Page 59 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Chloe

He wasn’t leaving, and he knew I was here.

I was royally screwed. Now, what was I going to do?

I liked this corner of the cargo bay to hide because no one could sneak up on me, and there were nearby vents I could crawl into.

Sadly, I wasn’t small enough (I wasn’t a mouse) to get very far into the pipes, and the grate, when I moved it, made a loud noise.

I hadn’t yet found the right kind of lubricant on this neglected ship to fix that.

Unless this guy decided to leave to call for backup or something, he’d hear me the moment I tried to get to a better hiding spot. My only option was to stay as still as possible, try to make him give up, and maybe even make him think he’d imagined things.

I should never have let myself get cornered like this, but it was too late for recriminations.

I was in this mess now, and it wasn’t like I hadn’t had to risk it all anyway, with my water supply running low.

I tried to tell myself this could work out—that the fact that this was a Sune and not one of those Krektar was a good thing.

But he was injured, likely from the fight with the pirate crew, which meant he was part of their crew.

It meant he was one of the slavers, and thus I couldn’t trust him.

It felt like forever—and then some—had passed by now, though he was still right there, leaning against those crates.

My legs were cramping something fierce from my crouched position, and I wasn’t sure how long I could stay still.

Maybe he was getting cramped too, because I could see him in the reflection of the stasis pod, shifting on his feet.

He finally picked up his dropped leather kilt and awkwardly turned his body to start putting it back on.

His tail waved out behind him like a thick plume, red-tipped with white at the end.

No, that wasn’t right. For a moment, I thought I was hallucinating; I’d never seen anything quite like this before.

This wasn’t my first Sune in hybridform, but this was definitely the first I’d seen with three tails.

They swished and rippled through the air for a long moment, clearly three different entities.

He seemed to have control over them separately, too, for they waved in three different directions before two dipped low and were neatly tucked into the kilt, while the last stayed on the outside.

Did all Sune have this? Were they all hiding a split tail?

Somehow, I doubted that. This was probably something unique about this guy.

“Did you get a good look?” he asked, startling me. I hadn’t realized how mesmerized I’d been by the motion of those tails, by the puzzle of it. Had I given myself away? Had I leaned in too far? Had he seen me?

“Have you seen a Sune before?” he asked next, but this time, clearly not expecting an answer, he quickly continued.

“The split tail—it’s a rare trait. If you told another person that I have it, you’d sentence me to a life of imprisonment.

” Then why the hell did he show me that?

I felt panicked at the thought alone; I didn’t want to be responsible for someone else’s secret.

“I figure,” the Sune male said as he finally moved a little closer to my hidey-hole. “That means you have one over on me, understand? If you don’t think I’m delivering on my promise of safety, you can use that information to bargain with.”

Oh, okay, he told me because he thinks that will make me trust him.

No way. I wasn’t a dummy, despite what Old Basra said; this guy probably just lied to me.

He probably thought I was a dumb human stowaway who didn’t understand the universe, who didn’t know the harsh rules out in this crazy galaxy where slavery seemed to be the norm for over half the species.

Yet, when I looked at the warped reflection on the top of the stasis pod, I saw a guy who didn’t scare me nearly as much as he should.

He was patiently waiting now, standing at most a couple of feet away from me.

The stasis pod was the only thing between us, and he didn’t seem inclined to approach further.

Was this a trick, or was this the truth? The answer to my problems?

I shook my head, more inclined to believe it was a trick, but feeling like I was out of options anyway.

The club I’d fashioned from an old, rusted pipe might be enough to take this guy out, but if he took me to the others aboard the ship, it wouldn’t be as useful.

The Krektar. I shivered just thinking about the wart-faced slavers.

The Sune male hadn’t approached further and seemed to be patiently waiting again when I chanced another look. His eyes caught mine immediately; this time, I knew he’d seen me—that he wasn’t going to leave.

“Look, I can see that you’re scared. I understand that, but I’m as weak as a newborn cub right now; you have nothing to fear from me.” He gave a self-deprecating kind of smile and gestured at his bandaged body. “Come out so we can at least talk face-to-face, okay?”

