Page 327 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Meena

The giant, winged creature called himself Sunder, and he talked to me the entire way to our destination.

I only paid attention to him with half a mind; mostly, I was focused on my surroundings, on the crowd we were walking through, and the dazzling view of stars above my head once we reached a part of the space station that Sunder called the docks.

“Look, the Vagabond is right over there. I’ve called for my mate to meet us at the airlock.

She’s human,” Sunder said, the electronic box dangling from his belt translating with that cold, computer-generated voice.

You’d think advanced aliens could generate a better voice than that—heck, Alexa or Siri sounded more welcoming than this one.

I thought he’d been talking about his mate for most of our walk, about how she was from Michigan and a schoolteacher.

That she was taken from her home just like I was.

I suspected he thought it was reassuring to hear that, that he’d rescued a human before.

All I could think about was that he’d made this poor woman his mate.

Was that any better than being some sick bastard’s sex slave?

Then I spotted a human woman standing in front of a set of gray metal doors.

Those doors led into a gray tube, and beyond that, I could see the great shape of a sleek silver ship.

This woman was a little older than I—maybe nearing forty.

Her brown hair was tucked into a neat bun, and a radiant smile graced her face at the sight of us.

“Sunder!” she yelled out, waving wildly with one arm.

Her other arm held a pink and purple baby on her hip, and two boys stood right in front of her, eagerly jumping up and down and waving their arms. They were yelling their own welcomes, but I couldn’t understand what they were saying.

What was more worrisome: one boy was completely blue, while the other was as gray as my companion, with a set of wings to boot.

Were these all kids from this guy? They each looked so different.

“Hey, Aggy!” Sunder responded, but he didn’t quicken his pace, keeping his steps short and careful so I could keep up with him on my bare feet.

I sensed something hovering just behind my back, his wing stretched out around my shoulders without touching.

It made me feel trapped, but it also shielded me from the sight of the many aliens working on the docks.

“Who’ve you got there?” the woman asked as we got closer.

Her eyes were warm as she scanned me, a gentle smile on her face, her expression overwhelmingly kind.

The kids with her left the safety of the airlock she stood in front of, eagerly running toward Sunder.

He ducked and caught each boy in an arm, easily lifting them to settle one on each hip.

“I found this brave one in an alley a couple of streets over from the house of the male who bought her,” Sunder said.

Leaning in, he pressed a kiss to the woman’s mouth, then nuzzled the pink and purple baby on the crown of her head.

“She took care of him all on her own,” he added, his slate-gray eyes shooting my way.

Ugly as he was with his exaggerated features and tusks, there was something kind about how he looked at me.

I sighed, struggling to make sense of my own feelings.

Seeing this weird-ass family looking so happy together was reassuring, but…

I just couldn’t shake the feeling that the other shoe was about to drop.

When I stepped aboard their ship, would I be trapped again?

It wasn’t just that my experience with that creepy alien and the auction house was making me distrustful.

I had a terrible track record when it came to trusting the right people.

“I’m Aggy,” the woman said directly to me, reaching out a hand in a normal handshake.

“What’s your name, sweetheart?” Those brown eyes held nothing but patience and kindness as they met my own.

I wanted to believe that this motherly woman was good and kind, that I could trust this.

But seriously, who had this much luck after being abducted by aliens?

To stumble into safety by chance like this? It just had to be too good to be true.

With a mouth as dry as cotton, my throat aching, and my stomach all in knots, I answered her question.

“I’m Meena Kocchar,” I said, my hands clutching at the coat I wore, my only shield against the outside world; the knife a burning weight in the right-side pocket.

This Aggy looked so neat and put together in a beautiful crocheted sweater over a simple pair of leggings.

Purple boots encased her feet, matching that handcrafted yarn masterpiece exactly.

The only wrinkle in her appearance was a stain on her shoulder, where she held the strange baby.

