Page 310 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Tori

Eoin still wanted to stop me from going, I could see it on his face.

At least he wasn’t speaking out loud, which was an improvement over the previous hour.

I think we’d bickered back and forth about this for the past two days.

I was furious about it all. I thought we’d made progress, he hadn’t interfered when I’d spoken with that scary guy, Sin, for example.

He’d even seen the humor in the way I’d finally convinced the mercs to help us rescue the two humans.

Nope, no such luck. He was still obsessed with keeping me safe, but my patience for that kind of thing was limited to the bedroom only. I was sliding from anger into what was almost despair that we’d ever see eye to eye on this. When would he trust me enough? Give me the independence that I needed?

He stood with his arms crossed over his chest, a thunderous expression on his face, and his eyes shooting daggers at Jaxin. The Rummicaron weapon master was currently making adjustments to a set of high-tech armor I was wearing. It was much too big and needed quite a bit of fixing to make it work.

Come to think of it, maybe Eoin’s confrontational expression was more about the male touching me than anything else.

Sure enough, when Jaxin raised a hand to tighten a section of plating over my chest, a growl rumbled from his throat.

The Rummicaron froze, black eyes in his shark face shooting from my body, up to check out the threat.

Then he wisely backed up, his hand finding the barely portable laser cannon he liked to carry around.

We’d been on the Varakartoom for three days now, and each day, Eoin had taken on various crew members in their gym in hand-to-hand combat.

That included Jaxin. Eoin was used to training with the gladiators on the Vagabond, so he seemed right at home with these mercs, too.

Proving his fighting skills had gained him a lot of respect, and, in some cases, a healthy dose of fear.

“You do it then,” Jaxin scoffed, turning away to the long bench against one wall, where he located a cloth and started polishing his beloved weapon.

I was pretty sure he called that thing Bex and treated it like it was a living entity with feelings and everything.

The guy was nuts, but at least he wasn’t all that bad once you got used to the weirdness.

Eoin stepped into my line of sight, effectively blocking me from even looking at the Rummicaron male.

I glared at him, ignoring the way it felt when he gently brushed his hands along the metal plating, and the whole section simply conformed to my shape.

I glared even more when he dared to brush his hands over my breasts, not that I could feel much of that, what with the actual metal armor in between.

“What about Novalee?” he demanded, his voice vibrating with restrained tension.

He’d ducked down to make sure the plating curved just right around my shins.

Maybe he’d ducked as much to avoid the look on my face when he tried this already exhausted avenue of arguments.

I knew what he meant, but it was precisely because of Novalee that I was doing this.

I had to prove to myself, and to her, that I could do it.

Those two girls would be terrified out of their minds, stuck on that mining planet as slaves, possibly enduring horrible things. I was going to be the only one they could understand if they didn’t have any kind of translator implant. I needed to be there when they were rescued.

My eyes darted to my little girl, so alien in the color of her skin and hair, yet so much like me at the same time.

She was crawling around the armory, occasionally pulling herself to her wobbly feet when she got hold of a crate or box.

Jaxin had one eye on her as he worked on his favorite weapon, making sure she couldn’t grab anything dangerous.

This place was neat as a pin, with each of the weapons behind lock and key or stacked in sealed crates.

There was no risk that Novalee could hurt herself.

In fact, if Jaxin was staying behind for this mission, I’d probably have picked him as her babysitter.

Since there was no chance in hell that the weapon master would miss out on the fighting, I’d had to find a different solution for her with the freaky Captain of the ship.

“Novalee will be perfectly fine in the kitchen with Brace,” I said, aiming my words at the crown of Eoin’s head, where he was bent over my feet.

His hands were curled around the steel toes of the boots I was wearing.

He wasn’t adjusting the size, but I could feel warmth, so I knew he was doing something.

I had yet to lay eyes on the grumpy cook of this ship.

Apparently, he didn’t allow anyone into his domain, and his sleeping quarters were right next door.

If possible, that guy was even more painfully shy than I had once been.