I felt fear claw up my throat at the thought of exposing myself that much, but I had little choice now.

He’d already seen me. My legs hurt when I tried to rise into a careful crouch, every major muscle group cramping from having been forced to sit still so long.

I held back my hiss of pain, and made myself look the Sune straight in the eye, showing no fear.

He rewarded me with a smile, golden eyes glittering warmly in the semi-dark. “There you are,” he murmured, his eyes never once straying from my face. I felt like I couldn’t look away either, like our gazes were locked together. “My name is Kitan. What should I call you?”

Kitan—that was a nice name. I liked it. Nobody had ever bothered to introduce themselves to me before.

Not even Old Basra had told me his name or asked me for mine.

I’d just been “the kid” to him all the time I lived aboard the Ever Golden.

I remembered my name, of course. I whispered it to myself sometimes, just to remind myself that I was a person—that I was real.

I felt warmth in my chest and belly at the thought that this strange, injured Sune would want to know my name—that he’d want to know me. But getting the name past my lips was a struggle, and I worried he thought I was an idiot, incapable of speech, and would soon get bored or annoyed with me.

Wetting my parched mouth with my tongue, I tried to get the sounds out.

His gaze never wavered, keeping me trapped, and his expression never changed.

That, more than anything, convinced me he might truly mean what he’d said.

“Chloe,” I whispered at last, and he rewarded me once again with a wide, friendly grin, his sharp teeth glittering in the light.

“Hi, Chloe. Nice to meet you,” he murmured softly.

At long last, his eyes dropped from mine, and he slid his sharp gaze over what little of my body was visible from behind the stasis pod.

Wrapped up in several layers of form-concealing jumpsuits and sweaters, I knew I resembled a little blob with a mop of long, matted, blonde hair on top.

I purposely kept dirty streaks on my face to hide my features, so likely the most noticeable thing about me was my blue eyes.

Indeed, his gaze came back to my face quickly, and he gave me a nod.

“Thank you for trusting me with your name. Would you like to accompany me to the mess hall for lunch?” he asked me.

He was so polite that I almost didn’t understand what he was saying to me; he sounded like a gentleman from one of the entertainment feeds I liked to watch.

I was hungry, though; my stomach was pretty empty.

But the thought of going to a place where there were others—where there might be Krektar?

It took away the hunger pangs in one fell swoop. No, thank you.

He must have seen the hesitation, the rejection of this idea on my face, because he talked on.

“Can you tell me what worries you about that idea? What scares you? Maybe I can reassure you.” That required more words, and I wasn’t sure how I was going to get them out.

He was still being so kind and patient, though, that I realized I was getting less and less scared. I’d even straightened out of my crouch.

After studying him for another moment, I decided I’d have to trust him. The damage was done anyhow, and so far, he’d shown me more patience and kindness than the entire pirate crew combined had shown me over the past twelve years. Pathetic, sure, but also true.

I carefully shuffled a little to the side, coming out from behind the stasis pod so that we were more directly face-to-face.

This close, it was obvious how much bigger than me he was, but he had the decency not to loom over me.

“Krektar?” I asked, hefting my rusty pipe in my hand to make sure he saw it.

I wasn’t going out there if he told me there were still Krektar around; I was starting to hope that there weren’t, though.

Hadn’t he said he had been a slave, too?

That he’d risen up and defeated his owners? Was that how he’d gotten injured?

The single word had caused the Sune male to curl his lips back in anger, but I wasn’t scared. I understood that reaction entirely. “Dead or gone. We got rid of them over a week ago.” Before they’d landed on Xio, then—what had they been doing on the pleasure planet? Who was running the ship now?

Those questions must have been obvious from the expressions on my face because Kitan smirked and said, “The pirates aboard this ship failed to take over the Caratoa two weeks ago, and the Krektar you must have seen appropriated this ship and loaded us aboard—us being eight gladiators they were meant to deliver to the arena on Xio.”