Smuggler’s Contubernium (Mea Lupus Series Book 1)

by Kahaula

  “Mea Lupus are only here once a year,” Quintillus’s soft words deepened the twin looks of bitterness on Oli and Cassie’s face. “And even when we are here it’s for judicial duty. If there’s barely any judicial duty we move on as quickly as possible so we can get back to the myriad of investigations we have to keep track of.”

  “This is probably the first time we’ve stayed here or at a station of this size in a long time,” Bhar blew out a breath and ran his hands along the glow tattoos on the shaved sides of his head.

  “We can’t do anything about it if there’s nothing really on the docket,” Quintillus added gently, “And we can’t keep up with everything.” Oli ignored us all and stared down at the table. Our young pack mate was getting more than a taste of our frustrating existence. We knew why people hated and revered us. They knew the Divine Couple rescinding our gift is what kept us honest but there wasn’t enough of us to protect all the innocent out there in the galaxy.

  “The slavers here knew they could get away with what they did here,” Cassie wasn’t accusing us like I would have thought. If anything she seemed to be trying to sooth Oli with her statement. “Their biggest mistake was their arrogance. The Ferryman changed that.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  “The Ferryman walked right into this place,” Cassie held up her hand and looked at a spot not five feet from us, “Said, ‘You betrayed me. You die.’ Then eviscerated my owner.”

  “Your former owner must have had allies. Did no one try to stop him?” Quintillus wasn’t asking out of some naive belief in justice in the frontier. He was just as curious as we all were that a lone person could get away with walking in and making hardened slavers cower.

  “You’re still not getting it,” she huffed in frustration, “The Ferryman walked in here calm as can be, said one thing, then slashed open my owner’s belly and pulled out his intestines.” Her nose wrinkled as if still smelling the viscera hitting the floor, “Then strangled him with it.”

  We stared at her.

  “Do you know how long that took?” She asked, her eyes dull. She snorted, “Intestines are slippery. But the Ferryman didn’t nick an artery or cut him in such a way that his insides would fall out in the process either.” Cassie’s face turned pale and she rocked back and forth a bit before catching herself. “It took a long time. The Ferryman made sure of that.”

  Ding!

  All eyes turned to me and my eyes turned to my gauntlet.

  “FUCK,” I shouted. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. Fillion was hanging by his own intestines in the main marketplace with a gaping smile of a wound across his neck. Behind him, on the wall where he was pinned upright, was a scythe painted in his own blood.

  I ignored the worried questions that my pack mates where pelting at me. I switched over to the maintenance feed of the lower docking bay. I couldn’t see Kara, “Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck!” I got up from my seat, caught between my body wanting to run to see if she was okay and my mind knowing checking a different feed would be faster.

  “What’s wrong? Talk to us Adohi,” Quintillus’s alarm only fed my pack mates concern further.

  “Is it Kara?!” Cassie’s question was borderline hysterical. She got up from her seat and pointed her finger at Bhar, “I told you not to get me involved and now you’ve put Kara in danger!” She accused.

  “Adohi,” Aphelele’s said my name calmly but it had an edge of panic to it.

  “Everyone just shut the fuck up,” I yelled. My fingers flew over my gauntlet and I switched from feed to feed until I found Kara. I closed my eyes in relief. I opened my eyes again to see Quintillus’s guilt stricken face coloured with relief, “Kara’s fine.” Cassie dropped back down into her seat and rubbed her forehead.

  “Then what the fuck did you just scare us all for?” Gritted out Bhar. Aphelele wore his reproach plainly while Oli clenched his jaw and seethed at me in silence.

  “Fillion’s dead.” Only Quintillus didn’t react with shock. After getting a sudden blast of my uncontrolled emotions, I knew he must have put two and two together. Cassie hung her head and shook it slowly side to side.

  “I don’t know what Kara means to all of you,” Cassie’s words were barely above a whisper, “but what you’re doing is only going to get her hurt or killed.” There was absolute conviction in her voice. Quintillus looked torn while the others seemed taken aback by her certainty.

