Page 94 of Gladiators of the Vagabond Boxset

“Abby,” I said, surprised that my voice was a little husky with emotion.

“It’s Kitan, I can’t talk long. Are you nearby?

Chloe and I managed to escape.” I glanced out the door again and noted no one was there before turning my focus to Chloe, who had slumped a little more, a pinched look to her lips.

White lines bracketed her mouth. I hoped it was exhaustion more than anything, but I feared that it wasn’t—that this was far more sinister.

“Oh my God! Kitan! Yes, we’re still in orbit.

We didn’t want to leave you guys! Where are you?

We’ll pick you up.” I breathed a sigh of relief; they were still here!

I felt a hot surge of warmth and affection for Ziame and my brothers—they hadn’t wanted to leave Chloe and me behind.

That loyalty warmed me from the tips of my toes to the top of my head.

I checked the coordinates of the relay shed and let Abigail know where we were.

It was, however, Ziame—with that deep growl to his voice and his calm confidence—who spoke in return.

“Kitan, we can’t come down into atmo. Flight control tells us we’ll be shot down if we try, as we are blacklisted for clearance. ”

I groaned, but I wasn’t surprised. Of course, they would do such a thing; they’d never allow my brothers to come anywhere near the planet.

They wouldn’t want to risk them trying to break me out, so they were making sure they couldn’t even get close.

“A transport too?” I asked, already knowing the answer.

“Correct,” Ziame growled back. “Can you and Chloe hunker down somewhere? I do not know how secure this transmission is.” Fear sluiced down my back in a rush of cold sweat, and I looked at Chloe again, where she sat—though it looked more like she’d collapsed at this point.

She was so pale, with dark circles below her eyes.

We hadn’t had nearly enough sleep, having spent a glorious moment making love and then waking in the early morning hours.

How was I going to keep us safe? I was exhausted myself, and my body wasn’t going to be happy if I tried more shifting, though I would if it came down to it. “I’ll hunker down with Chloe. We have no com, but I’ll get hold of another,” I told Ziame, forcing myself to sound optimistic and confident.

“Good. We’ll figure out a way to get you and your female out of there,” Ziame said. “I’m glad you’re okay. Chloe hanging in there?”

My female tilted her head my way, eyes finally leaving the broken hole in the door, a tired smile on her face.

“Okay, Abby, I’ll see you soon,” she said, sounding cheery and upbeat when nothing about her expression or her body language suggested any such thing.

It reassured Abigail, because Ziame’s mate sighed—the sound crackling through the speakers—“Good. See you soon. We’ll work on this from our end, waiting for your call. ”

When the com clicked off, I knelt at Chloe’s side and tucked her tightly into my arms. She was so small and fragile that I feared I’d break her, but she was strong too, patting the side of my face and giving me a reassuring smile—taking care of me.

We needed to move fast, just in case someone had overheard this conversation, but I could take a short moment to hold her in my arms and reassure myself that, right now, she was alive.

The telltale click of a bucklaser ratcheting up had me spinning, firmly planting my body between Chloe and the broken door. “Fuck,” I murmured, staring straight into the barrel of the laser.

***

Chloe

Sitting on a worn wooden chair inside a warm and well-loved kitchen felt surreal.

After twelve years aboard the Ever Golden in its various iterations, it was as if I’d forgotten what a real kitchen was supposed to feel like: warm, inviting, and clean.

It should smell like fresh bread and herbs, with somebody humming at the stove while stirring something that smelled divine.

A kitchen was the heart of a home—that’s what my mom used to say while she and I worked to make cookies. Or while she worked at the kitchen table, Dad made spaghetti sauce at the stove, and I sat and drew with my crayons. That was what home was: a place of warmth and happy memories.

That’s what this kitchen was all about, and it brought tears stinging to the backs of my eyes. The details might be different—with strangely colored and smelling foods, and with aliens instead of humans—but the atmosphere was the same. The exact same.

Amara sat on a chair next to me while she gently wiped the blood from my face with a soft, wet cloth.

She was an Aderian woman with huge, black pools for eyes, shimmering anthracite skin, and long, black hair—sleek and smooth.

Each touch of her fingers was soft and sweet, filled with tender care that felt so genuine, it was hard to put into words.

