Page 335 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Jakar

I was pacing back and forth inside the hydroponic bay, my mind in turmoil.

Every part of me wanted to storm out of the ship and follow Meena into the port city on Rakex.

I’d looked out of the hatch that morning because I wanted to see where she was going to be living.

Rakex—the city—was a glittering, fortified gem made of white stone and nestled against a backdrop of hills and deep green forest. For a brief moment, I’d itched to get out there, to test myself in the wilds beyond the city.

The forest was a place my body was especially adapted for, and sometimes I missed it.

It had shocked me earlier when Akri asked her his question.

This time, I hadn’t been purposely spying on her; I’d come to the hydroponic room because being surrounded by my plants eased me.

I hadn’t expected them to have that conversation in the hallway, and I hadn’t been the one who’d opened the hydroponic room door.

It had just suddenly slid open, and I’d been privy to what Meena had to say.

She thought she was the one who wasn’t right for a relationship.

She’d sounded angry when she started to answer, but mostly, she’d sounded sad when she’d uttered those last words.

I suppose they meant that my friends were right: she needed time and space to heal, and only then would she be receptive to being courted.

It didn’t sit right with me. Something in the back of my mind kept niggling, telling me that it wasn’t right, that she needed me to help her recover from what she’d been through.

I also couldn’t quite shake the feeling that she wasn’t really safe on Rakex.

Yes, it was a Kertinal planet, and they were fiercely protective of their territory.

They were also always looking to expand, to annex their neighbors, so they had many enemies.

What really worried me was that smugglers, bounty hunters, and thieves weren’t the enemies they worried about—but they were the ones who posed the biggest risk to my mate or any of the other humans.

My lower arms clasped behind my back, I fidgeted with my upper hands as I paced.

What should I do? Go after her? Screw what my brothers said and try to have that first real conversation?

More primitively, I was struck by the urge to simply snatch her off the street and spirit her away into the woods.

They might be unfamiliar, but I would have the upper hand in there regardless.

I felt ashamed by the thoughts immediately afterward; I shouldn’t steal her away.

That’s what had happened to her already, and doing it again would be selfish.

It would add to her trauma, not heal it.

No, I had to do as the Captain had ordered me to: stay on this ship and wait.

I wasn’t a patient male, but for my mate…

“Jakar!” The shout echoed through the hallway, and the alarm in those tones had me rushing for the door, knives already defensively in my hands.

Were we under attack? Had something happened on Rakex?

Was one of my brothers injured? My spots went white with trepidation. Had something happened to Meena?

It was Fierce who was running down the hallway toward me, but his Ferai beast was not at his heels like it usually was.

My friend was most often blue in a sort of leafy pattern, but right now his skin was adapting in streaks to his surroundings, making portions of him nearly invisible.

I’d never seen him look this worried, and it only served to reinforce my fear that something really terrible had just happened.

“What’s wrong?” I demanded, but Fierce didn’t answer.

He grabbed me by the arm and started hauling me in the direction of the bridge.

That wasn’t a good sign. Were we about to take off?

Had Drameil, our former owner, managed to renew the bounty on our heads?

“Tell me what’s happening!” I yelled when my brother just kept urging me to come with him.

I knew he wasn’t the talkative type, but this was pretty extreme, even for him.

That meant the news had to be really bad, and he didn’t want to be the one to break it to me. This was about Meena.

We burst onto the bridge, where I discovered Ziame pacing in front of the viewscreen, talking with an officious-looking Kertinal on the screen.

Ziame had been escorting Meena and the other humans to their new accommodations on the planet.

Kitan and Sunder had been along too, but they were both absent. Were they still in Rakex City?

Everyone froze in place when they spotted me, the stares of several of my brothers—and even the Kertinal official on the screen—focusing solely on me.

Oh yeah, this was about Meena. My heart sank into my boots at the realization.

Had she gotten hurt? Taken? Killed? Each possibility made me more frantic than the last, until I couldn’t possibly get a word past my lips.

“Jakar, I’m sorry, brother,” Ziame said gently. It took a lot for a male as fearsome-looking as Ziame to sound gentle; it couldn’t mean anything good. Staring him down, I waited for his explanation, my hands in fists at my sides.

“She was taken twenty minutes ago, right in the middle of a crowded street. The Rakex City guards are looking for her now.” He didn’t specify which “she”—he didn’t have to.

I growled, furious that I’d let myself get talked out of joining her on the planet.

If I’d been there, she would have been safe.

They had kidnapped her right in the heart of a heavily fortified city.

“They won’t get far,” the Kertinal official said on the screen.

His yellow eyes matched mine, but he had his head tilted at an arrogant angle, and wealth dripped from his apparel.

A male used to power and unaccustomed to any kind of hardship.

