Page 31 of Rescued

The words left my mouth before I had time to stop them. Nikathy’s proposal was outrageous, a surefire way to get us both killed. And yet, the bastard was just crazy enough to pull it off.

“Glory? Honor? What is it a man like you wants?”

Vaguely, I thought about Caimbrie on her bunk.

I set my jaw and looked Nikathy dead in the eye. “I want it all.”

Wordlessly, he held out a hand to me and I took it, silently sealing the deal on his business proposal, for better or worse.

“Now, if I’m not mistaken, you have another matter to address before we move forward?” he added politely.

I cleared my throat and rose from the captain’s chair, convinced that I was finally ready to face Caimbrie. All I needed was Nikathy to put my head back on straight. I wondered how different things would be if I had managed to do the same for Adreax when Tayla first came on board. But this was different. This wasn’t love, and we both knew it. It was time to let it go.

When I got to the back of the ship, Caimbrie was huddled on her bunk, blanket pulled tight around her shoulders and eyes red from crying. I approached her, expecting her to scoot aside so I could sit, but instead she stretched out a leg and blocked me from joining her.

“What’s wrong?” I asked, a bit too gruffly.

“Nothing is wrong,” she snapped. “Everything is just as it’s expected to be, I suppose.”

And in that moment, I knew the trap had sprung.

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