Page 354 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Jenny

With apprehension, I eyed my boss. He was nervous, and a nervous boss was bad news.

Drova was in his customary spot, standing behind the bar while polishing glasses with a clean rag.

Nothing unusual about that. I just knew that something was off.

He kept glancing at the door, almost jumping out of his skin when the little chime above it tinkled as a customer entered.

Rubbing my fingers over the silky scarf tied around my throat, I wondered what was going on—and what it meant for me.

Nothing good, no doubt about it. I’d been squirreling away money for months in case something happened and I had to make a run for it.

Was this it? Should I fetch it from my hiding place and tuck it into my bra?

I was undecided on that front—until I saw Drova glance nervously at the door yet again.

As soon as I had a moment to duck into the storage closet off the kitchen, I did so, ignoring the odd glance the four-armed chef gave me when I came back out.

He knew I wasn’t supposed to be in there, but he didn’t say anything, just shrugged his upper pair of shoulders and continued cooking.

I didn’t know his name; he never spoke, but sometimes he slid leftovers my way while patting his flat belly with a stern look on his face.

He thought I was too skinny, and he knew Drova barely remembered to feed me some days.

I contemplated my fate as I scurried back into the diner to collect dirty plates and take orders.

Drova wasn’t the best owner a person could have—assuming a person who was alright with owning slaves could even be considered good.

I also knew I was lucky: Drova didn’t condone his customers feeling me up.

He was an old Asrai male who had long ago lost his twin, and he’d never shown any interest in availing himself of me.

Dodging a rowdy bunch playing Keflo, I shrugged, the weight of my credit chips burning against my skin.

Drova’s bar was a seedy place catering to gamblers, thieves, and drunks.

A regular sight was the Kertinal males with notched horns—cast out from their own tribes, murderers hiding from Kertinal law.

But Drova didn’t peddle flesh like many of the other places in this area of the city.

I was safe from that, and I counted my luck each night I went to bed alone.

The shadiest part about his bar was the kind of date-rape drug he sold under the counter. Not to drug unsuspecting women, but to incapacitate marks people wanted to rob once they left the place. I’d seen it happen more than once, and Drova always got a cut of the earnings.

I had been the only human at the auction house where they had sold me well over a year ago.

I didn’t like to think about those first few hours after they had dragged me from that stasis pod.

The panic, the pain as they installed my translator implants, the horrible conditions of the cell they had thrown me into with a dozen other women.

Someone had spelled it out to me: a blue-skinned woman whose name I didn’t even know.

She’d been a little bit of kindness right at the start of this journey, even though she’d been downtrodden herself.

I was to be sold as a slave, and likely everyone I once knew was dead.

That’s what she’d told me, and though the message was harsh, I could see the sympathy, a trait that was rare when all of us were in the same trouble.

Out here, far too often, it was every man for himself.

I’d learned to live by those rules quickly enough.

You couldn’t trust anyone to have your best interests at heart.

When they sold me, I’d been terrified of what my fate would be, but the alien who bought me had gone to a gambling den and immediately lost me to Drova.

At the time, I didn’t think that was lucky.

Now I knew it was. I also knew—like the sword of Damocles hanging above my head—that Drova was a gambler himself.

At any moment, he could end up losing me again.

It was early afternoon, and a crowd had flocked inside for food during their breaks.

It wasn’t unusual to have a full house around this time, and most were regulars I was familiar with.

Of course, Drova always kept the bar open for gamblers, so people of all races were spread around the gaming tables too.

Those die-hard gamblers were often more focused on the game than on me.

It was the lunch crowd or the dinner crowd that I had to watch out for.

At least I’d discovered that I had sticky fingers when I wanted to, and if they grabbed me, I grabbed their wallet.

Nothing went unearned around here. I wasn’t going to risk that today; Drova was too nervous, and with my entire savings on my person, I couldn’t draw attention to myself.

