Chapter 2 #2
The Dragnell had collected some of the women with him who had been too scared to join our little collective.
Women who didn’t think they could handle using a sling, or stand up to a horde of men and aliens to keep each other safe.
I had not judged them for that choice, like some of the others had.
Some people were fighters; others weren’t.
The Dragnell had been the biggest, scariest thing in the hold, besides the Krektar.
It was no wonder some of the women seeking protection had flocked to him.
While I was sure that some of the stray women had bargained for protection with sex, I was not sure if that had been the case with the Dragnell guy.
They didn’t mate outside their species, did they?
They were genetic purists who did not even mate outside their caste.
Maybe he was my safest bet; he was certainly the strongest.
My hand went to the panel to wake him, fingers trembling, this time not from the cold, but from nerves.
This guy was big, and his fur was lush; he had to be from one of the higher Dragnell castes.
He was going to be super bossy to deal with, no doubt about it.
I hesitated over the panel, wondering once again whether it was a good idea.
Then a sound reached my ears: metal shifting, a lock disengaging.
I leaped over the stasis pod that housed the big Dragnell and crouched behind it.
As far as hiding spots went, it was a terrible one, but all I could manage in the two seconds it took for the cargo hold door to swing open.
Fuck, that wasn’t good. I’d been taking too much time making up my mind, dawdling over choices when every minute mattered.
I’d assumed too easily that the whole ship was asleep, and now I’d been proven wrong.
Three men had walked into the cargo hold, judging by the sound of their footsteps: boots slapping against the metal flooring with heavy thuds.
The noise made me squeeze my toes together inside the soft, gray slippers I wore, already damaged from the outdoors and hardly adequate to keep my toes from getting frostbite.
Then came the sound of voices, two of them, crude and rough.
They spoke the language of the Krektar guards who had been keeping us in line and working to protect this crash site before.
But the other voice sounded nothing like them, and it made me so curious that I peered around the edge of the pod to get a look.
Who was that? He sounded alien and strange, but at the same time far more cultured than the smelly, warthog-resembling guards.
My breath misted in front of my face as I exhaled in surprise.
I clasped my hand over my mouth to muffle the sound, but the way that long, sinuous tail twitched, I was certain he’d heard me.
The stranger with the different voice—tall, bigger than the two Krektar with him, but also leaner.
He wore black, but what I could see of his skin was also black and shot through with bright red lightning. Even his hair was streaked that way.
They kept talking, but the tail that dangled behind him—long, slender, and tipped with a razor-sharp knife—settled down.
It hung calmly, and I thought maybe I’d gotten away with it after all.
Then the guy turned, boot shifting along the floor, and I realized he was looking right at the box of emergency supplies I had raided.
Fuck, that was bad; he had to know someone was up and about.
He barked orders then, pointing with his hand and tail, whipping out to snap in the face of one of the two Krektar.
They turned and jogged out of the hold, back the way they’d come—just like that.
The other one, though, stayed, standing with his back to me, tail lazily stroking through the air.
He cocked his head, and I caught the profile of his face against the faint light spilling in through the crack in the ceiling.
Horns rose from his forehead, sharp and spiraling before curving back over his head.
His eyes were as red as the lightning that marked his dark skin.
He twisted more—no longer a silhouette—his face pointed right at me. All red glowing eyes and darkness.
My heart stuttered in my chest, fear curling through my veins and making my muscles tremble with tension.
Any cold I’d been feeling was forgotten in the face of certain doom.
Trapped with no way out, even my instinct to fight turned into a complete freeze.
The moment stretched out, but he did not move, not even his tail twitched.
He turned so abruptly after that prolonged stare that I nearly winced back.
Striding across the hold to the plundered emergency kit, he picked it up and snapped it shut.
Then, casually, he hung it back on the wall where it belonged, as if nothing had happened.
Without a backward glance, he strode to the hold’s interior door and out of it.
I stared after him—at the still-open portal—and blinked, struggling for my brain to catch up to what had just happened.
Did he keep my secret? Or had he not seen me after all?
Why had he cleaned up the box before he left?
With more questions than answers, I slowly rose from my terrible hiding spot behind the Dragnell in stasis.
The door to the hold was still open, and I had a feeling that was not a coincidence either.
I didn’t dare to believe my good fortune, but even if it was a trap, staying in the hold wouldn’t do me any good either. I had to try.
There was no one in the hallway, but it was dark here, and things were hard to make out.
I knew there was an airlock to my right, but they had sealed it after the attack that freed Nala.
I turned toward it anyway and tiptoed silently down the metal hallway.
Maybe they’d opened it back up so they could send out hunting parties.
It was the only exit I knew about, so I had to give it a shot.
I was out of the hold—that was a good start. Now I just needed to figure out how to get off this ship and find help. Nala had been able to talk to her native guy, how hard could it be? And then I’d find Jasmine, too.