I didn’t feel so shy anymore, but I understood his desire to hide.

“She’s familiar with a galley, it will make her feel safe. Don’t worry.”

Eoin huffed, “Just because you spoke to this guy through a freaking hatch every morning doesn’t mean you can trust him!

” He had a point. I hadn’t even considered leaving Novalee with Brace until the Captain had made the suggestion.

I wasn’t even sure why I trusted the Naga’s word when I found him so utterly terrifying and alien.

Yanking my foot from his hands, I stomped across the armory under the guise of testing out my range of motion.

This suit was slick, and now that the metal plating properly conformed to my body, it was actually rather comfortable.

You’d think wearing this much metal would feel heavy, but I hardly felt it, in part, I knew, because I was in good shape.

Camila’s exercise regime had done wonders.

Once I’d shaken off some of my frustration, I returned to where Eoin was standing, his hands on his hips.

“At least stay on the Varakartoom until after we’ve taken out the relay station orbiting the planet.

You don’t need to be there for that.” Another good point: there wouldn’t be any humans to reassure on the orbiting station we were hitting first. They’d have to come back to fetch me if I stayed behind, and that would take precious time.

I just knew that Eoin would convince the mercs not to pick me up.

I took the laser pistol Jaxin offered me and strapped it to my thigh, then holstered a second one on my hip.

“No way. I’m coming, get over it,” I snapped.

Eoin growled again in response but didn’t argue, grabbing my arm instead to strap a knife to my left wrist. I could tell that, behind him, Jaxin was grinning from earhole to earhole, but the weapon master kept his jaws shut.

The door to the armory swished open almost soundlessly, but the Captain’s entrance was even quieter.

His long, scaly tail didn’t make a single noise as he slithered into the room.

His golden eyes were intense and scary with their slitted pupils, but I was starting to learn not to flinch back from that look.

If anything, being on the Varakartoom had taught me to be far less nervous around all these strange and scary aliens.

I knew I couldn’t have done that if I hadn’t lived on the Vagabond with equally big and alien gladiators for the better part of a year first. Exposure therapy, so to speak, and I was actually starting to feel intensely grateful that I was here, that I’d gotten this far on this adventure.

“Ah, there you are,” he said, his voice a low, drawling hiss that made goosebumps break out across my skin.

His eyes weren’t on me but on my precious baby.

Novalee had drawn herself up on two booty-clad feet, swaying unsteadily as she clung to the edge of an open crate—possibly the only open crate in the entire armory.

It was filled with rejected bits and bobs and little shiny pieces of metal.

She was reaching for a coiled spring, which looked far too sharp to be safe to play with.

Ducking down, I picked up my girl just as Eoin snatched the coil away from her grabby fingers.

She instantly opened her mouth and started wailing, angry that her shiny toy was now out of reach.

“Hush, darling,” I said, gently swaying her in my arms and giving the Captain an apologetic look when I realized he’d clasped both hands over his ears with a wince.

“Here. It’s safe now, you can have it back,” Eoin said, shaking the spring in her face.

He’d rounded all the edges and curled the ends in on themselves so she didn’t have a single sharp part to hurt herself on.

Novalee grabbed the shiny thing with both hands, instantly quiet again.

I wasn’t convinced it was good for her to have; it seemed rather hard for her developing teeth to chew on, and she promptly stuck it in her mouth to test that.

I started to protest, but he held up a hand.

“I checked with the Doc about her teething needs, okay? She’s not fully human—this is fine for her.

” He gave me a sharp grin. “She likes to chew on metal things, just like I did as a baby. Don’t worry.

” I knew he wasn’t her father. Whatever she was, it was a mix of many things, created in a lab.

It was irrational to like it so much when she did things that were like Eoin. Especially when I was mad at him.

“That’s settled then. Come here, kiddo. I’ll take you to Brace.

” I was a little uneasy with just how big the Naga captain was when he approached, but the male was clearly comfortable handling a small child.

He held her like he’d done it before and didn’t bat an eye when Novalee banged him in the chin with her new toy.