Page 268 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Da’vi

Arianna was perched on the edge of the medical cot, her bare feet swinging back and forth, her soft brown eyes darting around the med bay, full of interest. A smile graced her pink lips, drawing my gaze to her—even as I tried to pretend I didn’t care.

I stood with my back against the wall, arms crossed, to make sure that Noa didn’t start asking me questions, though she was already shooting me curious stares.

Luka had just installed a set of translator implants behind Arianna’s ears, and I was anxious to find out whether the procedure had been successful.

Ziame and some of my other brothers and their mates had gathered around to welcome her aboard.

I was pretending I didn’t hear how Thorin and Kitan were joking with each other that another male was biting the dust. They thought I was claiming Arianna as my mate, but they didn’t understand, I didn’t deserve a mate. They were wrong.

It made my chest feel tight to see how at ease Arianna seemed among all kinds of aliens.

The ladies were asking her questions, sharing where they’d come from, and moaning together about the things they missed from Earth.

Arianna seemed like the kind of person who could talk to just about anyone, that much was clear.

Selfishly, I hated that she was no longer mine alone to talk to. She’d forget about me pretty quickly with so many new friends to make. I was terrible company; she was probably happy she didn’t have to deal with me anymore. That hug meant nothing; she’d just been relieved to finally be rescued.

“What I want to know,” Arianna said with a cheerful lilt to her tone, her head tilted as Luka scanned her ear to make sure everything was all right, “is what will happen to those stasis pods the bad guys took just before you all arrived.” Her face turned serious, her eyes meeting mine across the room before she unerringly zoned in on Ziame.

He hadn’t introduced himself as the captain, but she seemed incredibly sensitive to social dynamics.

She instinctively knew he was the boss here.

“We don’t know where they were taken,” the Lacerten male rumbled.

He reached out to curl his arm around Abigail’s shoulders, clearly feeling the urge to make sure his mate was close to him; safe.

Arianna was focused on him, listening closely.

There was no confusion on her face, so I had to assume her implants were working.

“I heard them talking as they hauled them to their ship,” she said.

Pushing off from the cot, she landed on her dainty bare feet, shaking her hands out of the oversized sleeves of the large sweater she wore.

I’d seen her make that sweater with her bare hands during the course of the many conversations we’d had over the last three weeks; I was still impressed by that.

“There were two kinds of aliens, I think, and they both sounded really different when they spoke.” She shivered, even though she couldn’t possibly be cold in her warm clothing.

I fought down the urge to push through the crowd to be at her side.

I had never been the type to hug, so the urge to do so now baffled me.

“Probably Krektar and whatever the hell Drameil is,” Abigail said.

She was patting the portion of tail that Ziame had curled around her waist as she spoke.

“You were really lucky they didn’t discover you if that was Drameil himself…

” The female shivered, and Arianna did too, clutching her arms around her middle.

Neither had met the Crimelord directly, and yet they instinctively feared him.

“He walks with a cane,” Camila interjected.

“You might have heard that? Creep likes to pretend he’s weak, but it’s really just a weapon.

” She spoke with such venom that it was clear she’d had her own run-in with the bastard.

I wondered if I was the only one present who hadn’t had any direct dealings with the crimelord.

Unlike the rest of my gladiator brothers, I had been owned by a different master, small-time, not a criminal of the caliber of Drameil.

While they wanted revenge, I didn’t give a shit about the guy; we’d barely interacted at all.

I’d only spent a short year as a gladiator, put out on the sands so quickly only because my training in the Kertinillian Army was better than what many born slaves got before they started them on fights.

“Yeah, I definitely heard a tapping noise,” Arianna said, nodding thoughtfully.

Then she stepped around the girls clustered closest to her and ducked beneath Luka’s arm—with his handheld—as he tried to continue scanning her, until she ended up at my side.

I tried to ignore the flush of heat rushing through my body at her nearness, and I tried even harder to suppress the urge for my body to light up with its bioluminescence in excitement.