  No, I thought vehemently. I pulled up every feed on my gauntlet to everywhere around Fillion’s corpse. I rewound all the footage I could get. Nothing. My eyebrows smashed into each other as my rage and disbelief warred across my face. The Ferryman had to have left multiple witnesses, a bloody trail, or any other physical evidence I could check later. That’s not what disturbed me.

  “There’s nothing,” I could hear the devastation and sobering disbelief in my own voice.

  “What do you mean?” I glared at Aphelele’s question. We seemed to be in the dark a lot lately, and they kept coming to me for answers. Well, too fucking bad because right now I was fresh out. I opened my mouth to snarl something at him but Cassie got there first.

  “No one betrays the Ferryman and lives,” she got up slowly, “I think the only reason the Ferryman never killed me is because I was a nobody who knew nothing, and who couldn’t see anything useful that day.” She slowly took in a breath like she was trying to find the right words but couldn’t, “Life on the frontier is harsh; it’s just the life we live. Kara’s my friend. Don’t get her hurt or killed because this is just a case for you to clear. We may just be Mortals to you but she deserves better. She’s... She’s a good person.” She tapped the side console and the noise of her establishment rushed back in to fill the gaping chasm she had just laid down at our feet.

  Cassie walked away but her words rang through my head. The fear of Kara’s possible gruesome death cut into my guilt riddled gut. Fear morphed into anger. Kara had gotten herself into this situation somehow. Or at the very least she had no way to get out of it safely. She had no one to turn to in her life. She should have known better and come to us from day one. I clenched my fists in frustration. My mind, my instincts, and my heart were at war inside me.

  I had no solid evidence or reason to be suspicious of Kara. If I were honest with myself I’d admit that I was probably angrier with myself for liking her at all. My gut had said she was at the heart of this case, but now that my ability had been accurately leading me on the right path, I felt zero sense of victory.

  “All of you can investigate the crime scene,” I stood up filled with disgust at how this night had turned out. “There’s no data trail what-so-ever, the Ferryman didn’t show up anywhere on any surveillance, even the ones I planted recently.” I pushed away from the table and left my pack mates behind, ignoring them calling my name.

  Smug is what I should feel. Validated, that my ability had been right. Instead I felt only rage and fear. Fear that I may have put Kara in the Ferryman’s crosshairs all for my own pride. All because capturing the smuggler who had the audacity to keep evading me mattered more to me. Rage burned like a wild brushfire, destroying both the good and bad inside me equally. I was angry at Kara. I was angry at myself.

  My thoughts spun round and round feeding into the inferno. Angry footsteps took me through corridor after corridor until I found myself stepping onto the lower docking bay. Kara’s ship the Lyre was closed up. Considering the time, she was probably sleeping in her quarters. I didn’t give a shit. I wanted answers.

  I pounded on the external console knowing it would cause all sorts of loud alarms to go off inside her ship. I felt a sick kind of pleasure knowing that she was probably getting a rude middle of the night awakening. She had upended my life, my pack, the least I could do was throw her ass out of bed.

  The ramp hissed and lowered. I stopped dead in my tracks. Kara stood there rubbing the sleep from her eyes in nothing but a threadbare pale tunic that barely reached her thighs. I could see through the fabric
like it was no thicker than cobwebs across her beautiful flesh. Rage in my blood turned to heady desire.

  “What the fuck do you want, Adohi?” She asked grouchily.

  “I want to know, who the fuck you think you are,” I snarled and stomped up the ramp going nose to nose with her.

  “You need to back the fuck up, wolf,” she growled. A wave of her arousal hit me and I let out a reflexive rumble of approval. I watched her pupils dilate and her mouth part slightly. The noise and commotion all throughout the lower docking bay fell away as we stared off.

  “No. I think you like it when I don’t let you get away with shit,” I all but purred.

  “And what shit am I getting away with, Adohi,” she scoffed.

  “For one,” I ran the back of one finger slowly down her collarbone, giving her enough time to tell me to stop. “You always wear sheer sexy as fuck clothes when you greet people who wake you up with alarms?”

