Page 26 of Victoria's Embrace

They’d be okay. They had to be.

Her grip tightened on the rifle in her hands.

She’d make sure of it.

Chapter 17

Lying down on her stomach on the catwalk atop the wall, Victoria set up her tranq rifle, then took a moment to scan the market below, while Thorn and Ishra took their positions thirty feet to either side of her.

It was set up much like an arena, just smaller, roughly three hundred feet long and wide. The circular retaining wall, only maybe fifty feet high instead of the soaring three-hundred-foot walls surrounding the complex, enclosed an open-air space below.

Lining the far side were stalls, restaurants, and vendor shops where it looked like a variety of foods, supplies, and smaller animals and people were for sale. In the middle of the sandy space were multiple platforms with screens hovering just above them, giving an up-close view of the slaves being paraded for buyers. Hovering above the market was a massive, arched awning made of some kind of silvery fabric, lined with lights to illuminate the space below.

The market itself was an absolute madhouse of activity. Not all the sellers had chosen to keep their slaves in the holding arena, so there were people and animals being dragged behind their owners by chains, ropes, and, in a few cases, by nothing at all. Some of the slaves were just following behind their masters obediently: heads down, shoulders slumped with resignation and defeat.

There had to be at least five hundred people down there. The yells, roars, and shouts in too many languages to count mixed together until it just became one deafening clamor, too muddled for her translator to pick up more than the occasional word here or there.

As she caught sight of Thegan and Vi’kail moving toward the entrance along the wall below her, she was immensely thankful slave markets required visitors to check their weapons during their stay. Not only had that requirement armed their little army, but it also meant her guys and the rest of the people posing as guards would only have to face off against knives and smaller handguns people had managed to sneak through security.

That some of them had snuck weapons in wasn’t even a question. People who bought and sold sentient beings weren’t what anyone would call honest or upstanding and damn sure couldn’t be trusted to follow the rules.

Releasing a slow breath when she saw that her guys were nearing the entrance, Victoria set her cheek against the stock, adjusted until she could see through the scope, then waited for the signal.

A flash of blue from above came seconds later and all hell broke loose.

Like a well-oiled machine, the prisoners poured out of the holding room door, formed a line, and immediately opened fire. Slaves and slavers alike dropped like flies as they advanced, collapsing unconscious to the hard-packed, sandy ground.

There was a momentary pause before the rest of the assembly caught on to what was happening, but by the time realization hit, and they tried to run, it was too late. The lupka had already formed an impenetrable barrier around the perimeter of the market, using their massive size to prevent anyone from escaping.

Keeping her breathing as slow and steady as she could, Victoria focused on finding targets instead of letting her gaze seek out her guys, scanning for anyone holding weapons or anything that looked like a communication device and taking down as many runners as possible so the lupka weren’t overwhelmed or forced to kill to prevent escapes.

Back and forth, she swept the muzzle of her rifle over the roiling, panicked crowd, her pointer finger pressing the trigger button again and again, the soft, rhythmicthwopof the shots sounding in her ear a split second before her targets dropped to the ground. Scan, aim, fire. Scan, aim, fire. Over and over until she fell into a sort of trance.

When she spotted guards running out of the doors on the opposite side of the market, she smoothly took aim and fired, feeling oddly detached yet hyper-focused.

Between her, Thorn, and Ishra on overwatch and their people on the ground, they took down everyone in what felt like only a few minutes, but it took Thorn calling her name before she emerged from the trance enough to realize it.

Blinking a few times, she raised her cheek from the stock of the rifle and peered at the market below. It looked like a bomb had gone off. Bodies littered almost every inch of the ground. The only ones left standing were their people. Squinting, she scanned faces until she spotted Snitch and her guys. Something tight and hard in her stomach unclenched when she saw they appeared uninjured.

“We did it,” she whispered, scanning the market a second time. Huffing a shocked laugh, she shook her head. “Holy shit. We actually did it.”

* * *

By the timethose of them going back to the complex were ready to leave, the suns were coming up. It had taken hours and hours to work through the unconscious beings, picking out the victims from the bad guys, leaving the former where they lay and moving the later into cages.

Rykar found his friend, a human woman Victoria strongly suspected was his mate, among those unconscious. She was frail-looking and couldn’t have been older than twenty-three. Her hair was a matted mess, her face was mottled with scars and bruises, but even with all that, she was remarkably beautiful.

Thankfully, her buyer must’ve wanted to purchase a few more slaves before leaving the planet, because he’d been among those near one of the bidding platforms in the middle of the market with her chained to his side.

Leaving Rykar to look after the woman, Victoria went to Vi’kail where he was waving at her from one of the doors set in the wall near the vendor stalls, trying to ignore the tightness in her chest and not quite meeting his eyes when she walked past him.

She heard his soft sigh, but he remained silent otherwise as he led her to another holding area, one in which newly purchased slaves were stored until their owners were ready to leave with them. He’d tried to let them know what was going on, but he was a scary-looking guy and most of the caged people hadn’t believed him, so he brought in the ‘big guns.’

Her.

Nodding, she stepped farther into the room, thankful to have something else to focus on other than the dozens of questions swirling in her mind and the ache in her chest.

After freeing those people, she did what she could to calm them down and let them know what had happened then, when that wasn’t enough to ease the tension, she invited them into the open market area to see for themselves.

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