Punished, Tana Stone [top reads .txt] 📗

monster. His gaze flicked over my shoulder briefly and then strong hands were grabbing me from behind. “We can fix that.”

Before I could jab my foot behind me or throw an elbow, pain exploded across my head. As the menacing face of Donal grew smaller, darkness swallowed me.

Chapter Thirty-Four

Ch 34

Corvak

“That should do it.” Holly blew a strand of fiery-red hair out of her face as she patted the last of the missile launchers. “I refitted them so they can blast anything out of the atmosphere, and I improved their homing technology.”

Kush passed an armful of torpedo casings to me. “I told you she was an excellent engineer.”

I eyed the female in brightly colored clothing. “I have been learning that human females are more capable than they appear.”

“You got that right, Skirts.” Tori lowered a pair of heavy Kimitherian guns to the ground and stood, swiping the back of her hand across the warm-brown flesh of her forehead. “My bounty hunter babes have been kicking ass all over the galaxy.”

“Skirts?” I asked, glancing down at my battle kilt. “This is not a skirt.”

Tori shrugged one shoulder, pulling a metal stick from her hair and twirling it over the tops of her fingers. “I’m not saying I don’t approve. You Vandar all seem to have the legs for it.”

“I did not think you noticed any legs but mine,” her Dothvek mate growled, crossing the middle of the open amphitheater with a crate filled with ammunition.

Tori flashed him her pointy teeth as she smiled. “Your legs are my favorite, pretty boy.”

The young Dothvek lowered his crate and gave her a reluctant smile, looping an arm around her waist and pulling her to him. “I hope so, mate.”

I pulled my gaze from the pair of lovers and scanned the weapons we’d been moving from the secret armory. The bounty hunter’s engineer and security chief had been inspecting everything and bringing it up to code, since the equipment had been sitting dormant for hundreds of rotations. It now appeared we had enough firepower to challenge an imperial attack, if only we had the fighters to wield them.

For not the first time since we’d started working, my gaze searched for Sienna and came up lacking. She’d slipped away sometime during the bounty hunters’ arrival, and she hadn’t returned. I’d been so caught up with preparing for battle and bringing the Dothveks and their females up to speed that I hadn’t dwelled too much on why she’d left.

I’d have thought an entire ship filled with battle-tested warriors and bounty hunting females would have been something Sienna would relish. These females were doing what she claimed to want to do. Why would she walk away from a chance to fight by their side?

I looked up at the cave dwellings rising over the village square. She must have gone home to attend to her sister. I let my gaze fall to the rock face that held the planet’s supplies. Or maybe she’d needed to attend to work. I frowned. Neither was a good enough reason for staying away when it was finally time to ready for battle. This was what I’d been preparing her for during all our training sessions.

Then I thought back to our conversation before the bounty hunter ship had arrived. The one where she’d talked to me about staying on the planet with her. Had that upset her? Was that the reason she’d run off? I grunted as I shifted one of the newly augmented launchers and tilted it to face the sky. I’d always been honest with Sienna about wanting to leave the planet and find a way back to my people.

You should have told her you want her to come with you, I scolded myself. Even though my stomach clenched at the possibility that she would say no, I needed her to know that I did not wish to leave without her.

“I need to take care of something,” I told Kush, as he fitted a torpedo into its casing.

He straightened and met my eyes. “Is it about your female? The one standing with you when we arrived?”

“How did you know?”

He put a hand to his chest. “You do remember that my people are empathic?”

I hadn’t, but my face warmed at the realization that he could read my thoughts.

“But even if I couldn’t sense your emotions, I would know that something is amiss with a female because of the look on your face.” He waved at hand at the Dothveks working in the dusty ring. “I have seen it on all my Dothvek brothers’ faces at one point or another.”

I rubbed a hand across the scruff of my cheeks. “It is that obvious?”

He grinned and thumped a hand on my shoulder. “It is not a bad thing to care about a female so much that it makes you sick.”

I choked out a laugh. “It isn’t? Doesn’t it make you a more vulnerable warrior?”

Kush shook his head, his dark braid swinging. “It gives you something more powerful to fight for. Revenge is good, but love is better.”

I had not expected such wisdom from the bare-chested warrior that some might consider a barbarian, but all of the Dothveks on his ship were mated to one of the bounty hunter females, and they all appeared to be just as eager for battle.

“Besides,” Kush continued, giving me another thump and stepping back. “Didn’t you say your female was a good fighter? We need all the warriors we can get.”

“I will return,” I told him, determined to find Sienna and bring her back. After I asked her to come with me when I left the planet.

I’d almost made it to the tunnel leading out of the amphitheater when a blast exploded the far end of the open air arena. My gaze snapped to the sky, where Zagrath fighters were zipping overhead, a red torrent of laser fire shooting from them. They’d arrived sooner than we’d expected.

“Tvek!” I yelled, looking over my shoulder at the weapons we’d assembled