Page 60 of Tempting Jupiter
The crushing pressure at her neck lifted. Her lungs filled with robust, planetary air. The shroud of darkness fell aside. Seneca’s weight shifted away. She lay still, just breathing for a moment. The sound of snarling and snapping swelled, drowning out the children’s screeches.
Rough hands gripped her arms and pulled her to her feet. Seneca shook her once. Her eyes blinked open. His face was close. A red splotch surrounded a small gash on his temple. Were the children okay? She couldn’t see anything but his face and she still couldn’t lift her arms.
Her voice shuddered and broke as she spoke. “I had to trade him for the credits to save the kids.”
The growling Seneca pulled her impossibly closer, his breath hot against her face. “If you chose him to sell to Roma, because you thought you’d be safer with me, you’re going to regret it before I let you die.”
She shook her head, her strength returning bit by bit. “Roma doesn’t have him.” She set her jaw. “And WE. WILL. GET. HIM. BACK.”
His grip on her arms tightened to pain. “If not Roma, then who?”
She turned her head enough to see Toby crouching a few meters away. He held a rock in his hand. His clothes were dirty and rumpled and his hair stuck up in odd places, but she didn’t see any sign of serious injury. The other children were clustered behind him. When he noticed her looking at him he stood up, moving slow but steady. She opened a palm and waved him off with a tiny motion.
Seneca shook her again. “Who?”
“A slaver, but—”
Seneca hissed. “Slaver?” His eyes narrowed. Deep grooves formed in his wrinkled forehead.
“Yes. An independent one. We have a deal.” She reached out and dug her hands into Seneca’s sides. “He’s keeping Jupiter safe until I can buy him back. I promise. We’ll get him back. Unharmed.” She wanted to wrap her arms around him and feel his arms holding her back. He loved Jupiter as much as she did and that somehow made her feel like he would be the one person to understand both her conviction and her terror. “Morgan wants a connection with me badly enough to stick to my terms… and he knows I’ll kill him if he breaks his word.”
“Did Jupiter agree to this?” A new pain had entered his voice. That was a worry she could lift from his heart.
“No. He’d never have left you without telling you. He loves you.” She stepped closer and wrapped her arms tight around him.
Seneca exploded into motion, shoving her away.
She landed on her ass on the ground at his feet. With Jupiter around, Sen had always been the smaller Dog. From her position on the ground, looking up the full length of him, he was a giant.
His face had gone from fiery rage to icy stone. “If I didn’t need you to get him back, you’d be dead.”
She nodded, grief and loneliness weighing down her shoulders and hollowing out her insides. Fee shifted her gaze to the ground and focused on the mundane reality of the hard packed dirt beneath her. She sent a silent command to recall Bug from the sky overhead. Brushing the dirt from her palms, she buried her emotions and shifted her attention to the kids. She couldn’t give up now, not after she’d sacrificed so much.
Chapter Twenty-Four
TheHawley
EarthAllianceBetaSector
2210.161
Seneca watched Feeona settling the children into beds and on to benches and sleeping mats. She’d gotten them back into space without alerting the authorities and managed to get them re-supplied by doing what she calledoff-the-bookstrading with other nearby ships. All proof and reminder that she lived her life outside the law. He hadn’t minded that before, because the law wasn’t on their side. But sharing an enemy didn’t necessarily make them allies. She’d seemed good for Jupiter, something else he’d gotten wrong.
With the ship safely back in skipspace, she’d assessed the health of each child, comforting them and getting to know them as she gave them each a nutrition booster and saw to their scrapes and minor injuries. They called her Angel. The part of him that wanted to hate her for her betrayal didn’t want to understand why, but it was impossible to ignore her efforts to take care of them. Or the fatigue weighing her down as she leaned over to cover a child with a blanket.
“If you hurt her again, I’ll kill you.” The boy called Toby stood a meter away. His threat was calm and convincing, despite his young age.
The other children kept their distance and avoided eye contact, but Toby’s gaze rarely left Seneca. The boy had decided it fell to him to be Feeona’s protector. The other children looked to the boy as a leader.
“Understood,” Seneca acknowledged.
“She said you had a good reason to be mad.” The boy’s hands fisted at his sides as he spoke.
Seneca nodded, surprised she’d made excuses for him.
“No reason is good enough to kill an angel.” Toby puffed up his chest as if he were trying to look intimidating.
Seneca well understood the human mythology of heaven and hell and angels and demons. One of the men who’d kept him like a pet for a time told him stories of ancient, winged beings that had been favored by God or fallen from his teachings. He’d also told Seneca they were both going to Hell for what they did together. The man’s self-loathing had only made Seneca want to send the bastard to his God all the more.