I was a slave, and slaves didn’t have belongings.

If anyone found that money on me, I was in big trouble.

“What do you want, Mikak?” I asked one of the regulars in a corner booth.

He was a big Tarkan male with leathery wings and gray skin.

He was usually safe to be around—unless he had too much to drink.

I stood close to him to avoid his buddies.

They were all locals, Ovts that looked much like salamanders walking on two legs.

Toothless, they still liked to chew something similar to tobacco called Garga, and it smelled.

The Tarkan male grinned around his tusks, his eyes bloodshot from too much drink already, just not enough to get grabby.

“The usual, Jen. You know what I like, don’t you, girl?

” He waggled his eyebrows from beneath the shaggy black hair on his head.

He was in his peace-form right now, so his features were almost humanoid.

It was an expression that was familiar, human, and I couldn’t help but smile back.

“Alright,” I said, and I logged his order on my tablet while pretending to attentively look at the others.

I could take their orders while, from the corner of my eye, I watched a new customer shuffle into the bar, an arm clutched around his middle.

I’d never seen this guy before, never even seen his species around, but something instantly intrigued me.

He looked a little too polished to belong in a shady, low-class bar like this, and I wasn’t the only one who’d noticed.

If this guy wasn’t careful, he was going to end up getting robbed on his way out.

Hunched in on himself as he was, he didn’t look like much of a threat.

He sat down at the bar in the corner, as far away as possible from where Drova was manning the taps and slinging drinks.

His skin was the color of a sunset: dusky yellows and oranges, with darker tan streaks.

He was human-looking, with the same number of limbs and the same general build, but he didn’t have hair.

Instead, two long tentacles sprouted from his skull and draped around his shoulders.

I could see them gently moving on their own.

Once I was done with Mikak and his buddies, I bee-lined for the newcomer, intrigued despite myself.

I shouldn’t be sticking my nose into things that didn’t matter to my survival, but I couldn’t help myself.

I loved finding out about all the new species out here.

I had been a total sci-fi geek before this happened to me, and sometimes that part of me still came out.

Now, I could learn about real aliens, not make-believe ones.

“Hi, I’m Jenny. What can I get you?” I asked cheerfully as I popped up next to him.

I made sure to duck around him so that I stood with my shoulder to the wall instead of right next to the large, and extremely ugly, Krektar sitting on the barstool beside him.

They had a reputation for being slavers and mercenaries, so I definitely didn’t trust that bloke.

The strange new alien tilted his head in my direction when I spoke.

He had a sharp jaw, a little more pointed than I was used to seeing on human faces.

His eyes were black, dotted with hundreds of tiny pinpricks of white, almost like I was staring into a starry night sky.

It was eerily beautiful. I loved how his skin was darker around his eyes, with streaks of burnt orange and dark red patterned much like the dramatic colors a husky might have on its face.

With my hand poised over my tablet, ready to input his order, I waited to hear him speak.

He was wearing a long black coat, kind of like a leather trench coat, and I could see hints of a sleek gray shirt beneath it.

I’d already clocked the pair of boots, shaped differently enough that I knew his feet wouldn’t be shaped like mine.

His lips were sculpted, with a pillowy bottom lip that looked far too soft to match the rest of his angular face. Color me crazy, but something about his expression said “kindness” to me. Yeah, he was definitely going to get jumped on the way out of here, poor guy.

Then I noticed a glint of some kind of green precious stone dangling from a gold chain around his neck; he was an idiot for openly wearing that. I felt sorry for him, but there wasn’t anything I could do. Even a warning wouldn’t help, though I might still slip him one if he stuck around for food.

“Hello, human,” he responded at last, his voice a posh, cultured drawl that sent a shiver down my spine.

“What food would you recommend? I need hearty sustenance. My body is depleted,” he added.

To my great shock, he wasn’t speaking some strange alien language; he was talking to me in English, with a fancy, cultured accent.