Page 70 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

Chloe

Someone was beating on the loudest drum—it was driving me utterly crazy. Thump, thump, thump. Why were they banging like that? Each thump sent a spike of pain through the back of my skull. It was bad enough that I couldn’t think straight. What was going on? Where was I? Had something happened?

When I tried to open my eyes, at first, it seemed like an impossible task.

The lids felt so heavy that I couldn’t figure out how to lift them.

They were sticky, too—crusty, even. Had I been crying?

When they finally obeyed my wishes, it sent a new type of pain stabbing into my abused skull.

The white light around me felt like needles to my too-sensitive eyes.

Had Gethryel or Old Basra convinced me to try the Aderian wine again?

The pain from the light was ebbing, though, enough that things around me jumped into focus.

This was the med-bay, the only room aboard the Ever Golden with a white ceiling.

I always avoided this place if I could. Even if Miean had hangover cures, I didn’t trust the failed doctor near me.

For one, he’d fled his world due to horrible malpractice crimes; for another, I was terrified he’d figure out my true age.

How had I ended up here? For the life of me, I couldn’t recall. That was bad, just as the location of the pain in my skull was bad. My nav-ports were there. Had I burned out? Had I suffered memory loss from it?

Movement in my periphery briefly frightened me as my eyes struggled to focus on it.

Red hair, a humanoid face. There was a male I didn’t know, sprawled half in a chair at my side and half on the cot with me, his head resting on his arm, his face turned my way so that the crown of his head was pressed warmly against my hip.

I didn’t recall seeing his face before—not at first—but he was, by far, the most attractive male I’d ever laid eyes on.

Thick, slightly curled red hair haloed around his head.

It was quite long and messy, but that didn’t detract from the rest of his stunning features.

He had a sharp, slightly pointed chin with a strongly defined jaw and high cheekbones—sharp enough to cut.

A proud forehead was bisected by his ruddy brows, and on his cheeks lay the longest, darkest-red lashes I’d ever seen; they were like pretty little feathers.

Then there was the dark brown, almost ocher-like stripe that crossed from one ear to the other, directly across the straight bridge of his nose.

The line was razor-sharp across the top, beneath his eyes, but petered out in little freckled dots across his cheeks.

I wasn’t sure if it was a tattoo or a natural marking either, but his coloring told me he was likely Sune, and I knew that species often had odd patterns naturally occurring across their bodies.

Though I had never seen anything quite as precise as this mark.

I would have studied this strange male longer because, the longer I did, the more the pounding headache seemed to fade into the background.

But then his eyes fluttered open. The golden orbs that met mine were so bright they glowed like little suns, and the look in them was magnetic—it drew me in like nothing else.

Everything came rushing back then, and my head spun from the onslaught of recollection.

A moan escaped my parched throat, and I moved to clutch my head.

“Chloe!” the Sune male exclaimed in worry, jumping to his feet and leaning over me.

His face was a mask of panic. The features were unfamiliar to me, but the look in those golden eyes was not.

Despite the pain, I dropped my hands, sighing with relief.

“Kitan.” The pirates were dead. The realization washed through me with staggering force.

The release of tension that came with it brought tears to my eyes.

Finally, I was safe. The nightmare was over.

Here, with the gladiators who had made the pirate ship their own, I’d finally found something that resembled a home again—something that reminded me of growing up on Earth.

“Chloe,” Kitan said in a husky voice, “you remember me?” I did, though I realized with some alarm that I didn’t remember what had caused me to burn out.

I had to have been plugged in—risked FTL jumps.

Going faster-than-light was the most taxing form of navigating a port-nav could do, though they were asked to do it often, as it drastically reduced the time of travel.

Had we been forced to make a fast trip somewhere?

We’d been at Strewn, hadn’t we? Did we get a new transponder?

“We did,” Kitan said, making me realize I’d spoken that last question out loud.

“We’re now the Vagabond. Though currently, we’ve got the old transponder still running.

