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“Come out, Sullivan!” Raine practically stamps her foot in frustration, and I know she is probably thinking about grabbing me and just bodily dragging me out. But I’m not ready for that. I’m not ready to just go with these people who betrayed me so deeply I got myself into all this shit.
“I think you owe me an apology. I think you should be telling me how much I contributed as captain, and that you came to get me because you need me. Not because you feel sorry for me.”
There’s another reason I’m stalling. They don’t know my brain chip stopped working, and they don’t know that I’m not the woman I was, and they don’t know that I can’t do what I used to do for them. I don’t have the same reckless edge I once did, so if that’s what they’re counting on me for, they’re going to be disappointed.
“Captain, please,” Mouse says, her voice soft and timid. “We need you.”
“Unfortunately, your crew mates decided otherwise, didn’t they,” I say. “And I don’t recall much in the way of support from anyone, come to think of it. I was lucky to get the shuttle. Raine was ready to throw me out the airlock.”
“I am ready to throw you out an airlock now,” she growls, giving me a furious stare. “Only you could be so ungrateful to be rescued.”
I give Raine a steely stare. “Fine words from a traitor who undermined me with my crew, took possession of my ship, and sent me off into the great unknown with a shuttle whose controls failed and flung me into the nearest planet of predators.”
There’s nobody you’ll trust less than someone you once trusted completely who turned around and betrayed you.
A soft clearing of the throat indicates that we are no longer alone. My crew and I turn to see Sona standing in the door, flanked by a number of Thorn’s soldiers. They make for an imposing wall of saurian. You might even call it impenetrable.
“I have locked the entire house. There is no way in or out,” Sona says. “Believe me, I am not interested in making another mistake as I did the first time. You are all going to stay here until the alpha arrives to sort you out.”
Raine swings around and levels her weapon at Sona in one easy movement. I’ve seen her act this way before. I know he’s as good as dead if he doesn’t do as she says. Raine isn’t reckless like me, but she is a lot more dangerous. I get people killed by accident sometimes. With Raine, it’s never an accident.
“No!”
I leap in front of the old servant, my arms outstretched, as if that’s going to make a blind bit of difference as to whether or not she shoots me. “He has a family. And he’s just doing his job. Leave him alone.”
“He’s getting all of us captured,” she says, her eyes narrowed at me. “I knew that coming to get you was a mistake. I knew we should have stayed well clear. The only thing I know about you is that being near you is a surefire way to experience something worse than I was already experiencing. You’re a fucking disaster, Sullivan, and I regret the day I met you.”
“See? Now, you and Sona share the same opinion of me, so you have that in common too!” I smile, knowing this will do absolutely nothing to improve basically anybody’s mood, but it does improve mine slightly, and that’s really what matters.
* * *
For the next however long, we all sit in the room, guarded by Sona and the other saurians he has called upon to back him up. Raine gives me frequent dirty looks, which eventually turn into a bitter comment.
“I knew we should never have come for you. It was a mistake.”
“Probably,” I agree. “I didn’t ask you to come.”
“You knew we would, though.”
“No. I didn’t, Raine, because you had just abandoned me.”
“THE ALPHA HAS ARRIVED!” Sona blares the announcement, interrupting our overdue argument before it can happen.
Thorn walks in, looking unimpressed and yet curious. I feel a spiking pulse of guilt in my belly, almost as if any of this was my fault, which of course, it isn’t. Will he believe me, though? I don’t know, and for a moment, I find it a little hard to care. Seeing Thorn sends a bolt of feeling through me, much of it unexpected. I find myself happy to see him, and even relieved he is here. That’s odd. I have dedicated all my time on this planet trying to escape him, and now, on the verge of escape, suddenly he seems like safest, happiest place for me to be.
“What do we have here?” He addresses the question generally, but he is looking directly at me.
“The human’s friends came to rescue her,” Sona says. “I captured them all.”
“Very good, Sona,” Thorn says. The tip of Sona’s tail wags with excitement at the praise from his alpha. It’s actually pretty cute. My situation hasn’t materially changed, really. If anything, I look good in Thorn’s eyes too, because I clearly didn’t try very hard to run away myself.
“You’re going to let us go,” Raine says. “Because we’re not alone, and if we don’t return to the ship in a very short amount of time, this entire building will be turned to rubble. Actually, you’d be lucky if it was rubble. It’s more like dust. Atoms, really.”
“You’re inside the building,” Thorn points out.
“I’d rather be part of the building than be subject to whatever horrors you’ve been putting our captain through.”
It’s strange to hear her refer to me as their captain. Maybe my crew really did miss me. Maybe I’m the sort of person you can’t easily forget. Or maybe captains and scapegoats have more in common than people like to think. Maybe without me around to blame, they had to realize that they all made mistakes, and that being a pirate is actually pretty damn hard.
