Enslaved Book III: The Gladiators

by Kaitlyn O'Connor

  Karen released a huff of breath that was part anger and part resignation. “I guess this means we won’t be getting any dick—not for a while anyway.”

  Loren bit her lip to refrain from smiling.

  “Not that I’m not glad in a way. I’m still sore as hell, but I think some good loving would go a long way toward helping me put that horrible episode behind me. I need some cuddling at least … even if they’re afraid sticking their dick in would … like taint it or something.”

  Loren’s amusement vanished. “Yes, well I hadn’t even figured out how to try to smooth over the last upset. I’m beginning to think it’s hopeless to think we could work anything out.”

  “You can’t think that way! I mean unless you just want to give up?”

  “I don’t want to. I just don’t know what to do,” Loren said.

  Karen hesitated. “You seemed … a little touchy about the conversation you had with the demon guy.”

  Loren glanced at her irritably. “I know this going to sound weird,” she said finally, “but I think he might’ve been trying to flirt with me.”

  Karen gaped at her. “Are you serious?”

  “I probably just imagined it.”

  “Well, what made you imagine it?”

  “I don’t know. I guess the way he looked at me and … he invaded my space … just seemed a little too close, and … it was just a feeling, I guess.” She frowned, struggled a moment and finally shrugged. “Actually, I had the feeling he was the one that offered to protect me before if I’d be his woman—not that I’m sure! I know it was one of them, but it scared the shit out of me and I didn’t really look, if you know what I mean.”

  “You usually don’t get that feeling unless they are,” Karen said dryly. “How did you feel about it?”

  Loren frowned. “I think I was just mostly surprised and really unnerved. He actually doesn’t seem at all like I thought he was, though.” She paused. “He’s actually kind of attractive—in a really alien way, if you know what I mean. The first thing that popped in my mind, though, was that maybe he thought, or knew, that Kael and Dakaar and Balen didn’t want me anymore and he could move in.”

  Chapter Eleven

  If it had occurred to her that there might be a problem with following Karen’s advice, Loren never would have. Although she hadn’t been convinced that the corridor they’d taken had to lead around eventually as Karen had been, though, she’d figured they would see a com unit at some point and be able to ask for directions. That wasn’t the case, unfortunately. They walked until they were nearly exhausted and finally sat down to rest and consider the situation.

  “I was sure the lift must be this way,” Karen said irritably.

  “I told you it wasn’t,” Loren reminded her.

  Karen glared at her. “Well! Why did you follow me?”

  Loren shrugged. “I figured we’d be able to ask the computer to tell us how to get back if we got lost.”

  “Why didn’t you? I know we passed at least a couple.”

  “I didn’t know we were lost then!” Loren snapped. “And I figured there’d be more.”

  Karen fell silent, thinking about it. “You know, I think I remember seeing one at that last intersection. Let’s go back that way and look.”

  Shara stared up at her accusingly when she stood. “I stay here. Tired.”

  Karen frowned at her.

  “I’m with her,” Loren seconded. “I’m tired. Let’s rest a little bit before we try anything else.”

  “Well, I’m hungry,” Karen objected. “It must be about time to eat.”

  “That isn’t going to tempt me to get up from here,” Loren muttered. “It’s disgusting.”

  Karen sat back down sullenly.

  Loren had just decided she’d rested enough to tackle renewing their search for the lift when she looked up and saw a group of the men heading toward them. Kael was in the lead and he looked like a thundercloud.

  She surged to her feet guiltily, wondering if there was a problem on the bridge or if they were just in a foul mood because they’d been pounding on each other and then discovered all of the women had disappeared.

  Kael searched her piercingly, as if he was looking for some kind of injury. “Why here? Why no go back to control?”

  Loren chewed her inner lip. “We were exploring.”

  The men with him—Dakaar, Daeman, and one of Karen’s men, Jarr, looked around the corridor skeptically. Loren glared at them, uncertain whether they’d taken her literally or they were trying to be sarcastic. “Not here, here,” she said testily. “We were exploring this level and we got tired so we decided to rest before heading back.”