“Does the word Yenger mean anything to you guys? That’s what they were both talking about.

It stood out because that, uh... Drameil guy sounds like a snake when he talks.

” I shared a look with Ziame and then Kitan; she’d heard them talk about the Yengar Space Station.

The place was a known slave market, floating in a neutral portion of the Zeta Quadrant.

It was a lawless hole of criminality. Not a bad location at all to expect Drameil to offload his several dozen humans and make a fortune.

A fortune he needed if he wanted to stay in power.

“Yeah, the Yengar Space Station would be just the place for Drameil to go,” Abigail confirmed, beaming a smile at Arianna so that all her blunt white teeth were on display.

“We should head there and see if we can rescue those poor humans.” I could tell this was going to spark a lively debate, and I wanted to leave.

I didn’t like it when everyone was talking all at once; it made my head buzz.

The moment I started to step back, hoping I could get to the door without anyone noticing, Arianna’s warm little hand slid into mine.

I froze, looking down at our joined digits in shock.

Why was she touching me? Why was she choosing my company when she now had her pick of females to make friends with, and the much more outgoing Jakar or Eoin to welcome her?

I’d seen the way Jakar was looking at her, he really wanted a mate of his own.

“I think this is all a bit much for me. Can you show me where I’ll sleep?

” she murmured to me, a soft smile playing at the edge of her far-too-pink lips.

I felt like there were dozens of eyes on us, staring with curiosity at our little interaction, and I felt the urge to curl her under my arm and snap at them.

I wanted to hoard all her private little smiles and touches and keep them secret so the others couldn’t gossip and speculate about us.

“Sure,” I grunted at her, my fingers curling more snugly around hers.

I was keenly aware of the feel of my metal prosthesis against her soft skin, the hard edges that pressed against her fragile bones.

Ignoring the stares, I started pulling her with me out of the med bay, but I paused just at the door.

“Hey, Doc, she has a clean bill of health, right?”

He nodded, a confused expression on his face.

I really hoped it was too crowded in there for him to pick out what I was feeling.

I wasn’t sure what I was feeling myself.

Definitely uncomfortable with all those eyes on us, so I pulled Arianna into a jog down the hallway, heading around a few corners to reach the one with the crew quarters.

Not that they were crew quarters in the traditional sense now, we’d converted them, as needed, into private quarters for each of us.

There were still several empty rooms, including the one next door to mine.

I pressed the door plate to open it, then paused.

“Let me key you to the door so only you can open it, all right?” It only took a few moments to register her biosignature, keying her exclusively to this door.

Then I made sure she had access to all the public places she might need.

“Thank you, Da’vi,” she said, beaming a smile at me.

“That’s nice of you,” she added when I frowned.

I didn’t want her to thank me; this was just basic decency, she had a right to private space to withdraw to.

When my brothers had made it clear that I had a spot like that on the Vagabond, giving me a good mattress and a proper place to sleep, it had cemented my loyalty to this ship.

These were good people. This was a good home, now that I was out of the Army.

I hoped Arianna would think the same thing.

Then the thought struck me that she might not want to stay here. What if she wanted to move on, settle on a planet somewhere? I should prepare myself for that; living on a spaceship wasn’t for everyone. It was irrational, anyway, to want her to stay.

She walked into her newly assigned quarters, her body brushing closely against mine, and I jolted from the sensations.

She smelled a little of the musty old ship she’d been on, but mostly, she smelled like something uniquely female, soft and sweet.

It would always baffle me how females, of any species, could smell so nice, but her scent…

It was making my cock go hard, so I shifted awkwardly, hoping to hide the evidence, clenching my thigh muscles desperately to get my erection to go down.

After my eavesdropping, I had no right at all to lust after her, definitely not until I’d come clean.

I just didn’t think I’d ever tell her; she’d hate me then, and I selfishly didn’t want that. So, no touching, no lusting after her.