Chapter 29

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

Night had finally fallen as Margot trudged through the camp after being run off from her talk with Floxxia, and she was more than a little bit lost and rudderless. She'd been rudely yanked from her idyllic life with Braxxos and thrust back into this place. This stinking shithole of a mercenary camp. And unlike last time, she was not receiving any special treatment. In fact, it was quite the opposite.

Exhausted from the ordeal, she'd initially bypassed the dining area entirely and gone to walk aboard the ship but found herself given a stern warning that she was most definitely not welcome on board. Her living arrangements were made abundantly clear. She could sleep wherever she could find a spot, but not aboard the ship, and not in the men's tents, as if she would want to do that anyway.

That meant she was left to her own devices, wandering aimlessly without a private place to call her own, nor a bed on which to lay herself down to rest. Given the lack of a proper bunk, she decided that going to bed on an empty stomach made no sense if her body was going to have to deal with the night air and hard ground. Skipping nourishment was not a decision she could afford to make.

As it turned out, the kitchen staff didn't quite know what to do with her when she turned up looking for food. They weren't the usual sort of brutes working for Gromm, though they were still very uncouth and rough individuals. But as they'd been essentially demoted to cooking duty, they were a bit out of the day-to-day drama that was part of the rest of the gang's routine. And as such, Margot was able to convince one of them to load her up with a rather heaping tray of food.

She didn't know if she'd be able to pull off such a trick again come morning once everyone had the benefit of a proper briefing on their returned guest-turned-prisoner, but for now she'd make the most of it.

Stuffing her face as best she could as she walked, Margot ate her fill of the over-salted and partially processed meal.

Do what you have to , she reminded herself. Keep your energy up.

She waited until most of the men were in the dining tent before she made her move. She hurried to the holding pens, moving right to the bars.

"Floxxia," she called out. "Take this."

The old woman and her cellmates reached through the bars and cleared her tray in an instant, leaving it as clean as bones in piranha infested waters.

"Are you going to be okay?" the old woman asked between grateful bites.

"I'll be fine. Look, I've gotta go. If I hang around, they'll realize what I did. I'll try to bring you more tomorrow.

"Thank you. We all owe you our gratitude."

"Hang in there. I'll see what I can wrangle up in the morning."

With that Margot hurried away, not risking waiting a moment longer in case any of the guards happened to meander this way, though she was pretty confident they'd all either be cleaning up from the day's bloodshed or stuffing their faces after the lengthy excursion. What tomorrow might bring, however, was anyone's guess.

She walked the camp for a while, finding it much easier to avoid notice by sticking to the shadowy dark areas now that night had come. The camp was illuminated, naturally, but not much. Gromm provided enough light to move around but not much more. Ever the penny-pincher, even when it came to basic comfort equipment for his men, it seemed.

And speaking of men. Now that she'd had a better look around, it really did seem that quite a few were missing. Had the fight with those other aliens been bigger than she'd realized? Unfortunately, there was no one she could ask. The men hated her, and Rylinn was now and forever at the top of her shit list.

Reluctantly, she headed into the area of the woods where her collar would not shock her. It was dark out there, but unlike the men relying on technology, she had learned a better way. She was one with the forest, at least significantly more than anyone else in the area.

She was careful to avoid the perimeter trees, not wanting to accidentally stray outside her containment area and get a nasty shock. She spent nearly an hour simply walking the area, taking in the terrain, noting the plants and even occasional wild animals who watched her with great caution. For them, these people were danger, and she was with them. Smelled of them. And until she somehow broke free, she would be seen as one of them.

Margot stopped at the base of a squat tree with broad branches that spread wide. "You'll do, my friend. You'll do just fine."

Without any delay she scampered up into the lower limbs, moving slowly higher until she found a comfortable crook in a few branches high enough from the ground to provide her protection from both animals and men alike.

She reclined into the cool bark as best she could and closed her eyes, hoping she might get at least a few hours of rest. As it turned out, her exhausted body knew what it wanted and had no problem whatsoever obliging, and it wasn't until the first rays of sun crested the horizon that she stirred.

"Oh, my ass," she grumbled, realizing just how much different sleeping rough was without some sort of pad beneath her. "Lesson learned."

She climbed down from the tree and foraged her own breakfast in the early light, filling her pockets with an interesting assortment, separated and safely tucked away. After all, one never knew what might come in handy.