  “You’re lucky I’m wearing anything at all,” she gave me a wicked smile. She kept pushing and challenging me. I wasn’t going to disappoint. I let the back of my knuckle travel lower between her breasts. Kara’s chest heaved in and out as I made the slowest spiral possible, swirling in until I circled the very tip of her hard nipple.

  I leaned forward and licked it through the fabric. Her moan was like sunlight on my withered soul. I kissed and licked at her breasts, taking my time, ignoring the possibility that someone might peek in here out of curiosity. Kara’s fingers curled and dragged along my scalp, pulling more of my hair loose from my thick braid.

  “I see what this is,” she pushed off my shoulders to take two steps back. She sneered at me, “Come to take your turn?” I growled at her. I wasn’t going to fall into that trap. She was trying to distract me and make me angry enough to leave.

  “If I wanted a whore I would have stayed at Cassie’s,” I narrowed my eyes at her, letting her know that I wasn’t falling for her tricks.

  “Then why are you here, Adohi? We barely know each other and the few times we’ve interacted you’ve been nothing but a bag of dicks.” She crossed her arms tightly across her chest, hiding those juicy breasts from my mouth. I let my frustration fuel my rage.

  “I’m here because you’re making stupid fucking decisions that’re going to get you killed,” I challenged her right back and ignored the truth in what she had said.

  “My only stupid fucking decision was opening my ship to let you in,” grumbled Kara. She smiled suddenly and sweetly, “But I can easily rectify that mistake and throw your ass off my ship, wolf.” I laughed mockingly at her sass.

  “You’re just digging that hole deeper, Kara,” I stalked forward getting in her personal space all over again. “You’re in deep and you’re not even going to ask for help. Not even when you got a bunch of wolves at your beck and call.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about, Adohi?” Kara rubbed her face in frustration. Our pack may be known as the best bloodhound unit in the Mea Lupus Legion, but I was our only actual tracker. I knew what prey looked like when it was run down and on its last bit of energy. Kara’s eyes were bloodshot as she glared at me.

  “I’m talking about you being the liaison for the Ferryman,” I watched every movement and micro-expression on her face. She hadn’t been expecting me to say that.

  “Get out,” her voice was carefully neutral but I could see the edge of her left eye twitch.

  “No.”

  “Get. Out,” she said through clenched teeth. If she had been a wolf she would have already had her fangs in my throat.

  “You put yourself in this position—“

  SLAP!

  Kara had slapped me. It had actually hurt a bit. She held her red hand cradled in the other. She had hurt herself because of me, because of what I had said. My nostrils flared in anger. I grabbed her by the arms and slammed her up against her cargo hold wall.

  “There you go again, doing something that only hurts you,” I was furious. I didn’t know who I was more pissed off at, me or her. Her slap had stung but it in no way compared to me slamming her against a cold metal wall. She had only reacted. But I was the one who kept fucking up and treating her like shit.

  “Seems like the only one hurting me is you,” she bit out. Her lips brushed against my own and I inhaled her angry breaths. Gods, I was so fucking hard I could barely think straight. Her anger, her challenge, was just more fuel to the fire. “Admit it, wolf, my life means shit to you. You just want this case. You just want the Ferryman.” Her aim was perfectly on target. She had sliced straight to my own doubts about my motivations.

  “Admit that you know more than you’re telling us,” I countered. Every breath I drowned in her scent, her heat. Her fire made me want to live. To be reborn like a phoenix. The harsh flames of her own wary survivalism burning away my cynicism, begging me to show her... Show her what? That life can be better, as evidenced by her being in our lives? She blew away my apathy but what she replaced it with was so much scarier: hope.

  “That shouldn’t be hard considering you know so little about anyone other than yourself,” she mocked.

  “At least I know to avoid working for a murdering criminal,” I taunted. I held her arms harder when I felt them try to rise up. Probably to punch me this time.

  “How dare you! How dare you judge me for wanting to survive,” she shouted at me. Her body pressed against mine and I pushed her harder into the wall letting her feel what she was doing to me, spitting all that fire.

  “That’s right,” I sneered, “because you’re doing such a fantastic fucking job so far, liaison.” I dodged my head to the side, avoiding the head butt she had intended to break my nose.

