Page 14 of Stealing Mercury (Arena Dogs #1)

Chapter Seven

Mercury choked back a growl as Sam darted through the hatch.

His worry had taken him to a special corner of hell the moment he’d heard her shouted warning on the ship’s communication system.

It seemed he’d been right to worry. A coppery tinge overshadowed her honey scent. Her hair was streaked with blood.

She stopped in the middle of the cargo-hold, her lips tilted in a half smile. “Everyone okay in here?”

Mercury nodded as he reached through the bars and held out a hand, palm up. She flicked a cautious glance at Lo as she stepped forward. Everything inside him settled when her warm palm pressed into his. “You’re hurt.”

She pulled her hand back and pressed her fingers to her temple.

They came away wet with crimson, but she shrugged it off.

“I’m fine, but those idiots have wrought havoc on the Dove .

” She rubbed her fingers along her dark brown trousers, smearing away the blood as if she could hide it from him.

“It’ll be okay. I just had to make some adjustments to the plan. ”

“Plan?” He resisted the urge, the need, to touch her again, but he could feel it building in him like a thirst gone too long unquenched.

“We were supposed to rendezvous with a ship eight days ago. They were going to help you guys get away from Roma. But things have gone straight to hell and—” She was talking fast and her eyes were everywhere but on him.

“Sam.” Her name came out more bark than he intended, so he said it again softer. “Sam.”

She frowned and he wanted to smooth away the lines that appeared on her forehead.

He reached out and touched the side of her face.

Her wince threw fuel onto the embers of his anger and he couldn’t hold back his snarl.

She flinched and he grabbed her wrist before she could move away. “Never. Be. Afraid. Of me.”

She frowned. “Maybe if you didn’t growl like that—”

“It’s part of me,” he ground out. “Deal with it.” The words felt right when he said them, but grim pessimism rushed in to wash the feeling away and he wondered if she could deal with it—with him—an unnatural creature with the instincts of a beast.

Her arched brows shot up over wide eyes.

He pulled her closer and pressed his face against the bars. He drew in a deep breath, letting her fill his lungs. She didn’t scent of the whip-master. That cooled his rage enough to relax his hold and allow her to put a few inches between them.

“Speak slowly.” He nodded encouragement. “You made a plan?”

She started to shake her head, but the movement was aborted, pain etched into her features. “No,” she said. “It wasn’t my plan. I was hired to get you to the rendezvous and look the other way when they freed you. Sorry I couldn’t tell you before. They told me not to.”

Mercury heard Lo and Carn shift in their cages. “Who would—”

“It doesn’t matter now. They aren’t here and we’re going to have to improvise a plan B.”

“Another plan?”

Her small teeth bit into her plump bottom lip. “Yes, and actually it’s probably more of a plan C now.”

He waited for her to continue, his joy that she would try to help them escape overshadowed by the dread of what cost she might pay.

“The rendezvous ship might still come,” she said. “But they’re over a week late. I’m taking that as a bad sign. The Dove is badly damaged, so we’re not going far. If we wait here, the help that comes might not be on our side, but I managed to put us in orbit around a small undeveloped world.”

“Plan C.”

“Right.” A quick grin flashed across her face like the flicker of a glowbug, there, then gone.

Its loss left his world darker, bereft after that tiny moment of light.

“The ship is a mess and I think I can make Drake and Resler believe we’re losing the environmental controls.

I’ll convince them to use the emergency escape-pod to go to the surface until help can arrive.

” She pointed to a hatch at the back of the hold.

“There’s another emergency drop-pod back there.

It’s meant for freight, but I think you can survive getting to the surface that way. ”

He nodded, shocked at the boldness of her plan.

“I need to ask you a question.” She held his gaze, but her lips trembled and her jaw was tight. “Drake and Resler. I know you hate them. When you get out of these cages?”

She let the question hang between them, but he saw in her eyes that she knew what his answer would be.

Cold washed across him as he realized how she might view the violence, the brutality, that had made him.

He was a product of the arena. “I don’t know much of your world, but my world offers only two choices. Kill or be killed.”

She closed her eyes, shutting him out, and took a deep breath in through her narrow nose and out across soft, full lips.

Her lashes fluttered, then she was staring him down again.

“They forced you to kill, but it doesn’t have to be all you are.