By the sound of it, the camp had only just started to rouse themselves. She had time. She ran her hand over her Infala, the rune tingling at her touch, reminding her that her mate was out there somewhere. And somehow she would find her way back to him.

"Gotta be strong to do that," she reiterated to herself as she gathered up a pretty healthy selection of fruits, mostly for herself, but also for Floxxia and the others.

She'd have to be cautious sneaking them to the cages, of course, but she felt that with the whole day ahead of her, it was just a matter of patience, but at least she'd accumulated a respectable amount. Margot headed back into the camp where she quietly stashed her haul before heading to the mess tent.

"Can I have more?" she asked when the cook put her breakfast on her tray.

"No."

"But it looks like there's more than enough for?—"

"I said no. I heard ‘bout you. Gromm's plaything. You want more, you go ask him for it."

With that the man turned and served one of the heavily bandaged crew who hadn't left on the morning's missions, leaving her to eat her meager meal alone. She hurried outside and handed it off to Floxxia then returned to drop off her tray. As she walked, she noted that all of the ships had flown out, and it looked like every able-bodied man was aboard them. Only the injured and a small handful of guards tasked with maintaining the perimeter remained in camp. It was those that she heard talking through the tent wall as she approached.

"I tell ya, it was massive. A fucking beast with glowing eyes," someone said. "Killed Stimmo in a flash. Just ripped his head clean off."

"Fuck me. Seriously?" another voice gasped.

"I'm not exaggerating. I mean, we'd started out on a retrieval mission when we ran into those Dohrags?—"

"I hate Dohrags. Those bastards are always trying to snatch up our bounties."

"I know. And they're damn good at it, I'm sad to say. But we gave ‘em a good run for their money."

"Good thing you had the ships with you. If you didn't have those cannons…"

"For real. We were outgunned otherwise. Fucking Dohrags. You know they've got a supply platform here?"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. But these were different. Not part of that group, but a hunting crew jumping the systems for quick profit."

"They still here?"

"We'll know soon enough. Gromm sent every last man back there today to either mop up or confirm they left. But truth be told, I'd rather face Dohrags any day over that thing out there."

"Rylinn's been trying to catch it for ages, you know. And that guy's pretty legendary in tracking circles. If he can't find it, I seriously doubt the Dohrags can."

"I think they were after our bounty targets. From their reaction when it started tearing into them, I don't think they had any idea it lived in those woods. They didn't know what hit them."

He laughed, a pained sound, likely as a result of the damage his body had incurred on that fated mission. But he'd provided Margot with more information in just those few sentences than she'd been able to dig up in her entire time here.

Dohrags . That's what they were called. And it seemed that Braxxos was never their target. Surprise, surprise. Target or not, when his woman was in trouble, anyone in the way was fair game, and as a result that clusterfuck of a battle was the definition of a rude awakening if ever she'd seen one.

"I don't know how that thing moves so quietly," the man continued. "It's huge. But we had no idea it was there."

"Bad terrain for scans. You know that."

"Yeah, but even on the ground, it avoids all our traps like it was child's play. I'm starting to think we should just give up on it and cut our losses."

"Don't let Gromm hear you say that. You know how he gets."

"Yeah, sure. But haven't we lost enough people already?"

The sound of a returning ship overhead interrupted their conversation, the craft landing in something of a hurry, the hatch opening as soon as it touched down.

"Medic!" someone yelled, calling for help as wounded were unloaded.

Gromm came storming out of his ship, his anger palpable.

"Why the hell did you return so early? You had a mission!"

"We found wounded. Survivors from yesterday's skirmish. We got them back as quick as we could, but there are still?—"

"Your job was to survey the area, eliminate any Dohrags that might remain, and bring me that thing's body."

"That's the thing. There was no body. And we looked everywhere. Dohrags and our men, but no trace of the beast."

Gromm's square jaw flexed with barely restrained rage. He slammed his fist into a metal dining table, buckling it under the impact.

"Fuck it," he growled. "Recall the ships."

"All of them?"

"Did I stutter? All of them."

"At once, sir. But, can I ask why? I thought you wanted?—"

"Because I'm sick and fucking tired of this shithole world and this shithole forest. And I intend to kill this fucking creature once and for all. Get them back here. Now!"

Gromm stormed away, leaving his men wondering what the hell he wanted with the ships if his goal was tracking and killing the creature. But Gromm wasn't one to tolerate questions. Not when he'd given an order.

"You heard the man," a voice in the tent called out. "Recall the men. All of them."