  “We’re ready to go back now, though,” Karen offered. “We’ll just go with you guys.”

  “I, too,” Shara said decisively, surging to her feet.

  Kael gave Loren a look, but he and the rest of the group merely turned and headed back. Loren sent Shara and Karen a speaking look. Karen shrugged and mouthed something at her, but she couldn’t interpret the mouth movements.

  To their surprise, the men led them back to the large room where they’d been ‘sparring’ earlier. There were a couple of tables now where the floor had been cleared and they’d rounded up a combination of actual chairs and some containers approximately the right height to use as seats and placed them around the tables.

  The ‘plates’ were also a combination of actual plates and varying sized and shaped containers.

  A wave of nausea washed over Loren as the smell of the food wafted past her nostrils. Contrary thing that it was, her belly took that moment to let out a roar that would’ve made a mountain lion proud. Everyone looked around. Loren studied the ceiling.

  “We wait for udder search parties,” Kael announced, just enough dryness in his voice to make it clear he hadn’t believed the story Loren had told for a moment. Loren’s lips tightened, but she decided not to take the bait. After looking around for a place to perch, she finally settled on one of the makeshift ‘chairs’.

  “Great!” Karen said under her breath. “If they weren’t convinced before that we’re about as useful as a miniature lapdog, I’m sure they are now.”

  Loren glanced at her irritably. It wasn’t as if it hadn’t crossed her mind, but she was damned if she was useless! “Everybody can’t be good at everything,” she muttered.

  “Dey can,” Shara said with her usual candor. “Are.”

  “I can do things!” Loren informed her, gesturing around at the ship.

  “I don’t want to be mean but the computer’s running the ship,” Karen pointed out, then added hurriedly when Loren glared at her. “Not that anybody else could run it without a computer! It’s just too big and complex.”

  “I’ll have you to know my parents saw to it that I had a very well rounded education! And we went on a little dig every summer, so I know a lot about camping besides.”

  Karen looked at her with interest. “A dig?”

  “They’re archeologists—mostly they taught while I was growing up, but after I left home they stopped teaching and went back to field work.”

  “I’m surprised you didn’t become an archeologist.”

  Loren shrugged. “I just didn’t love grubbing in the dirt like they did—I mean, when I was a kid I thoroughly enjoyed it, but I was always way more interested in machines.”

  “I was a teacher back in the old days,” Karen said glumly. “I don’t suppose that’s going to be very useful.”

  “It will be if you’re pregnant and we don’t get back home.”

  Karen brightened immediately. “I hadn’t thought about that!” She frowned. “I’m not sure how pertinent it’s going to be. I taught kindergarten.”

  “Hey! The first years are the most important!” Loren said, nudging her.

  “I healer,” Shara offered.

  Karen and Loren both stared at her. Loren didn’t know what was going through Karen’s mind, but ‘witch doctor’ popped into hers. She smiled with
an effort. “Great! That’s definitely useful.”

  The ‘udder search parties’ arrived shortly after that, thankfully, and she didn’t have to struggle to find out whether Shara just chanted and waved burning embers around or if she was actually a woman of science. Everyone moved to the tables, picked a spot and began relaying the food that someone had prepared around the table. Shara and Karen had gotten up and moved to sit near ‘their’ men, and Kael had sat on one side of Loren and Dakaar the other. Balen had glared at both of them but taken the seat to Dakaar’s right.

  Daeman parked directly in front of Loren.

  She tried to pretend she hadn’t noticed, but she was keenly aware of the fact that most of his attention was on her rather than the platter making its way around the table. She forgot all about him, however, when the platter arrived. Kael very carefully took a portion and handed the platter to her. She stared it for several moments, trying to convince herself that it couldn’t possibly taste as bad as it looked and finally put a small portion on her plate and handed the container to Dakaar. Dakaar stared at the portion she’d taken and dipped a second helping and put it on her plate before he got his own.

