20. Alik

twenty

Alik

I 'm going to kill Essa. Not just for putting herself in danger, because that part is very on brand for her. But for having to put herself in danger because she wanted to protect me and my fragile emotions and volatile anger issues.

Should she be the one to take on my ire? Definitely not, but she's the one who will because I'm not about to kill myself now that I have a mate that I promised I'd stay safe for. That means the only person I can safely murder right now is Essa.

I can hear her voice through the door to the pleasure crew room just enough to know she isn't dying. I swear if I hear her call out or say 'no' once, I'm busting in. The entire plan can fall to shit for all I care. My friend is not about to be hurt, not because of me. Besides, if she's hurt, it ruins the whole point of killing her once this is all over.

When she dragged Vyron into the room, he spotted me but seemed to understand why I was there. Essa is playing as our illegally purchased pleasure crew.

If those females get hurt in any way that lowers their value, there's a part of the universe so far away from any inhabitable planets that a person can be dumped, and no one will ever find them. That's what happens to males who abuse illegally obtained pleasure crew members without it being part of their contract. Those who want unwilling participants buy a smuggled female or male for long-term enjoyment. The idea makes me want to gag.

"Strip for me."

I hear Essa giggle through the door, and it makes me wince. I have known Essa for ten years now. Ten years of her annoying the ever-loving shit out of me. What I don't need to hear is her seducing a male. Especially not her successfully seducing a male.

Something hits the wall, and the sound makes me tense. Then, there's another laugh that has me relaxing back against the wall. As much as I hate the pleasant sounds, I'd prefer her laughs and giggles over Vyron hurting her.

"Oh! Please. I've always wanted to try this."

I focus on the bolts lining the seam of two metal wall panels across the hall from me. I stare at them like they're the most entertaining thing in the world.

"You're so much better to me than they are. Maybe I'll join you when you leave."

There's a masculine groan that fills the air at the same time that I hear his purr start rumbling. I might feel bad for the male since he's falling for whatever Essa's telling him, except he deserves so much worse happening to him. He's altered a female's body without her consent, and who knows how many others he's done it to.

The purring continues, making it sound like he's trying to calm her. Holoth's purred exactly once since we've known him, and it was when Phial was having a panic attack after one of our missions. The purr helps calm others, but Holoth has also told us it can be heard when the males of his species are happy. I frown, wondering why we never hear it. The thought doesn't get much traction in my mind before Essa calls out my name.

"Alik!"

I'm through the door before Vyron has a chance to silence his purr. I have a blaster pulled in one hand and a dagger in another, and the other two are balled into fists, ready to do whatever I need to keep Essa safe. Of course, in true Essa fashion, she needs no one's help in keeping her safe.

My eyes go wide as I take in the scene. Vyron's restrained to the bed, completely naked, and shifting from embarrassed and confused to embarrassed and angry. Essa's straddling his hips, still dressed. She's the only thing covering Vyron's nakedness from me. I've never seen a knot, and I don't think I want to today, so hopefully, she stays right where she is.

"What did you do?" I ask as I holster my blaster.

Essa swings her legs off the bed and stands up, leaving Vyron naked on Sloane's old bed. He's pulling at his restraints, but they're not budging since Essa convinced him to wear a pair of magnetic handcuffs that are now secured to the wall. His legs are cuffed together as well, but they're not pinned down, so he can still wriggle about. Not that it's very threatening since, again, he's naked.

"The choices were to fuck him for real or make him realize this was all some ploy. I figured getting him secured would mean he couldn't warn anyone, so that's what I did," Essa says, wrapping her long dark hair into a bun that she ties between her horns. "I don't even think I can take a knot." She turns to look at the male. "Are our species compatible?"

He doesn't answer. Either he doesn't know, or he's still too angry to do anything other than try to free himself.

"I don't think you are, but it was a good plan," I say.

I throw one of the blankets from the ground over the male's groin so I don't have to watch his chub flop around as he tries to get free. He snarls, his growl vibrating so loud I wonder if the others have his companions somewhere where they can't call for help either.

