Page 57 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Chloe

I was running low on water, which was a problem.

I eyed the two containers I had left and then looked over at the crate of Aderian wine.

In a pinch, I could drink that, but I didn’t fancy surviving on alcohol.

The damn wine packed one hell of a punch too—for humans, at least. I needed to risk foraging outside of the cargo hold if I wanted to drink something other than that hangover-inducing stuff tomorrow.

Cursing quietly to myself, I wondered again why I hadn’t taken the chance to slip away from this damn ship when I had the chance three days ago.

Whoever had killed all the pirates that had run the Ever Golden previously had made a stop on Xio, which had a large spaceport that was mostly open-air.

I had felt too exposed getting off there, but I regretted the choice now.

Truthfully, I hadn’t wanted to leave the only home I’d known out here, either.

For twelve years, the Ever Golden had been my world, my home, my haven.

Not that it was much of one, of course—being run by pirates and being a slave myself.

But it hadn’t been all bad: I’d been useful, I’d learned, and I’d slipped around the edges, staying safe.

Until they’d taken on more than they could handle when they attacked the Caratoa two weeks ago.

As soon as things had started going south, I’d slunk off and hidden in one of my favorite places in the cluttered cargo hold, filled with previous spoils yet to be offloaded.

I hadn’t been missed, though, even if I had, I doubted they would have thought to mention me when they were all killed by the Krektar that had boarded this ship.

I was scared to leave the hold. If those Krektar found me, I’d fare a far worse fate than what I had endured for twelve years on the Ever Golden. They would see my slave collar and lock me up—probably rape me. A fate I’d managed to escape so far by lying about my age and hiding my body.

Eyeing my surroundings, I noted once again the old, broken stasis pod I was leaning against—part of a haul during one of my first missions navigating the ship.

It emitted a soft hum as it worked, but no lights blinked, and no data could be read from it.

The pirates had never managed to open it and had shoved it to the back of the cargo hold to make space for other things.

It was my favorite place to hide behind; the soft hum it emitted was comforting; it made me feel like I wasn’t entirely alone in here.

Around me towered crates of goods, locked in place with their mag-locks.

The deck was a little grubby, although I’d seen that pregnant human girl and a big Tarkan come in here, inventorying and cleaning.

They hadn’t reached this far to the back yet, thankfully.

They didn’t wear slave collars, but I figured they worked for the Krektar — maybe not willingly, though, because those were pretty menial jobs that not even the pirates I’d grown up around were willing to do.

Sometimes they made me clean, sometimes, if they had captives or hostages, they had them do some cleaning around the ship, but generally, the place was a stinking mess.

At least it used to be. The Ever Golden was a good ship, and they’d maintained her to the point of keeping her flying, with her shields and weapons working, but that was it.

Plus the med bay, of course—the only thing Captain Busar ever spent any money on, since it saw heavy use.

I was still contemplating my options about getting to a water source when the cargo bay doors slid open.

I froze in place, trying to make as little sound as possible while I strained my ears.

This wasn’t the right time for it to be that pregnant woman and her guard; they’d already worked for a few hours earlier today.

Nobody else had visited the hold so far, nobody.

So what had changed now? Had they found me? Did they suspect they had a stowaway?

I heard the clicking of nails on the metal flooring as someone walked into the large, cavernous space. The sound was ominous to my panicked brain, and I struggled to keep my breathing slow and quiet, fighting the urge to lean around the stasis pod to try and get a look at what had just entered.

It was a big creature, and unlike the human girl, it clearly wore no shoes.

The pace was off for it to be the Tarkan; this one was sneakier.

I racked my brain, trying to find a plausible explanation—perhaps a harmless race that always went barefoot—anything to stop myself from imagining worst-case scenarios.

The clicking of the nails stopped a short distance away from me, and I heard fabric rustling, then a soft susurration—a deep sigh. “Okay, I can do this,” a male voice husked out, followed by a brief silence and then a pained groan.

I couldn’t stop myself from leaning out around the stasis pod this time, my curiosity getting the better of me. Bad, Chloe, I thought to myself, even as my eyes hurried to search for the intruder in the semi-darkness of the cargo bay.