“Welcome aboard the Vagabond, Meena. Let me take you to the med bay. Don’t worry, we’ll get you taken care of in no time.

” Aggy gestured at the metal doors behind her just as they swished open to reveal even more people.

I flinched back, bumping into the leathery wing Sunder had cupped behind my back.

A sense of being trapped clawed at me, like I was doomed if I stepped aboard this ship.

This feeling only grew when I realized just what had come out of that door: a giant creature covered in green scales, its head shaped like a bull’s with a wide set of horns and a gleaming gold ring dangling from its nose.

Emerald eyes pierced me with laser focus, and despite disliking the wing at my back, I pressed myself more firmly into it.

That creature looked even more monstrous than Sunder.

Then, he snorted smoke from his nostrils, and I wanted to scream.

“Easy there,” an unfamiliar voice said. “It’s okay.

Ziame doesn’t hurt a fly.” It was another woman, her skin a glossy mocha, her hair in beautiful braids.

She was easily six feet tall, but she looked tiny when she stepped in front of the giant, green-scaled bull.

“I’m Abigail, and you’re safe here.” Behind her back, the monstrous giant snorted.

I could easily imagine that he was laughing at her calling him harmless. He was clearly not harmless.

This Abigail and the green monster weren’t the only ones who’d stepped outside, but the other two…

they looked almost mundane compared to Sunder and the green dude.

Then my eyes snagged on the softly rounded belly of the woman, the third human woman so far.

She was pregnant, and from the anthracite arm curled around her shoulders, the last man had to be the father.

All of these women had hooked up with an alien male. Was that my fate?

A daze fell over me. Maybe it was the shock finally settling in.

I didn’t protest when Aggy put my hand into the one the pregnant lady held out, and then I shuffled after her into the ship.

I was relieved when no one else seemed to follow, not even Sunder, who had hovered over me since the moment he’d found me.

Now it was just me, the pregnant woman, and the male she was with. He looked almost human, with shimmering anthracite skin showing from beneath a white doctor’s coat, or was that a lab coat? Was this when I would be taken to some freaky alien lab and used as a science experiment?

“So, Meena, is it?” the woman said, but I barely heard her through the rushing in my ears.

I dug my right hand into the coat pocket to curl my fingers around my knife, ready to defend myself.

When I nodded, the pregnant woman jerked her chin once in response, but she didn’t smile.

“I’m Noa, and this is my mate and the doctor on the ship, Luka.

We’ll take care of you, alright? Starting with taking that nasty collar off your neck.

” She gestured with her hand at the pain collar locked around my throat, and my eyes snagged on the colorful flower tattoos that decorated her bare arm.

The spaceship I’d just boarded looked gray and utilitarian in the hallways we traversed, but I caught a glimpse of a corridor with doors, each decorated in its own unique way.

Then we were standing in front of what was clearly the medical area.

It looked like a hospital, white and sterile.

I wanted to balk at the sight of it, even if it didn’t smell pungently of cleaning agents.

Was I about to get a needle in my neck? Get strapped down to a medical cot?

All hell seemed to break loose the next moment, a voice speaking in a strange alien language through some kind of loudspeaker somewhere.

The alien male with us seemed to leap into motion at the sound, racing into the medical room, snatching up a ready-made bag, and then rushing out the door.

As he passed Noa, I saw him lift a hand to briefly brush it over her protruding belly, then he was gone.

Noa, on the other hand, remained calm, urging me further into the room by gesturing with her hand.

But I’d seen something else, someone else.

A humanoid shape detached itself from the back wall of the large, square room lined with four hospital beds.

I realized it was probably a male from the sheer size of him.

He was colored like a sunset: ocher, gold, bronze, and even hints of red.

Two long tentacles draped from his head, twisting and moving with agitation.

I clasped my hand over my mouth to muffle a scream at the sight of black eyes filled with pinpricks of white—the most bizarre eyes I’d seen to date. They were locked onto my face, boring into me as if he thought he could see straight into my mind that way.