Until we can pause to spacewalk and change the signage on the outside of the ship, we thought it better not to risk it yet.

” Ah, that made sense. We shouldn’t risk giving away the ship’s old name while running a new name on our transponder.

That would reveal that we’d done something as illegal as swapping out our transponder.

“How long was I out?” I asked, the heaviness of my body and the fact that I clearly didn’t remember some things worrying me.

That was unsettling, but Kitan seemed more relieved than anything.

How close to death had I come? His human-looking hand reached out to gently stroke my cheek, and I leaned into the soft touch, starved for that kind of affection.

“Four days. Another four, and we should reach Gonavar to release the mindbroken Ferai beast into the wilds so it can live out its days in peace.”

He turned to lift a cup with a straw, offering me a drink that I gratefully accepted; there was ice in it, making it blessedly cool and soothing to my parched throat.

“What is the last thing you do remember?” he said, sounding deceptively casual.

Though I knew immediately that he was extremely interested in the answer.

How much damage had I suffered? I needed to see the most recent scans of my brain to find out.

“You and I running nav sims while we waited for the others to return and the repairs to the hull to be finished.” It was disconcerting to realize that, halfway through a seemingly innocuous interaction, my memory just suddenly cut out.

That alone gave me an idea that something had seriously messed up my head.

I hated that loss of agency, but there was nothing I could do about it now.

If the memories were still there, maybe they’d come back later, and if not…

I’d make new ones. I was still alive and kicking—for how long, I didn’t know, but I was sure the Doc would give me an estimate.

Kitan sank into the chair next to the cot again and rubbed a hand across his eyes.

It was odd to see him in his skin-form; I’d gotten so used to seeing that pointed snout.

He’d been my haven in a storm of change, the one constant thing.

Now, he looked different, but he was still the same kind man I’d gotten to know.

“Good, that’s only a few hours you’re missing.

Not bad…” he told me, and then, when I asked, he laid out in concise sentences what I’d done to burn out—how I’d saved us all with my rapid nav-calculations.

Because Kitan was always warm, always ready to talk, and never so stoic and precise as this, I knew he was not happy about what I’d done, and a part of me felt a little insecure.

From the sound of things, it didn’t seem like there had been any other options.

If I had to do it all over again, I probably would.

I wanted Kitan’s understanding of that. I wanted his warmth and his approval.

Though maybe that was selfish, to ask him to risk his heart when I had a ticking timebomb in my head.

Kitan proved to be the kind man I’d come to know when he leaned in and pressed his forehead softly to mine.

“I was so scared I’d lose you, Chloe.” There was pain in his husky tones.

“I know this was our only option, but… to see you lying there on the deck, blood on your face, your flesh burning… I hated it. I don’t want to lose you. ”

Heart pounding, my entire body warming up from the words he’d just spoken, I lifted my hands and threaded them through the messy red hair that framed his face.

“I’m sorry, that must have been hard.” As I spoke, I realized just how close our faces were.

My lips brushed against his with every move they made, and tingles shot down my spine.

I loved those tingles; they were addictive.

There was a sharp intake of breath from Kitan, a soft, husky moan, and then his mouth pressed against mine in earnest. His hands cupped my face in turn, so gently and carefully that I felt cared for from the tip of my toes to the top of my crown.

The heat and the pressure of his lips were something I’d never experienced before, even if I’d dreamed of it after seeing it in the entertainment feeds.

This was nothing like what I imagined it could be; it was far more than that.

Then he traced the seam of my lips with the tip of his tongue, and my toes curled beneath the blankets; something clenched low in my abdomen.

My mouth opened of its own accord, and his tongue swept in—caressing, invading, taking.

No, not just taking. When I tentatively pressed back, he let me, and I traced the sharp canines in his mouth, so unlike my own.

He made that rumbly, moaning sound again, and I clutched his hair tighter, pressing up against him for more contact.

Yes, Chloe, this is what’s been missing.