Page 345 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

One moment, everything seemed normal and quiet, the forest rustling with gentle life around us.

I imagined little rodents and birds, the leaves whispering in a breeze.

The next moment, all hell broke loose, sound exploding as an entire flock of birds took to the sky under loud screeching.

Jakar froze in front of me, his body jerking wildly, and then he went to his knees and planted face-first into the mossy ground, just like that.

I was left to stare at an unknown Kertinal male standing across from me, a weapon in his hand, and the gleaming metal shape of a vehicle partly hidden behind the thick trunk of a tree.

Oh shit, that was bad. Who the heck was this?

Why did my luck always seem to run out just when things started to look up?

*

Jakar

I woke up with a start, my mouth filled with a foul taste, and my body ready for a fight. Sitting up, my head bumped against a hard roof almost immediately, and I collapsed onto my back again in confusion. Where was I? What was going on? And where was my Meena?

As if she’d heard my thoughts, I felt her hand on my shoulder.

“Jakar, lie still, okay? You’re hurt.” She was here.

She sounded calm; that was all good. Okay, with Meena unharmed, I could start to figure out the rest. I didn’t think they had actually hurt me.

Despite the disgusting taste in my mouth, I wasn’t injured.

I knew what the taste was now as well, I’d been shocked by a shock stick at a very high setting, causing instant paralysis. I hadn’t even seen it coming.

Whatever place they locked us up in, it was small, and it was completely dark.

I couldn’t see a thing because, unlike Fierce, my eyes weren’t adapted to total darkness like this.

As I checked my body with my hands, I tried to figure out what supplies or weapons I still had on me.

Then my hand bumped into Meena’s knee, and I forgot about supplies.

Drawing her closer to me, all four of my hands got busy checking each inch of her body by touch, to make sure she was unhurt.

A nervous laugh burst from her mouth. “Oh God, Jakar, I was so worried. You didn’t move for ages.

I thought you’d never wake up.” She didn’t appear to have any physical injuries, and she was still fully dressed.

I had to assume that the Kertinal male I’d only tied up had escaped and gotten reinforcements somehow.

But how had they located us in the woods?

This place was enormous… Then, I shamefully had to admit that going to the only true landmark was probably a stupid move, all things considered.

What if this was their meeting point too?

“I’m fine, just got zapped pretty hard,” I said.

“We need to get out of here. Did you see what they put us in? How many were there?” I had no weapons right now—they’d taken Meena’s knife and anything I’d been carrying.

Not great, but I’d been a hand-to-hand specialist in the arena; I could deal with the lack of weapons. I had always been good at improvising.

Meena shuddered, her arms wrapped around my middle, her head tucked into my chest. I could feel wetness against my skin; she was crying.

I hated that I’d failed her again. I should have seen that attack coming.

I should have been more careful. What kind of mate was I, that I’d let my Meena get kidnapped twice? After what she’d already been through…

“I saw two of those guys with horns, the Kertinals. I think one was one of those who first kidnapped me from Rakex City.” She managed to sound steady and calm as she spoke, even though I could hear the tears in her voice.

Such a brave woman. Then she described the hover vehicle they had loaded us into, which had been hitched to a small trailer.

That’s what this box was, and I couldn’t risk bursting out of it until we’d landed.

A crash at the speeds a hover vehicle went… definitely fatal for my mate.

She was pretty sure there hadn’t been anyone else, and then she mentioned that she’d heard her captors talk about meeting someone with hover bikes.

“I’m sorry, Jakar, I should have remembered that.

This is a stupid mistake! I think I must be cursed or something…

” She had remembered. I distinctly recalled that she’d mentioned it; I just hadn’t considered that we’d run into them again.

The forest was vast, after all, and they wouldn’t have access to a biosignature scanner as precise as the one Akri had made for me.

I found her chin with one of my hands, cupping it to angle her face toward mine, even if I couldn’t make out a single detail in this darkness.

“No, this isn’t your fault. We surprised them as much as they surprised us.

I think this was just really bad luck. If anyone failed, it’s me.

I must be the worst mate in history, letting you get kidnapped three times!

” I said the words with a teasing note, trying to poke fun at us and our situation by including her first abduction from Earth.

We both knew I couldn’t have done anything to prevent that, and secretly, I was intensely grateful that it had brought her here, to me.

She huffed a little laugh—half-annoyed, half-sob—but nodded.

Then she settled trustingly into my arms, and I felt a rush of relief.

She still wanted my nearness, even though I had failed her.

I’d been caught off guard and hit with that shock; I felt like I should have seen it coming and done something.

Pretty sure Sunder would have just kept going after a shock like that: his skin was super thick, just like Ziame’s…

And Eoin? He wasn’t much older than me, but he was probably the best warrior around.

He could pull up armor at will. I was just good at hand-to-hand, but that didn’t help against getting shocked.

“Do you think they’re still taking us to Exka?

” Meena asked quietly. “I studied what I could on Rakex City and the woods… I didn’t think to learn about the rest of the planet.

” The question worried me as well. Rakex City was one of the few remaining, and Exka was the only other city with a decently sized port.

I don’t think they could deviate from that plan; their way to smuggle her off the planet was probably there.

They wouldn’t have any reason to change course either, because if we’d been able to reach out for help, they knew we wouldn’t have been where they caught us—we would have called to be picked up.

“Yeah, probably. We have to try to escape before we get there.” Once we left the forest, I’d be out of my element again, and our survival would become much harder.