"I wanted to kill him when he asked for Sloane, so thank you."

"No problem," Essa says, leaning against my arm and resting her head on my shoulder. She hits me in the face with her horns which slightly ruins this bonding moment, but it's the thought that counts.

We're both standing over the male. Watching to make sure he doesn't escape. He snaps his teeth at us every once in a while, but his fight's dying. I sheathe my dagger and then my blaster when he stops struggling. It's just in time, too, because my comm pings with the notification that Phial is back with the human and with the downloaded data from their ship.

"Looks like your nap is over," I manage to say the words seriously, even though I'm laughing on the inside. I pull out my blaster from its holster and point it at him. "We'll allow you to use your feet to walk, but if you try anything, I will shoot to kill. We have your female. We have all of your ship's data and logs. The only thing you have left is your life, and I have no problem taking that too."

The male's growl vibrates all around us, and his lips pull back at me. He gives me a nod of understanding, though, and it's enough confirmation for me.

Essa pulls the controls for the cuffs up on her comm and releases the magnetic hold on the wrists attached to the wall. He moves them in front of himself to hold the blanket over his now softened cock.

When she loosens the ankle cuffs, he watches us and waits for us to tell him to move. I make a motion with my blaster, and he stands from the bed. Essa walks in front of him, her blaster drawn as well, while I walk behind him, keeping a firm pressure against the back of his head with my gun. He drags the blanket with him when he gets off the bed, and I figure I can let him keep it since we aren't letting him get dressed.

The doors to the navigation pit open, and I'm surprised to see Jovi standing over the limp bodies of the two Unaran males that I left him and Holoth to deal with when I followed Essa. He has all four arms crossed over his body as he rolls his head from side to side. The smile that breaks across his face when he sees us is genuine and filled with so much relief.

"Do I want to know why he's naked?" Jovi asks, two of his hands moving to his hips as he gives Essa a questioning look.

"I used my feminine wiles to best a male. It's something females have been doing for eons, and we're still good at it." Essa pretends to toss her bunned hair behind her shoulder.

The male tries to talk, but I press the blaster harder into the back of his skull, and he just growls. I tilt my head down to the clump of bodies on the floor in question, and Jovi shrugs.

"They're alive," he answers when he realizes his shrug means nothing to me. "Holoth had to watch the video feeds, so I stayed with them. When it was time to meet, they were easy to subdue."

I nod, accepting his answer. Not that I'd care if he killed them. I'd want to kill them for what they've done. I'm still trying to decide if I want to kill the one in front of me. The only thing keeping the three alive is that the message Phial sent told us not to kill them. "Where's Phial?"

"The female is scared," Holoth says, his knuckles white on the armrests of his chair.

His breathing is labored and hard, but I take it as him still adjusting to the hormones from the female's recent heat. I don't know exactly how all of that works for him since he always makes sure to be somewhere other than the ship when he goes into a rut, and we've never had a female of his species on our ship.

"Phial is talking with her, just on the outside of the docking point."

"I can go speak with her," Essa says, the words hollow and uncertain.

She's always kind to the females on this ship, even when she isn't given the same respect. Knowing that we're bringing one on who doesn't trust any of us, who's been hurt by males, that's going to put her so much into protector mode that none of us are going to be able to go near the female if she accepts Essa's protection. Not that any of us would pester her, but we'd all want to offer our own service of protection.

"She's scared of everyone." Holoth's voice is a barely audible whisper. "Let Phial help her for now. She trusts him the most out of any of us."

"He's still male," Essa says, as though that's why the female is scared. It's a reasonable assumption, considering what's been done to her.

"He's bringing her now," Holoth says, standing from his chair and pacing near the edge of the room with his hand in his hair, stroking through it.

I don't have a chance to ask him if he's okay before Phial enters our navigation pit with a naked female in his arms. She's bruised and dirty, but she's breathing, and she's safe now. Essa rips the blanket that was covering Vyron's cock and offers it to Phial.

