Page 37 of Tempting Jupiter (Arena Dogs #2)

Chapter Twenty-Four

Seneca watched Feeona settling the children into beds and on to benches and sleeping mats.

She’d gotten them back into space without alerting the authorities and managed to get them re-supplied by doing what she called off-the-books trading with other nearby ships.

All proof and reminder that she lived her life outside the law.

He hadn’t minded that before, because the law wasn’t on their side.

But sharing an enemy didn’t necessarily make them allies.

She’d seemed good for Jupiter, something else he’d gotten wrong.

With the ship safely back in skipspace, she’d assessed the health of each child, comforting them and getting to know them as she gave them each a nutrition booster and saw to their scrapes and minor injuries.

They called her Angel. The part of him that wanted to hate her for her betrayal didn’t want to understand why, but it was impossible to ignore her efforts to take care of them.

Or the fatigue weighing her down as she leaned over to cover a child with a blanket.

“If you hurt her again, I’ll kill you.” The boy called Toby stood a meter away. His threat was calm and convincing, despite his young age.

The other children kept their distance and avoided eye contact, but Toby’s gaze rarely left Seneca. The boy had decided it fell to him to be Feeona’s protector. The other children looked to the boy as a leader.

“Understood,” Seneca acknowledged.

“She said you had a good reason to be mad.” The boy’s hands fisted at his sides as he spoke.

Seneca nodded, surprised she’d made excuses for him.

“No reason is good enough to kill an angel.” Toby puffed up his chest as if he were trying to look intimidating.

Seneca well understood the human mythology of heaven and hell and angels and demons.

One of the men who’d kept him like a pet for a time told him stories of ancient, winged beings that had been favored by God or fallen from his teachings.

He’d also told Seneca they were both going to Hell for what they did together.

The man’s self-loathing had only made Seneca want to send the bastard to his God all the more.

Seneca squatted down to the boy’s height so they could better look each other in the eye. “You don’t believe she’s truly an angel.”

Toby scowled. “Don’t matter. She saved us just like the stories said she would. Flew us right off the world. That’s good enough for me.”

But where was she taking them? That question had been circling in Seneca’s mind. She’d admitted knowing a slaver and had sold Jupiter to the bastard. She could easily be planning to sell the children as well.

Seneca kept those thoughts to himself. “You trust too easily. She could be a demon in disguise.”

“Naw.” The boy clutched at a leather loop hanging around his throat. “I’ve seen demons before. She ain’t one.” The boy hitched a thumb over his shoulder in her direction.

Seneca looked up to see her approaching. Angel or demon?

“Everything okay over here?” The makeup she wore was smudged, leaving hints of her true skin tone showing. Purple bruises he’d put there ringed the soft skin of her neck.

Seneca pushed up to his full height. “Fine. Toby and I have reached an understanding.”

Fee’s eyebrows shot up. “Is that so?”

“Yup.” The boy crossed his arms over his chest. He looked Seneca up and down then gave Fee a friendlier nod. “Night, Angel.”

With that he strode off to his assigned spot on one of the benches in the ship’s common space.

“Come on.” Fee led Seneca toward the ship’s pilot station. “I arranged for us to check in on Jupiter.”

That surprised him. Not only that she would’ve made the arrangement, but that it was even possible. “You said before that it was difficult to communicate in skipspace.” Had she lied about that, too? Is that why she’d been able to setup her betrayal without their notice?

“Difficult, but not impossible.” She sighed as she settled into her seat.

“I set us up for a skim, so I can drop us out. It’s inefficient resource-wise, but we have plenty of fuel.

We might have to wait. We took longer than I expected and they might have gotten tired of waiting.

” She swiveled one of the seats to face a view screen.

“Sit here. I want to keep you out of the vid.”

Seneca sat and watched her. She repaired the ornate braid she’d formed her hair into that morning and touched up her makeup to cover her bruises with a small spray bottle. She was full of tricks. “Why bother with that?”

She didn’t meet his eyes when she answered. “I need them to believe in me.”

“You humans are vain and shallow creatures.” He’d seen it in the pleasure houses and in the arena.

“Perception is everything with a con. I need them to think I’m strong, in control, and cold enough to smuggle slaves.