  “And what the fuck could you possibly know about surviving you pampered pet,” she spat.

  “I’ll show you what I fucking know,” I smashed my lips against her’s in a bruising kiss. We attacked each other with our lips and tongues. I let her arms go and she wrapped them around my neck fisting my hair in her tight grip. I moaned into her mouth when she pulled hard on the strands.

  I wasn’t Quintillus here to give her soft kisses and sweet nothings. I was here to give her the violence she craved. The rage that fuelled her spite to keep going from one day to the next when the world around her conspired to bring her low. I would even take her hate and indignation that she wanted me, a Mea Lupus.

  I gripped her breasts in my larger hands and kneaded her soft flesh hard and deep. I licked up her moans and shuddered when she bit my lip hard enough to draw blood. I pinched and pulled at her nipples in retaliation. She only pressed up harder into my hands. Yes, she wanted me to taste her hate. Her disdain for me and my baseless assumptions.

  I slapped the auto-fastener at my neck and waist. As the flex fabric loosened from my skin, Kara reached past my waist band and gripped my cock hard in her calloused hand. I staggered two steps forward and groaned in pain and pleasure.

  I trailed my blunt nails up the back of her thighs under her tunic to grip her ass. She pumped her fist up and down my shaft then squeezed the leaking tip. She smirked and kept up her harsh treatment. A rumbling growl left my throat and I felt my jaws adjust to fit my growing fangs.

  Unfazed, Kara held my stare and only increased her pace as she stroked my cock. I wasn’t about to let her win. Striking fast I gripped the gossamer thin tunic in my jaws and pulled back. Her gasps and whimpers drowned out the sound of me ripping her clothing from her body. My claw tipped fingers yanked off whatever my jaws couldn’t.

  I shrugged off my tech suit and gripped the back of her hips. Without any build up I slammed my cock up into her. A shocked yelp left my mouth as a scream of pleasure left hers. I had done nothing to prepare her, but she was already so drenched and eager.

  Impaling her had felt like coming home. No, that wasn’t right. I hadn’t known what home was until I was wrapped in her warmth. I thought all these years with my pack, I had found my home. I was wrong. Home, happiness, joy, fulfilment, was all right here in her. I lowere
d my head into the crook of her neck and whimpered softly.

  In one move she had burned me to nothing.

  I wanted to keep burning.

  I licked the column of her beautiful neck and gave her that fight she wanted so badly. I pulled back and slammed into her harder and deeper with every stroke. Kara clawed my back to shit and my hair was completely out of its braid. Sweat made the strands stick to my bloodied back.

  Kara clamped down on my shoulders and pushed down on my every upstroke into her. I had pinned her to the wall and she was still fighting me. I laughed breathlessly at our battle still waging.

  “C’mon Adohi,” she taunted breathlessly, “right now you bitch and moan harder than you fuck.” I laughed outright and saw what I knew was an honest smile brighten her face. She liked fucking with me and I liked fucking with her. It seemed like that was the only honest thing we could share with each other.

  “Maybe I want to draw you out,” I panted, “See how long you’ll walk that edge.”

  “Sounds like more excuses,” she made a mock pity face.

  “Sounds like you need me to fuck the lying right out of you,” something flickered in her eyes so fast that I couldn’t tell what I had seen.

  “Then do it if you can, Adohi,” her eyes burned with that challenge that I couldn’t get enough of. I snarled and fucked her as hard as I would another Mea Lupus. I would show her no mercy and no surrender. Her back snapping in an arch was the only warning I got before the tightest pussy I had ever been in, locked on me and damn near destroyed my resolve. I saw stars and the world swam as I held on while she came all over my cock.

  “That’s one orgasm down,” I laughed manically. I hid behind smarmy bravado as I fucked her through two more orgasms.

  “No more, Adohi, no more,” she whimpered. She curled her body around mine but it was only my arms wrapped around her that held her to me.

  “One more, my fire, one more,” I begged. Gods I had held on so long, wringing out every drop of pleasure I could from her. It was all I could do to assure myself that she was safe. She was with me. That, for now at least, I had her and she was mine.