I didn’t want to admit it, but the cities daunted me.

They were noisy, crowded, and all so unpredictable.

I really hoped I could get us out of this before we reached Exka, but I didn’t think we’d be so lucky.

At the speeds these hoverbikes went, we were probably already almost there.

Once we hit the port, it would get much harder to hide…

though I assumed we could hit up the authorities there and ask for help, if we could evade these assholes long enough to get to them.

I was worried that in Exka, there would be many more males to deal with.

If this was the guy who had sent that horde of green-uniformed males after us on Yengar Station, he had deep pockets.

“They took my knife,” Meena huffed against my chest, no longer sounding scared or weepy.

She’d gathered her wits, and now she was firmly in warrior mode; I appreciated it.

It helped me focus. No matter what, I would find a way to get her out of there.

Filled with determination, I set about figuring out the constraints of our current predicament.

I felt every nook and cranny with my fingers, tested the strength of the locked trapdoor above our heads, and, when nothing budged, made sure my muscles remained limber and ready for action, even in this small box.

Meena clung to me during most of that, her breathing a little too rapid for my liking.

I knew that meant she was scared, but she was trying hard to hold it together.

From my experience, I knew that showing kindness now would make her unravel, so I didn’t pry.

I focused on keeping her distracted, so I talked to her about my days as a gladiator, telling her about some of my more memorable fights.

Sometimes those stories made her laugh, like I had intended.

Sometimes she just became even quieter, but at least it seemed to keep her distracted from her own fears.

It still felt like a long time before the mild rocking motion of the trailer we were in ceased.

I was coiled like a spring beneath the hatch, ready to grab the first one who opened it.

Light pierced our prison, and I leaped, catching the notched horns of a Kertinal murderer with my upper hands and his shoulders with my lower hands.

I didn’t give a shit about anything but Meena’s survival and my own, so I yanked, and with a crack, the male’s neck broke.

Tossing him aside, I had only a few seconds to get my bearings.

I saw the shape of a ship nearby, a crowd of green uniforms, and at least half a dozen of them with shock sticks or laser rifles in their hands.

The odds were bad, but I had to try. If they got us onto that ship, all would be lost. Beyond them stretched a much more sinister-looking city, dark and gray with tall spires. That had to be Exka.

With a yell meant to intimidate, I launched from the trailer and tackled the nearest males.

Fighting my way through them wasn’t hard; they weren’t nearly as trained as I was, and my four arms were a tremendous advantage against species with fewer limbs.

A laser blast pierced my upper left shoulder, burning pain shooting through me.

Meena screamed, and I caught sight of her leaping down from the trailer, straight onto the back of the nearest male.

A knife flashed in her hand, and I grinned.

Yeah, that was my fierce little warrior.

I was willing to bet she’d gotten that off the first male I killed; she wasn’t one to sit on the sidelines and wait for rescue, which was terrifying yet awesome.

In this case, at least, I knew she was the prize. They wouldn’t kill her.

A second blast hit me in the hip, and I hissed in pain.

I was pretty sure we were about to lose this fight; the odds were just too much.

I couldn’t give up. A felled guard now was one less obstacle later, wasn’t it?

Unless they split us up—that’s what I feared.

What if they smuggled Meena off the planet but kept me here?

No, I had to believe that they recognized me and knew I was a valuable gladiator.

This rich asshole wouldn’t be able to resist snatching me up, too.

Then I spotted the big Kertinal male who was wading through his compatriots in my direction.

I recognized him, that was the one with the shock weapon who had felled me last time.

He was bigger than the two from before; this had to be the one they were meeting up with.

His horns were curved sharply back over his head, and his dual-toned mane was shaved short across his skull.

I couldn’t even begin to count the notches carved into his horns; this guy was an enforcer of some kind.

I was willing to bet Kertinal law wanted him for more than just a few minor crimes.

When others backed up around me, I prepared for a fight, expecting him to want to test himself against me this time around.

He’d taken the coward’s way out last time.

He wouldn’t want to do that in front of an audience this big.

I scanned his body, checked if he had any weapons, and eased my shoulder back and forth to test the injury.

Still good to move, I wasn’t worried. He was big, but I’d taken down much bigger opponents.

He wasn’t holding the dreaded shock weapon this time, so I just had to worry about his tail and horns.

A Kertinal through and through, he wore a blade attached to the narrow tip of his tail, and he swung that back and forth like an angry predator.

A little space seemed to open up around the two of us organically, and excited voices shouted their bets as they watched us.

It wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. I’d been in fights, big or small, just like this for the majority of my life.

My body settled into a familiar rhythm naturally, and despite my two injuries, I moved easily as the Kertinal male and I circled each other.

I tried to look for Meena as we did that, wincing when I noticed how two males were holding her by the arms on the edge of the circle.

One of them was a Rummicaron—which had to be frightening to her; the bastard who had bought her had been one, according to Sunder.

They had control of my mate. This asshole had to know there was no reason to fight now, but he wanted this.

He wanted to test his superiority against me.

Well, I’d give him what he’d bargained for: the fight of his life.

Giving him my signature smirk, I pretended I wasn’t terrified out of my mind for my mate.

Right now, I had to focus on what was going on here.

I’d wipe the floor with this bastard, and then…

then I’d try to free my girl. And if that failed, I hoped we wouldn’t be split up so I could try again.

I just knew that I wouldn’t give up, not ever.