Might as well get it over with.
“All right. Why not? Consider yourself on my guard. I will let Veral know. I’m sure he’ll be ecstatic that I have another person to hover over me,” she sighed.
The female seemed to sag where she sat for a moment with obvious relief before she caught herself and straightened once more. Malraha turned herself at an angle so that she partially faced everyone. Her expression hardened in what Terri figured had to be her ‘on duty’ face.
“Relax. We are all friends here,” Azan chortled, her laughter only increasing as Malraha’s disapproving glower.
Terri bit back her own laugh, not wishing the female to feel alienated, but she caught the flicker of a smile that appeared at the corner of Dreth’s mouth before disappearing.
“Is Veral capable of demonstrating ecstasy?” he inquired after a moment.
Azan snorted. “If you call cracking a faint smile a demonstration of ecstasy. The male otherwise seems to be limited to a range of expressions implying ‘I will kill you.’”
Terri flicked her first two fingers at the pirate, the second slightly bent, in what she had come to realize was a crude gesture among the intergalactic communities. Azan barked out a laugh that Terri completely ignored, but she was privately delighted when Malraha’s lips twitched. Returning her attention to the Blaithari, Terri raised an eyebrow.
“Was there something you wanted, or do you just randomly eavesdrop on everyone you meet?”
Azan shrugged with an unrepentant grin as she dropped down on a nearby bench, pulling her human onto her lap. “Not at all. Usually, it is more in the vein of information gathering. In this case, however, I was flat out straining to catch every bit of gossip shamelessly. I would have come and sat down to enjoy the show except my Wendy here objected. She has yet to learn that scruples are unbecoming of a pirate.”
Tall and slender, and possessing thick dark hair falling to her waist, Azan’s human hardly looked like a woman recently taken from Earth. Terri’s own hair was only half that length and, like the rest of her once painfully thin frame, had only recently began to thicken. Wherever Wendy had come from, it must have been a kinder environment. It was only knowing that the other woman had been captured with the intent to sell her that kept Terri from feeling envious of what seemed like a much better lot in life.
“There’s nothing wrong with wanting to be more than an ill-mannered space-thief,” the woman shot back smoothly. “I keep telling you that the universe was not created to entertain and fund you. If I’m going to be unscrupulous, it will only be against those who are deserving of it. Friends aren’t deserving of it.”
Her eloquence wasn’t what Terri would have expected of a recent survivor either.
“I differ entirely on that. Friends deserve it more than anyone else,” Azan objected with a scoff, the lowest of her three arms on her right side banding around Wendy. “How else can those who care about them know the minute details that they can use to assist them? Prying into friends’ lives is caring.”
“That’s disturbing,” Wendy replied with feigned annoyance. She half-turned to Terri. “By chance, are you looking to hire a nanny?”
“You already have a youngling you care for as well as an entire crew of miscreants who would not know what to do with themselves without your firm hand,” Azan quickly objected. She frowned for a moment. “Do not let me forget to check on said miscreants. I know I am going to regret allowing Garswal to stay on ship with them while we returned to the compound.”
“There’s really no need for you to stick around. I’m sure the guard is right and it’s just a typical local thing. Probably nothing to worry about,” Terri said, not liking the guilt that rose up from her gut.
“And leave it to Navesha to accidentally lose you or get you killed?” Azan scoffed as she flicked a leaf off her shoulder. “Not likely. I will not leave until I am assured that you and your youngling are safe.”
“Navesha isn’t trying to lose me or get me killed,” Terri replied.
“I did not claim that she was but that she is negligent with the care of delicate little humans. That one is distracted by something,” Azan said airily. “I will feel better with my own eyes on you, and those of your eager young guard,” she added with a grin.
“No harm will come to her while I am present,” Malraha hissed vehemently.
“See?Thatis the reaction of a good guard!” Azan praised. “If you could spit venom, I would be tempted to lure you away to join my crew. You cannot spit venom, can you?”
Malraha scowled back at the pirate. “Your foolish speech is making my head hurt.”
Azan sighed dramatically and hugged Wendy to her. “This is why you are much better off with your fine Blaithari pirate and crew. Argurmas are not much fun.” She slanted a wicked grin in Terri’s direction. “If you change your mind about being mated to a fleshy droid, you are always welcome in our crew.”
Terri didn’t bother to hide her smirk when both Argurmas snarled in offense. Azan was just fortunate that Veral wasn’t there to threaten her health, although her babysitters did a pretty good job at that by themselves.
19
Veral’s eyes tracked his mate strolling up the corridor. For days, he had attempted to satisfy his need to be near his mate by covertly watching over her as she walked through the long halls of the compound. Their nights together were not sufficient to fulfil his need for contact, and inevitably at some point during the day he requested his mate’s location and sought her out just to watch her for a moment or brush close to her in passing.
It was not enough. The whispers of contact barely took the edge off his need to be near her. His senses were deprived of her scent, touch and taste, and his processors were struggling, his concentration fragmenting into looping segments of data images of his mate. He required time alone with his mate without the chance of eyes on them. It was to that end he decided to stage a chance encounter to be near her without drawing attention.
He had been unprepared, however, for Terri to have two Argurma guards with her.
An annoyed hiss escaped him as he vented his frustration at the sight of Malraha and Navesha at either side of his female. Not only did her guards come close to blocking his view of his mate with their larger frames, but their presence was going to make his plans more difficult. With the addition of Malraha to Terri’s guard—a decision that had pleased him solely for the reason of providing his female with extra protection—he had failed to calculate that it could potentially pose some manner of obstacle for him.