Immediately, I spotted a Sune male in hybrid-form leaning up against a few crates not too far from me.

He was facing me, so I had a clear view of his near-complete nudity.

Only a scrap of cloth covered his groin, with a puddle of fabric lying around his talon-adorned feet.

The fur on one leg was a patchy mess, with warped, burn-scarred pink skin showing.

His entire chest was still wrapped up tight in bandaging, which was clearly there to support injured ribs as much as to cover open wounds.

Then, there was a sling that cradled one arm, encased entirely in a transparent cast.

The shocked breath I sucked in at the sight was quiet, but the Sune’s fox ears twitched my way regardless. This guy was fucked up and then some. Even I might be able to win a fight with him now. Geez…

Still, I flinched at the ear movement but didn’t make another sound.

A moment later, he tilted his pointed snout down and lifted his good arm—good being relative, because I saw burns and patchy fur there, too.

“Focus,” the guy muttered, and then I watched as his arm rippled: the fur shivering and retreating, and the burn-scarred skin smoothing out.

He gave another pained groan, and then the fur on his legs was rippling too: disappearing and the skin smoothing out.

His paw-like feet sank down into human-looking feet for a brief moment before the fur came back, the legs twitching back into hybridform—this time, at least, with full fur coverage instead of the mangy, patchy look he’d been sporting.

His head had been forced into a transformation, too: snout shrinking, ears twitching and then sucking into his fur, then the fur receding until, briefly, I was looking at a nearly human face—a man’s face with a square jaw, pointed nose, and fierce golden eyes.

A stripe went horizontally across his face in a dark orange-brown.

It was straight at the top edge, covering his cheeks and crossing his nose; at the bottom edge, it faded out into individual freckles and dots.

He was grimacing, strong white teeth biting down hard on a full bottom lip, the long canines typical of Sune in this form drawing dots of blood.

His body shaking, caught in that half-shift that looked incredibly painful, he groaned, fighting to gain ground before, with an angry-sounding growl, giving up.

This transformation back was much faster.

One moment, I looked at a pain-drawn, nearly human face; the next, his head sprouted a snout and fur, and he was back to his hybrid, fox-like form.

The moment it happened, I saw his gold eyes open, and for a moment, I thought he was looking right at me.

Heart pounding, I ducked back behind the stasis pod immediately.

Damn it! My curiosity was going to get me killed.

I knew it was... Old Basra had always warned me that I shouldn’t stick my nose into things, that I needed to keep my head down.

But my heart was racing now for more reasons than just fear—fear of discovery.

I didn’t think I’d ever seen a more handsome male than that Sune in his skin form.

I had to get out of here. I had to find a better hiding place—right now.

***

Kitan

My skin itched. The doc told me I shouldn’t risk a shift while injured, that I should be patient and let the bone fractures heal before I put strain on them again. Patience was never my strong suit, which was why I’d ducked into the cargo hold for some privacy to try anyway.

For nearly five years, I’d been forced to shift only when my owner felt like it.

I’d been forced to fight in my hybrid-form most, kept in that state almost entirely.

Sometimes, though, I was sent into the arena in my fur-form or forced to receive punishment in my skin-form.

In many ways, I was lucky my owner didn’t understand the significance of my triple tail—a small comfort.

Like the itch to fly, the itch to shift was hard to fight.

Now that I had gotten my dose of flying during our high-speed escape from Xio not two days ago, my entire being seemed consumed with the need to transform.

Sune spend the majority of their lives shifting between the three forms available whenever the mood strikes them.

It was extremely unnatural to have been restricted as I had for so long.

The cargo bay was dark and filled with haphazardly stacked crates and boxes.

A good amount was dried food rations, or so Sunder had told me, but he and Tori had been working hard to catalog the other stuff in the hope that we could sell some of it or use the rest in some way.

I didn’t need much light to see, so I made my way deeper into the bay, navigating between the mag-locked stacks to find a private place for my experiment; I didn’t want anyone opening the door to see me, on the off chance someone came here.