  Loren tried to look appreciative, but it hadn’t been consideration for everyone else that had prompted her to pass on anything but a very small portion. She was as conscious of the food shortage as everyone else and would’ve been careful regardless, but she also didn’t see any point in taking food she very much doubted she could choke down to save her life.

  And it was a matter of life or death, she reminded herself. She had to eat something or she would starve to death.

  Fortunately, water seemed to be in fairly abundant supply and they’d found various containers to hold the drink. Picking it up when the men on either side of her dug in and began to clean their plates as if the mess was odorless and tasteless at the worst, or scrumptious at the best. She slid a glance at Karen as the platter reached her.

  Karen turned a strange shade she’d never seen on a black woman. It was sort of a greenish gray and no more flattering than the color she felt she was—green. Swallowing convulsively a couple of times, she scooped up a small portion and put it on her own plate. As Dakaar had done, the Hirachi beside her examined it and added to it.

  Karen sent him a weak smile and then looked at her plate like she thought it might jump out and bite her.

  Loren returned her attention to her own food. After staring at it in revulsion for several moments, she became aware that Kael, Dakaar, and even Daeman kept glancing at her and finally took a pinch with her fingers as they were doing. Her stomach rebelled the moment she put in her mouth. She held her breath, chewed a couple of times and then grabbed her water and tried to wash it down. It was a battle for several moments as to whether she could keep it down or not, but it finally settled like a rock in her stomach.

  Breathing a sigh of relief, she girded herself for another battle with her stomach. By the time she’d emptied her water vessel, she’d managed to choke down five or six small bites, her belly was sloshing with all the water, and she knew absolutely that one more bite was going to be her downfall.

  Breathing shallowly, she sat back, trying not to look at the plate in front of her.

  “No eat?”

  Loren glanced at Kael and clamped a hand to her belly. “I’m full. You eat the rest.”

  He frowned, flicking a glance at the plate and then her empty water container. “Full water. No eat nothing.”

  “Oh but I did. I just don’t eat much. You’re sure you don’t want the rest?”

  He looked her over assessingly. “Need eat more, shimone.”

  “I can’t. I really couldn’t take another ….” She stopped abruptly as a warning wave of nausea hit her, swallowing convulsively several times as a cold sweat popped from her pores. Clamping a hand to her mouth, she looked around wildly for some place to puke where she wouldn’t distress everyone else or humiliate herself. “Excuse me,” she muttered behind her hand, leaping to her feet and racing for the door as fast she could run.

  She heard the scrape of another chair, but she didn’t realize Karen was right on her heels until she blundered past her and led the way. Hoping against hope that Karen knew where a bathroom was and she could hold it that long, Loren raced her to the next room off the corridor.

  It was really unfortunate that it seemed to be a storage room. Karen puked in the middle of the floor and that was enough to rip the shred of control Loren still had away from her. She puked right beside her. When she’d finally stopped heaving, she looked around a little weakly for a relatively clean place to collapse.

  That was when she discovered they had an audience. “Go away!” she growled at the green men in the doorway.

  Kael looked like he couldn’t decide whether to retreat or not.

  “I swear to god I’m going to throw something if you don’t leave!”

  He disappeared with the others and Loren slumped on a small crate, trying to gather enough strength to drag herself from the room before the stench sent her into another vomiting spasm. When Karen finally managed to stop heaving, she looked around and staggered toward the door.

  Loren pushed herself up and followed her, closing the door behind her.

  The men, she discovered, hadn’t retreated far. Deciding to ignore them, she braced her back against the wall of the corridor and slid down it, huddling in a tight ball. Karen collapsed beside her.

  “I thought it was a bathroom,” Loren said weakly.

  “We don’t need that room anymore anyway,” Karen said a sickly.

  Loren sighed. “Actually, I have a bad feeling that’s the pantry.”

  “Well fuck!” Karen said angrily. “That’s a hell of a place for it! I can’t face cleaning that up right now. It’s going to have to wait.” Lifting her head, she looked at the men loitering in the corridor. “If you’re all going to just stand there any damned way, at least tell us where a damned bathroom is!”

