Page 328 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

“Akri, maybe you should, you know… skedaddle? There’s about to be a lot of scared and injured humans incoming.

” Noa walked into the medical room with a confident stride, rushing to a cabinet to start pulling out supplies and laying them out on trays next to each bed.

She knew what she was doing in here, and I wanted to fade away, hide.

Shuffling to the side, my eyes on the newest creepy alien, I kept my back to the wall and found a corner.

This Akri lurched gracelessly into motion, one hand on the nearest wall.

His bare, three-toed feet were clumsy as he stumbled along, but his eyes never left my face while he walked, not until he reached the exit and ducked out of sight.

“Sorry about that,” Noa was saying, her eyes on my face, short blonde hair hanging in cute, pixie-like layers down to her sharp cheekbones.

“Akri isn’t very used to interacting with humans yet.

Now, let me remove that collar, all right?

” When she came my way, she was holding some kind of weirdly shaped phone in one hand and a scalpel in the other.

I flinched away, my hand coming up defensively with the knife.

Damn it, this wasn’t how I wanted to respond.

I was acting like a lunatic. That knife wasn’t to hurt me; she wanted to cut that thing from my neck.

But I couldn’t make myself trust her. I couldn’t stop shaking, and I was suddenly so freaking angry about that.

Since when was I this much of a scaredy-cat?

I wasn’t afraid of a silly spider. I hadn’t been afraid to walk home in the dark at the end of my workday.

One stupid little abduction and a bit of blood later, and here I was, trembling like a leaf.

Noa lowered the hand holding the scalpel, her eyes on my face with a thoughtful expression. She watched me for some time while I struggled to get myself under control, the knife-wielding hand trembling so violently I felt the tremor rattle up my shoulder.

Then, suddenly, our attention was snatched by noises outside the hospital room.

Noa shrugged and turned to face the newcomers.

I slunk back even further into my corner, hiding the knife again in the pocket of my stolen coat, grateful that I could pretend for a little while that it hadn’t happened.

A whole crowd was stumbling into the room, one human face after the other.

Suddenly, nobody was paying any kind of attention to me at all. Perfect.

Most were speaking English, and it was easy to separate out the new ones—the ones just rescued—from those who lived on this ship.

For one, I recognized the simple shirt and pants from the auction house.

When I’d been woken up from that stasis pod, that’s what they’d put me in, too.

They were all confused and emotional, hanging onto each other for support.

The women from the ship, like Noa, the African American woman I’d met before, and Aggy, wore clothes that expressed their own personal tastes.

They moved confidently, spoke reassuringly, and urged humans onto the medical cots to get their collars removed and their vitals checked.

That anthracite-colored doctor was back, too.

He seemed to be directing the medical part of things.

Soon, my eyes snagged on one particular woman with black hair and a petite figure, her arm draped around what was clearly a younger sibling.

At first, I wanted to feel sorry for her.

Like me, she wasn’t dressed in the auction house clothing; she was dressed in revealing lingerie.

Then I realized that she had several of the human men clustering around her as she talked.

She gestured with a graceful hand, and when my ears tuned in to the conversation, I could tell that she was using a soft, trembling voice to evoke sympathy.

I just… something about the entire act rankled.

It felt like it was just that, an act. Maybe it was the way she moved her scantily clad body, giving off vibes of seduction rather than fear.

“I see it too,” an electronic voice said just to my right, and I spun, my fingers twitching around the handle of the knife.

It was Sunder again, standing a couple of feet away, his hands open at his sides, wings tucked tightly against his back.

Everything about his posture screamed that he was trying not to be a threat.

What did he mean by that? Had he seen the same thing I had?

When he tilted his head to gaze at the small, black-haired woman with a nod, that seemed to confirm it.

I drew in a relieved breath. Somehow, that was the first thing he’d said that was truly helping me calm down.

Then he started trying to convince me to let the doctor have a look at me, and I wanted to retreat again.

After what I’d been through… what I’d done…

I didn’t want anyone to touch me, look at me—especially not when there was no privacy to be had.

My hand drifted up to the pain collar around my neck as I contemplated whether it was worth sticking around just long enough to get it off.

A rumbling noise drew my attention, not the same noise Sunder made when he spoke…

My skin prickled, breaking out in goosebumps when I realized it was an animalistic growl.

I felt heat low in my belly, and instead of wincing back or trying to get away from the noise, I found myself craning my head around to look at the source.

Far too much red, gleaming skin shimmering with health, glinting almost gold in the stark light.

My eyes widened when I realized I was staring at an alien with four arms—two stacked above each other—each arm bulging with muscle.

He was wearing a sleeveless black coverall, and a belt around his hips and one thigh to hold several knives.

He wore boots laced up all the way to his knees, and his feet looked absolutely giant.

It was his face that drew my attention the most: a chiseled jawline, jutting chin, sharp nose, and the most extraordinary pair of yellow eyes.

They were on me, watching me, and it was the first time since this whole ordeal started that I felt normal when someone looked at me.

Well, not normal exactly, but definitely not scared or distrusting—that was a definite improvement.

He had black hair curling in gentle waves around his head, almost down to his shoulders.

It was a little messy, a little wild, and it matched the primal way he looked—down to the leather bands around his many thick wrists, the weapons strapped to his body, and his warrior physique.

The only incongruent thing about him was the smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose and across his sharp cheekbones.

They were a dark purple that flashed bright pink the moment our eyes met.

“What have we here? You’re that super-strong guy. You were so fierce and protective!” a voice interrupted our intense staring. My eyes snapped away from Four-Arms, heat crawling up my neck, shocked that I’d had such an intense reaction to a complete stranger—an alien, at that.

The woman I’d noticed before had approached, one arm clutched around her middle, almost in the same way I was clutching my arms across my chest. Except she’d done it in such a way that her breasts were pushed up, blatantly on display.

I was not the only one who’d noticed. Four-arms turned to look at her when she spoke, and his yellow eyes dropped from her face to her boobs before he yanked his chin back up.

His colorful freckles turned a deep, dark brown, and I wondered if it was a blush.

He spoke to her, but I couldn’t understand a word he’d just said.

I’d heard enough anyway, seen enough. It didn’t look like they’d lied about rescuing us humans.

I felt like I could relax on that front, but I wasn’t sticking around here to be prodded and embarrassed in front of everyone else—not while Four-Arms here was about to fall for all of Miss Damsel’s little tricks.

I ducked around Sunder and made a nice, wide curve to skirt around Miss Damsel and her newest acquisition, rushing from the hospital area.

I had no clue where to go, but I figured since we were on a ship, I couldn’t really get lost. I’d just take a few random turns until I found a nice, quiet place to sit down.

I was so done with creeps; I just wanted to take another breather—lick my wounds in peace and quiet.