Yellow eyes widened at her in mock surprise. “I am not sure what you mean. Is my admiration and general amusement at watching Egbor fail to impress you or bring you under his thumb not enough?”
“Not really,” Terri replied, a smile twitching at the corner of her own lips.
“Smart female. Another reason I can tolerate you breathing the same air in this room with me. You are correct. There is something more…”
“And what would that be?”
Azan leaned forward, her eyes cutting to Garswal, who had occupied himself with Azan’s broken datapad. His rail thin body hardly seemed to take up any room on the bed as he hunched over it, his small, blunt claws tapping on the screen. Her voice lowered to a hiss.
“I want Egbor dead. Call it intuition, but I think your mate is going to be the only one who has a chance of accomplishing it, and that you have the strength to see this all to the end. That you will make certain that your male destroys him rather than letting him flee this planet. One way or the other, I do not want the captain leaving the planet’s surface with the treasure of theEvandra,” she whispered, her breath brushing Terri’s ear in a lethal hiss.
At Terri’s wide-eyed stare, the female rocked back on her heels, her voice returning to its normal volume as she brushed her hair over her shoulder with one of her hands. “Like I said, a truce. We throw our fates together on the planet.”
“But you’ll still kill me if you’re ordered to—if you can’t see a way around it?”
The pirate shrugged. “It would not be personal. But I have a feeling that the captain will know it is in his best interests not to give any such order, so that chance is small.”
“I’m guessing this is the best offer I’m going to get, isn’t it?”
“The best I can offer, I am afraid. No one on the ship will offer you better, that is for certain. I certainly wouldn’t trust any of the males on this ship.”
“But I can trust you?” Terri murmured doubtfully.
“Not really, but I will vouch for myself that I am the better bet.”
Azan’s expression continued to remain open and almost friendly in the face of Terri’s concerns. In the end, the female was honestly giving Terri all the information she wanted to make an informed decision—and it was obviously in her favor to accept. In any case, despite the pirate being…well, a pirate, she hadn’t been all that bad. Just annoying, more often than not, and occasionally amusing. More than anything, though, she had kept anyone from approaching and potentially harassing her. Hard as nails, she would make a good ally on the planet when she no longer had the buffer of private quarters.
“Very well,” Terri said.
Azan’s lips curled in a wicked grin as she threw an arm around her. “Good decision. You, me, and Garswal here are an excellent team. We will watch each other’s backs on that death pit of a planet we are headed to.”
The male glanced up, delight lighting up his face to be included as he eagerly nodded. Terri’s stomach sank at the idea of the boy being at risk on a dangerous planet, but she knew that in the end neither she nor Azan would have any choice. Garswal was everywhere the captain was unless the captain wanted some time alone, in which case he was sent to their quarters. He would be going down to the planet, and no objection was going to change that.
She prayed that this alliance with Azan might spare all of them.
10
The air was wet. That was Terri’s first thought as she exited the ship several days later when they finally arrived at their destination.
At first, she had been glad that they had finally arrived. Her mind had been filled with the anticipation of seeing her mate and some relief from being cooped up in her room with Azan for days. Even having Egbor hovering threateningly at her side as Veral was brought into the cargo bay had done little to dim her pleasure at being reunited with her mate.
She had wanted to run to his side, yet they were kept forced apart by Egbor’s private guard and Azan as Veral was forced to fly a team of twenty pirates down to the planet surface to the nearest safe clearing. Still, she had been able to tell just from the way his eyes roamed eagerly over her that he had missed her just as much.
Theirs wasn’t the only reunion denied that pained her.
The entire flight down, Krono could be heard throughout the ship snarling and digging at the metal door of the captain’s quarters where he had been trapped. She was unsure how long he had been sedated, but she hoped that it was for a few days. She didn’t want to think about him trapped and hungry in there, fed scraps of gods know what during the voyage. The captain hadn’t wanted such a valuable animal dying before he could turn a profit from it. She hated hearing his cries and sounds of rage, being helpless to free him. It was almost a relief to leave the ship she had called home as she exited onto the planet surface.
Now, however, her first experience of the planet was a hell unlike anything she had imagined. Why was there water in the air? Her lungs burned as she labored to breathe. All her life, she had wondered what it would be like to live away from the desert and be somewhere lush and green, but nothing prepared her for the heavy drag on her lungs with every forced breath. She gasped and wheezed beneath her mate’s concerned gaze. She could tell that he wasn’t breathing comfortably either, but he seemed to be controlling his reaction better.
“What is wrong with her?” Azan demanded, her blaster leveling on Veral.
“She has never breathed such humid air before,” he hissed impatiently. “She is a native of a desert environment like my species, and you thrust her out here without anything to make her manner of breathing easier. The humidity levels here are excessively high, even compared to the most humid places on her planet.”
Egbor grimaced from where he stood off to the side, scouting the area as his chosen team from among the crew formed a perimeter around them. “I do not have anything like that, unfortunately. She will survive,” he assured Azan. “You can see that, despite looking grotesquely wet and red, she is getting enough oxygen.”
The Blaithari female did not look convinced, but Terri nodded. Breathing was uncomfortable, and the wetness in the air felt like it forced her to draw deeper breaths instinctively, but she was not suffocating from it.
Why had she ever thought that this would be a paradise?