Behind her at the stove stood a young Aderian teen, all gangly, boyish limbs and a fiercely rebellious expression.

He stirred the pot bubbling on the stove, keeping his eye on Kitan and his father, who sat on the other side of the table with their heads bent together as they talked in hurried, hushed whispers.

Of all the people whose relay shed we could have broken into, we had the good fortune to break into one that Kitan actually knew.

That was a stroke of luck I couldn’t quite wrap my head around—not that I was complaining.

These Aderians were distantly related to the ones who had adopted Kitan when he was a teen, freshly escaped from the Monastery.

At that time, he’d managed to sneak into the capital and aboard a vessel—a vessel belonging to merchant Aderians who were departing from a visit to these people.

“Thank you,” I told Amara through a thick throat, clogged with emotion.

The gentle woman gave me a soft smile and pushed the bowl at my elbow a little closer.

It was filled with a type of Haras porridge and fruit, still warm.

I did as she had insisted and dug in. A tiny hand snuck out from under the table and tugged on my knee—black fingers with glistening onyx claws, all downsized to an impossibly cute scale.

“Hi there, little one,” I said, directing my words at the curious black eyes gazing up at me from beneath the table.

Amara and Othan, after a tense moment in the relay shed, had welcomed us into their home.

We couldn’t stay long without risking them and their vast brood, but it was nice to bask in the warmth of this family.

Aderians tended to be empaths, and I was certain Amara was one of them—a strong one, because she’d taken one look at me and then smothered me in motherly care.

They weren’t worried about letting some of their smaller brood get close to me, either. I’d never been this close to a baby alien in all my time in space. The pirate crew that had kept me had had no contact with younglings of any kind.

Once I’d finished my oatmeal, feeling stronger and more relaxed, I realized my headache had faded into the background again, for now, which meant that despite my exhaustion, I was as ready as I could be for another stretch of furtive traveling.

Othan and Kitan had concluded their whispered conversation as well, and now Othan dug out a com from a drawer somewhere.

It was an older model, one that had been replaced but not thrown out.

I could tell the teen eyed it with a little envy as his father handed it to Kitan with zero hesitation.

“Should still work. Don’t turn it on until you want to use it, though. The battery is pretty bad.”

“Good enough, thank you, Othan,” Kitan said, and he pressed his fist to his sternum and dipped into a slight bow—a gladiator’s sign of respect. The symbol was probably lost on most of the Aderians here, as they were unlikely to watch fights; they were illegal on Sune.

Othan, however, nodded and repeated the gesture in turn.

“Go with the light, my friend. May you and your mate find your freedom.” It wasn’t lost on me that Othan talked as if we weren’t free yet.

Despite this stolen moment in a warm and homey kitchen, I knew we were on borrowed time unless we could get ourselves off this damn planet.

I hugged Amara, waved at the three little ones hiding beneath the table, and nodded at the teenager.

Othan shook my hand with a wide grin. “That is how humans do it, yes?” he asked, and I laughed.

A spike of warmth and happiness surged through me at something so familiar yet so strange.

Most species out in this galaxy didn’t shake hands.

This was the first time I’d shaken hands with anyone as an adult. It was… strange. But welcome too.

Outside, Othan led us around the back of the homestead, with its purple-thatched roof, and took us to the threshing barn.

The huge doors on the side of the building slid open on well-oiled hinges, revealing a vast interior with various farming machinery on one side and stacks upon stacks of hay on the other.

I had no idea what any of these machines did, but I did recognize the old, slightly rusty hoverped.

Meant mostly for a single person to use in an urban setting, it was a small, open-air vehicle, much like a scooter or moped, that allowed one to dart quickly in and out of traffic.

This one was meant to fly a few feet above the ground.

“It’s old, and we don’t use it. I won’t report it missing and will say I saw you guys run away on foot.

That should give you a head start,” Othan said.

Still, Kitan was right—I wasn’t with the pirates, and it felt wrong to take this from these people without giving them something in return.

So I dug around in my improvised pack and pulled out some of the gemstones I’d yanked off the expensive dresses hanging in the closet back at the Monastery.

I’d taken them, hoping they were worth something so we could pawn them if needed.