Page 69 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

And we weren’t even safe yet. A four-second FTL jump meant they could still trace us with a little time.

We needed to do at least three more random jumps before we could lock in a permanent course toward Gonavar.

Ziame was there with Abby to lift Chloe carefully from the nav-console seat and lay her out on the deck.

I wished that could be me, but I had a job to do, however much I resented it right now.

I would have snarled at Diamed to get moving if not for the fact that, without question, she sat down behind the nav-console and started rapidly processing a possible FTL jump.

Without a port, she needed to use the shipboard computer for it, which wasn’t nearly as fast, but it would do.

“Three?” she said in a quiet voice, and at my nod, the first jump popped up on my console: a ten-second one in a different, random direction.

I engaged it, but my focus was more on what was happening on the deck behind me—on Chloe.

Luka had arrived with a medkit, and he was working on her, his face grim and focused.

We dropped out of FTL and drifted in space for nearly a minute while Diamed worked on the second jump.

It gave me enough time to turn to the Doc and demand to know how Chloe was doing.

He didn’t respond, working with the tools he’d brought with him to stabilize her.

I wanted to snarl, to demand answers, but I needed him to do his job more, so I kept quiet.

When the console indicated Diamed had the next jump ready, I barely glanced at it before engaging the jump and riding us through it.

It was a shorter jump—only seven seconds—but she was mercifully faster on the last FTL jump, a four-second one that swung us around, at last, in the direction we had planned to go originally.

The moment that last jump was done, I un-clipped my harness and rushed to my feet, ripping the splintered and broken cast off my arm and shivering myself into my skin-form at long last. I didn’t want my clawed, callous, rough hands touching Chloe when she was likely already in pain.

Landing on my knees at her side, across from where Luka was kneeling, I picked up her slender hand and clutched it tightly. “Come on, Chloe, wake up!”

The look on the Doc’s face, though, I didn’t want to contemplate its meaning.

Looking at the pale and bloody features, I could see the writing on the wall.

She wasn’t coming out of this, was she? I didn’t know what I’d do if that was the case.

I didn’t even want to consider the options or what Chloe might want, if that was what awaited us in the future.

When Diamed grabbed my shoulder, I flinched at the contact of her skin on mine.

I wasn’t used to touch in my skin-form; I’d been a hybrid for so long that everything was hypersensitive.

The Sune woman was the last person I wanted touching my skin, at that.

“You need to lock in our final heading and set the autopilot for now,” she said.

Her voice was all soft and sympathetic, which I hated, as if Chloe was already dead.

“I haven’t got the permissions to do it. ”

Turning on her, I would have snarled again, but it wasn’t nearly as impressive in this form as it was in my hybridform.

Besides, the female had a point: I needed to set the autopilot.

We’d purposely restricted what she could do on the ship because we didn’t trust her.

Doing it would require me to let go of Chloe’s hand, though, and I wasn’t sure that I could.

My eyes turned back to her face; I couldn’t make my legs obey and get up.

She was still deathly pale, still covered in the blood that had leaked from far too many places.

I hated seeing her this way, but I couldn’t stop looking either.

It was Ziame who pulled the Sune female away from my side, finally dislodging that pesky hand from my shoulder.

“I’ll set it; I know how.” Ziame had once re-engaged the autopilot shortly after we’d rebelled and killed the Krektar slavers.

It was during that fight that I’d gotten injured—too injured to fly this ship.

I was relieved to let him take over. If I didn’t have to, I wasn’t letting go of her hand.

Far too long it took for the Doc to give me a nod.

“You can pick her up. She’s safe to move, but we should get her to the med-bay.

” I knew it might be foolish to hope, but still, I could feel how my heart sped up, how this felt like a signal that maybe she’d somehow recover after all.

Chloe was strong—so damn strong—for all that she’d survived. She had to survive this too.

Slipping my hands beneath her body, I gently lifted her into my arms. Bare-chested as I was, I felt her every slender curve as I cradled her against me.

She was far too slim, far too light; it felt to me like her bones were as fragile as a bird’s.

It belied the vivid strength I’d seen in her so far—the strength with which, against all odds, she’d navigated us to safety.

There was no doubt in my mind that she’d earned her spot among this gladiator crew, and I’d make sure each of my brothers understood the lengths to which she’d gone to save us all.

Maybe I didn’t have to tell them, though.

As I carried Chloe to the med-bay, following the bowed back of the Doc as he perused scans on his handheld device even as he walked, I saw the first signs of the others.

They were lining up outside the med-bay, solemn faces staring with awe and concern at the fragile female I carried.

The moment I passed the first of them—Thorin, always so stoic and arrogant, always loud and brash—he clasped his fist and thumped it against the center of his chest. The truest sign a gladiator could make of respect.

I knew that fist wasn’t for me. It was for her.

They were letting me know they knew what she’d done.

And each of my brothers thereafter made the same gesture—head bowed, fist thumping against their sternum.

Jakar, Fierce, Sunder, and even Ziame made the gesture as I carried her inside.

Da’vi was there too; he’d only just met Chloe that day, had only just made the step to integrate into our crew, and with his damaged hands, making a fist had to be agonizing, but he did it all the same.

Amethyst eyes glowing fiercely at me, blood dripping from between his closed fingers.

Their silent respect and support meant more to me than I could ever express. With all the pain and all the fear that boiled beneath my skin, I knew, too, that my brothers had my back—that they shared in my pain. That this was the truest home I’d ever have: here, with these people.

As I carefully laid Chloe down on the medical cot, I could only watch as the Doc went to work on her again, administering drugs, performing scans, and somehow—hopefully—performing a miracle too.