  They stared at her blankly and Loren could see that didn’t compute. “Facilities? Shower?”

  Comprehension hit. They all turned and pointed in the other direction.

  Releasing an irritated huff, Loren struggled to her feet and trudged down the hall. As luck would have it, the damned facilities were on the other side of the fucking ‘dining’ hall!

  “You have got the worse sense of direction of anybody I’ve ever known!” Loren snapped irritably when she and Karen had made it inside and turned on the showers. “I don’t know why I keep following you! Two choices! Two! And you picked the wrong one!”

  Karen glared at her a moment and then snickered. “Because you’re a dumbass! I got us lost earlier.”

  Loren frowned, but she couldn’t help but chuckle after considering it a moment. “At least we know which way to run next time,” she said ruefully.

  The water wasn’t hot. It didn’t get better than lukewarm. Deciding that still beat the hell out of freezing cold, Loren got in and bathed off. Luckily, she’d managed to empty her stomach without getting it all over her toga! There was only one thing in the room that looked like it might be for drying, though, and it smelled like it had been used—a lot.

  After another search, she discovered the thing she’d thought was a tiny closet was actually something like a hand blow dryer, except for all over. Shivering, Karen climbed in with her. Her goosebumps had goosebumps by the time she got out again, but she was mostly dry and clean enough it was with great reluctance and revulsion that she put on the clothes she’d discarded.

  The men, to Loren’s irritation, were still loitering outside when they came out again. “Where’s the bed?” Loren asked weakly.

  “Need eat,” Kael said grimly.

  Loren threw a hand up in a ‘stop’ motion. “Don’t talk to me about food. I can’t handle it right now. I need to lie down.”

  He scooped her up into his arms. She would’ve protested if a wave of dizziness followed by a fresh wave of nausea hadn’t swept over her when th
e movement disoriented her. Instead, she dropped her head weakly against his shoulder and fought to recover her sense of equilibrium as he strode down the corridor with her.

  Thankfully, the cabin where she’d spent the night wasn’t far. She curled into a tight ball on her side when he settled her carefully on the mattress, shivering and searching blindly for the blanket. Kael pulled it up over her shoulders. “Lau-ren sick?”

  She thought that over and for the first time saw the situation from his perspective. She’d just puked up a meal and they damned well didn’t have any to spare when they didn’t know how long it might be before they could get anything else. Beyond that, one of them had cooked and she was going to insult whoever had if she informed him that it was the most god awful disgusting mess she’d ever tried to eat.

  On the other hand, telling him she actually was sick also wasn’t a good idea. It was bound to alarm him at the very least when the closest they had to a doctor onboard was their healer, Shara.

  Unfortunately, she couldn’t tell him it was something she’d eaten before the meal when she hadn’t had anything since the last meal she’d eaten in Lecur’s dungeon.

  “No,” she said finally. “I think it was just that I haven’t eaten in a while and the lizard-man’s food is … uh … not what I’m used to.”

  “Must eat,” he growled.

  “Yes, I know. Not right now, though. I’m tired. Just save it for me. I’ll eat later.”

  “Shimone … know must eat.”

  “I don’t feel like puking again right now!” she said testily. “At least give me time to recover from the last bout!”

  “More empty stomach, no easier,” he said tightly.

  She knew he was right. If it had been emptiness that added to her lack of tolerance, getting more empty wasn’t going to help. “Just leave my food on the table,” she said tiredly. “I’ll go back in a little while and try to eat it.”

  To her relief, he finally got up and left.

  Loren couldn’t say she actually got used to the food. She sure as hell didn’t develop a liking for it, but she managed by dent of sheer determination to nibble at her portion off and on throughout the day by washing it down with plenty of water and never pushing herself to eat more than a bite or two at the time. It was still hellish trying to force it down. She was sorry if it made guys feel bad, and she could see it did, but it was the best she could manage and there was no way in hell to hide her revulsion from them when they were determined to watch her like a hawk.