” She turned back to the control console.

“No matter what, stay quiet and out of the vid. So far, Morgan doesn’t know there are two of you.

” She pulled up data on one of the screens.

“That won’t last forever, but I’d like to keep him in the dark on that as long as possible. ”

Seneca studied the commands she entered manually into the navigation system. The transition from skipspace was smooth enough that the children probably wouldn’t notice the change. Very different from the damaged resistance ship.

“Alfred, adjust the lighting to keep everything but me in shadow, please.”

“I’ll take care of it, Captain.”

Seneca sat, stiffly. He didn’t want her to see how starved he was for the sight of Jupiter.

A small tone sounded and the vid display came on.

“Well, if it isn’t Feeona Traveler. About damn time.” A human male, midlife, muscular and impatient. “We’ve been waiting out here for hours.”

“I had a few things to do.” She spoke dismissively, but Seneca could see the stiffness of the muscles of her neck and shoulders.

“We’ve got effing things to do,” said the man. “Hang on and I’ll transfer the com to the hold.”

The screen flickered. Another man about the same size and age appeared then stepped aside to reveal Jupiter pacing in a cage behind him.

“There’s your boy. Unharmed, as promised.”

Seneca’s chest tightened. He wanted to throw his head back and howl. Rage still burned in his gut, but seeing Jupiter looking whole and healthy turned the heat down to a simmer.

Jupiter stopped his pacing and turned to face the vid camera—his face a blank mask. “You should not have done this.”

Feeona looked into her own camera with a face just as expressionless. “Never trust a thief.”

“I didn’t trust just any thief.” Jupiter never flinched. “I trusted you .”

***

Feeona couldn’t sleep. She studied the constellations painted on her ceiling.

I trusted you. Jupiter’s words had been stuck in her head like a never-ending loop.

After he’d said that, he’d turned his back and sat on the floor of the cage.

She remembered their conversation about cages when they’d been locked in the Salley Ho brig.

Jupiter had been freed after a lifetime in a cage and she’d been the one to lock him up again.

No matter what it took, she’d get him free, but then they’d part ways.

She wished she could have held on to him a little longer.

Despite the ship full of new arrivals, she’d never been more alone.

Seneca had moved into Roland’s room and several children had made their way up the stairs to sleep on Feeona’s floor.

A few had staked a claim on her bed. It was plenty big, and she could never deny the frightened ones the extra measure of security they found in sleeping near the Angel.

In their eyes she could do no wrong. What a lie.

Feeona slipped out from under the covers and pulled on pants and a top in the dark. The kids deserved all the sleep they could get, but she couldn’t stand to be in that bed a moment more. She took the cabin level passage over the common area below and climbed down the ladder to the pilot’s station.

She pulled Jacky from his storage compartment then hugged him against her middle as she settled into her chair. She stroked her fingers through the soft pink fuzz of the unicorn’s mane. “How are we doing, Alfred?”

“Everything is functioning satisfactorily and we are on schedule, Captain. I would have alerted you if there was anything needing your attention.” Alfred was the only thing that allowed her to fly the ship without a crew.

“I know.” She sighed. “I just need someone to talk to.”

“Mr. Seneca is also awake.”

Her heart squeezed. She didn’t want to think of him tossing and turning with worry for Jupiter. She was doing enough worrying for them both. “I meant you, Alfred.”

“I am at your service, Feeona. But I’m surprised you wouldn’t rather talk to a person.”

Her heart ached. Something it was accustomed to when it came to the kids, but this was different.

With Jupiter gone, a piece of her soul was missing and the one person who was probably feeling the same rightly blamed her.

She’d lost Jupiter forever, but she would get him back to Seneca and see them both safe.

Feeona huffed out a frustrated breath and pushed Jacky back into his bin. “It wouldn’t be polite to approach Seneca when he doesn’t want to talk to me.”

“Of course.” Alfred paused and Feeona was left with her thoughts. “He is already talking to young Toby, so perhaps you are right.”

Why was Sen talking to Toby? She was on her feet before the question fully formed in her thoughts. They’d claimed to have come to an understanding, but that hadn’t made them friends.