“Nothing leaves this planet without our say-so.” I snorted.

Yeah, right, and that’s why smugglers existed.

They’d find a way to get her off the planet; I had to find her before they could.

“Fierce will start tracking her, but the port’s most experienced trackers are already on the case, Jakar.

They will find her,” Ziame said. I think he might have continued talking, but my mind had turned away from the conversation.

No, I wouldn’t trust anyone to do a good job when it came to my mate. I’d find her myself.

I turned on my heel without a backward look and jogged from the bridge to the accompaniment of shouts, but I didn’t hear anyone follow me.

There was a plan forming; I just needed to grab supplies.

I ducked into my quarters, where I’d strung up a wide hammock instead of a bed, the walls crawling with plants even more luscious and verdant than the ones in the hydroponic room.

Digging a pack out of my closet, I tossed in everything I thought I might need.

As an afterthought, I added the box of little trinkets I’d been making for my mate.

When I found her, I’d shower her with gifts again.

I ducked into the galley’s large storage room, my last stop, to fill up the rest of my pack with long-lasting ration bars.

I half expected there to be people waiting for me at the airlock, ready to stop me from going, but it was only Akri.

The former AI—now turned flesh-and-blood male—stood in the opening, arms spread as if he meant to stop me.

His balance and gait might have improved, but I doubted I’d have any trouble brushing past him.

About to do just that without a word, my focus already on the planet beyond the door, Akri halted me with a single word.

“Wait,” he said, holding out a scanner. My eyes dropped to it, noticing the crude weld on one side and a few extra wires sprouting from a slot where they definitely shouldn’t be.

“I adapted a scanner for you. It should help you find her,” he explained, and I hurried to take the gift.

He leaned in to point out how it worked, and my heart started racing at the little blue dot that indicated Meena’s biosignature.

It told me nothing about what else was around her, just her direction, but this was much more than I’d had a moment ago.

“Thank you, brother,” I said, and I clasped my fist to my chest in a gesture of thanks and respect.

My skin prickled when I left the ship. There were eyes on me—more than just Akri’s.

Didn’t matter; I didn’t care. I wasn’t going to let anyone stop me from finding her.

It didn’t look like anyone planned to try, but when my com beeped with an incoming call from Ziame, I answered with trepidation.

I was prepared to listen to him as he gave me a whole shitload of warnings, but all he said was, “Good luck, Jakar. May your hunt be fruitful and satisfying.”

With a ground-eating stride, I followed the path into the city.

Meena’s bio-signature told me she was beyond the city now, and the quickest path was straight through it.

Nobody stopped me at any of the city gates, but the guards gave me warning glances at the sight of the weapons strapped to my body.

Whatever, if they’d done their job right, I wouldn’t be here.

It didn’t take me long to locate the place where she’d been taken.

Several guards were containing the scene with barriers, urging curious bystanders to walk on.

Sunder was standing inside, looking down at a spilled bag on the ground.

My heart clenched at the sight of it; that was definitely her bag.

I could see broken shards of terracotta and the remains of the plant that I’d given her.

I pushed myself through the crowd, all the way up to the barrier, and then I ducked underneath it.

Immediately, two Kertinal males in slick gray-blue uniforms barred my way.

“This is a restricted area, sir. You can’t be here!

” one of the males said haughtily. I leaned around him and caught Sunder’s eye, and the older male straightened from his crouch.

“He’s with me. Let him in,” he said, his voice commanding respect.

Somehow, he was the one in control of this scene, possibly because it pertained to one of our wards.

I didn’t care why the Kertinal guards obeyed; I just pushed past them as soon as they let me.

My heart ached at the sight of Meena’s meager belongings, spilled out so casually across the cobbled street, there for everyone to see.

“Can I take these?” I asked, not explaining why I wished to take her things. Sunder looked at the backpack hanging from my shoulder, including the rolled-up blankets and the lightweight traveling tent. He had to know what my plan was, but he just nodded, a thoughtful look on his face.

“I’m sure she’ll appreciate a fresh change of clothes when you catch up to her,” he agreed, and together we gathered all her things back into her small bag. Then, Sunder helpfully tucked her bag into my bigger pack. “I’ll rescue the plant. Go.”

He gestured with both arm and wing in the direction of a nearby alley branching off this main road. He said when, not if, as if he had complete faith in my ability to find and rescue Meena. It made me feel a little less frantic, that Sunder, my teacher in all things combat, believed I could do it.

Then I spared no further thoughts for the crime scene, my brothers, or the Kertinal guards.

I simply followed the blinking blue dot on Akri’s modified scanner, letting it guide my way.

It didn’t take long for me to leave the city behind, and while the feeling that eyes were on me never left, I simply ignored it, treating it as a problem to solve at a later time. I had other priorities.