It isn’t all you are.” She reached a hand tentatively through the bars and he turned his face into her touch.

Even as he reveled in the gentle warmth of her fingers, he worried she’d only done it to test him. To assure herself he wouldn’t bite her hand off. That, given the chance, he wouldn’t kill them all.

“I’ve done what was necessary to survive and keep my brothers alive.”

She pulled her hand back and a tiny hint of her smile returned. “Are you going to tell me to deal with that, too?”

His fists tightened around the bars of his cage. “I’d never hurt you.”

“If you could be free?” She motioned toward Lo’s cage with a quick tilt of her chin. “If you could all be free.”

“We all wish for another life, but we cannot change what we are.”

She nodded, but there was still worry in her eyes. “I don’t know where the others were going to take you, but we’re not far from Gollerra territory.”

“Gollera?”

“Oh. Of course. I wasn’t thinking.” A slight pink tinged her cheeks. “Roma is in the Earth Alliance territory—human controlled. Gollera territory is under the rule of a race called the Golley.”

“Not humans?” The idea of a place where humans did not rule settled into his mind and started to weave into his reality.

“Right. I don’t know what your status would be there, but I think you’d have a chance to be free.”

Her words hung in the air. Small motes of hope that could surely choke him if he allowed himself to breathe them in.

“Roma won’t know you got off the ship. I’ll tell them you died in the collision—that the cargo-hold was breached.

” She backed away, stepping out of reach.

She wrapped her arms around herself, as if warding off a chill she couldn’t blame on her environmental controls.

“When help comes, I’ll go with them, but I promise I’ll come back for you. There’s just one thing.”

He wanted to pull her to him, to wrap his arms around her, to ease her worries, but she was out of his reach.

“You can’t...” She cleared her throat and when she spoke again her voice was steadier, her posture stiff with resolve. “You can’t come after them on the planet’s surface. I know you probably want to hurt them and they deserve it, but it would ruin everything.”

He hid the panic her words churned up in his gut. “Your plan is flawed, courra , my courageous one.”

“How?” The tiny lines appeared on her forehead as she studied him.

“They’ll try to punish you. I won’t allow that.”

“They won’t know.” She shrugged. “At least they won’t be certain.

” She strode over to a stack of dull gray containers with the red Roma logo and started checking the labels as she spoke.

“I’ll have to rig the ship to blow out the cargo-hold, to support my story and explain why your bodies aren’t onboard.

I know it isn’t a perfect plan, but it’s the best I can do. ”

He wanted to shake her. The moment the whip-master no longer needed her as pilot, she’d no longer be safe from his twisted games. “You’ll come with us. We’ll keep you safe.” He’d rather be stuck with her on a primitive world for the rest of their lives than allow anyone to hurt her.

“No.” She started rearranging the containers, huffing with effort. “I can’t. I need to be with them when help comes. And I could never survive the drop in the cargo pod.”

“I’ll protect you. You’ll come with us.” The growl was slipping back into his voice.

She shook her head. “There’s no enviro in the cargo-drop. The three of you will survive the low oxygen environment to the surface. I’d never make it.”

He wanted to howl. “Send them down to the planet and stay aboard with us. You can repair what you’ve done to the ship after they’re gone.”

She activated a switch on the hover-pallet beneath a stack of containers and pushed it toward the drop-pod. “The damage to the ship from the collision is too extensive to get her skip-ready and they’ll never believe me about the rest if I don’t go down with them.”

“She’s right,” growled Lo. “They won’t believe her.”

Mercury snapped at Lo to silence him.

“Please,” she said. “Trust me and be ready.”

She stopped at the hatch to the cargo-drop and unlocked it. “I’ve programmed it so all you have to do is step inside. After it’s launched I’ll set the cargo doors to blow.”

“And you?”

“I’ll be long gone in the crew’s pod before the explosion.”

She pushed the pallet in, disappearing from sight for a moment before returning to stand in front of his cage, but still out of reach.

“The supplies will make things easier for you on the surface. Now promise me, you won’t come after Drake and Resler.

That none of you will harm them.” His brothers growled softly, but Sam kept her gaze locked to his, body tense as her voice dropped to a whisper.

“Please. Prove you aren’t the animals they claim you are. ”