"Put it down, Essa," Holoth growls the words in a dark, menacing way that has all our heads snapping over to him. He stares down Essa, who lets the blanket fall to the ground without question. Holoth isn't one to let his anger overtake him, and if it is, there's a reason.

Vyron's laugh makes it clear that Essa did the right thing by dropping it. Holoth begins his pacing again when he decides no one's about to cover the female with the blanket. The human doesn't look around at all of us and doesn't say anything. She presses her face closer into Phial's scales and makes a soft whining sound in the back of her throat to signal her distress.

The metal collar around her neck and the metal contraption going down her spine are the only things she's wearing. Phial's holding her in such a way that none of us can see anything. Not that we'd look even if we could. He keeps his hold on her tight as he walks through the gathering of people, narrowing his eyes at Vyron as he passes him.

When he's near me, he hands me the small device he attached to the ship's central comm so we could hack into their systems and take their data. The green blinking light on it tells me the download of their logs and data was successful, which means Phial succeeded in both of his tasks.

"She's scared, she can't understand us, and she's hurt," Phial says when he opens the navigation pit door. "I'm taking her to my room to stay in my nest. I won't be with her, but she's made it clear she only trusts me because I look nothing like all the others who hurt her."

Phial swallows, the lump in his throat bobbing as he says the words. His feathers ruffle behind him, and his talons seem to shrink back into his fingers just a bit.

He gives me a sad look. "We will ask Sloane to help translate if they speak the same human language until we can get her refitted with a translator."

I close my eyes, my jaw ticking back and forth. I give Phial a nod of dismissal, watching his back as he slips from the navigation pit and down the hall. Essa doesn't even comment on him not being dressed.

The smugglers stripped the human of her translator. They've had her for gods know how long, and the whole time, she couldn't understand what they were doing to her or why. I can't imagine the pain she's endured, the pain she would've continued to endure.

The thoughts make my lips peel up in a vicious snarl, wanting to hurt the smugglers for what they did to her. The only message Phial sent us was to tell us he had secured what we needed, and he wanted the smugglers returned to their ship alive. So, as much as I don't want to, we start loading them back into their own ship.

Jovi starts to throw the two unconscious Unarans into the airlock without much care for how they land. After seeing how they kept the female, I don't seem to mind him treating them roughly.

"Leave, and good luck with your boss," I say as I push the male into the airlock and start to shut the door.

Chances are that a fuck up as big as theirs will end up with all of them dead, anyway. I'll only be upset we didn't get to take part in killing them until we jump from here. Once I can't see them, I'll block them from my memory, not needing to remember them for anything. They deserve to be forgotten.

The airlock clicks shut, and Holoth begins the undocking process before it's technically safe to do so. We all stand in the navigation pit as we watch Holoth navigate us away from the other ship and towards a location safe for making jumps. He's a bundle of tension and anger like we've never seen before, and none of us are sure what to do about it.

I'm itching to return to Sloane, and I'm sure Jovi is feeling the same way. One of us is needed in the navigation pit to make sure Holoth doesn't lose it, though.

"Go check on Sloane, see if she's up to eat. I'll meet you guys in the kitchen," I tell Jovi, moving the sleeves of my shirt up now that we're free from needing to hide our marks.

Jovi runs out of the navigation pit to get to Sloane. Essa rolls her eyes when she sees my bonded marks, and Holoth frowns at them like he's not quite sure what to make of them. He turns his gaze to my face, mouth opening to ask me about them when the door to the navigation pit opens.

"The human female is safe in my nest," Phial says when we all eye him, wondering why he's back. "I wanted to see my work."

He moves over to the control panel and turns on the largest comm screen that's connected to the outer cameras. He flips through video feeds until he's on one that's watching the ship we just stole from.

"I never told you guys I did much worse than kidnapping to become a fugitive on my planet," he says with a click of his talons on his comm tablet. He gives us an unhinged smile right as the ship outside explodes into a million pieces.