in front of everyone.

Instead, I headed for the brig, hiding, feeling like I wasn’t good enough.

I had messed up everything, and I had nothing to contribute aboard this ship.

My brothers didn’t trust me, and rightly so.

They hadn’t said they wanted to kick me off the ship, but I feared they’d decide that anyway, not just because of my crime, but also because I was a burden, bringing in more and more mouths to feed.