Captive (31 page)

“What?”

“
I
carried him.
I
suffered in labor and nearly died giving birth.
I
should have named him.”

“Hell, Addy, then call him something else.”

Ah, back to the gruff gladiator voice she knew so we— Wait. “What did you say?”

“I said name the kid something else.”

“Did you just call me Addy?”

“Yeah,” he said, as if this wasn’t the first time he spoke it.

Emotions like electricity spiked through her nerve endings, setting her body tingling with energy. Focused on Max’s dark, solid form, she didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Hit him or hug him. After all this time, the father of her baby finally called her by her name.

What’s more, she enjoyed the sound of it rolling off his tongue. She closed her eyes, savoring the moment.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “I shouldn’t have gotten angry. Especially after all you’ve done for us. Thank you for taking care of him… and me. And Max—” she couldn’t stop the smirk from forming on her lips “—thanks for not naming him Hell Boy.”

The baby stirred and she stroked his fuzzy head. “Noah,” she said, trying on the name. “Noah. I suppose the name suits him considering you’re male, I’m female, and we’re on a boat.”

“Uh. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“What’s wrong? Is Noah sick?”

“No. He’s fine. For now.”

For now
? What did that mean?

“Addy, we’re not on the umiak anymore.”

“What do you mean? Where are we?”

“We’re on a subaquatic.”

“A what?”

“A Hyborean watercraft.”

“Ferly Mor’s?”

He shook his head. “Worse. We’ve been captured by poachers.”

She flailed her arms, feeling for her surroundings in the dark. The back of her hand smacked a smooth wall behind her, not wood or animal skin. Her stomach dropped. “Why does this wall feel familiar?”

“Because it’s identical to the wall you were feeling up when I first saw you.”

“We’re in a breeding box?” She pounded her fist on the floor. Un-freaking-believable! How could they’ve suffered through every minute of their escape only to be caged again?

“Breeding box. Containment cage. Whatever. It seems like everything on this planet is made out of the same damn material.”

“Can we escape?”

“No. The cage is sound. The wall behind you is solid and the three other walls are cage bars like the kennel. There’s no furnace, but there is a pot in the corner if you need it.”

“I don’t believe this. We’re back where we started, except now there’s three of us.” Not ready to admit defeat, she choked back threatening tears. “How long before they return us to HuBReC?”

It must have been getting brighter because she could now see Max’s grave expression. “We aren’t going back to HuBReC. Ever. These are poachers, Addy. And we’re their cash cows. They’ll assume I’m a gladiator from my gladimort and boots.”

Right. A human pet wouldn’t normally have a Hyborean-issued gladiator weapon or boots with crampons.

“Once they check their records, they’ll learn I lost the Survival Race Championship, I’m old and currently without an owner. No owner means no reward for my return. They’ll sell me for sport on the black market.”

She gasped. “You mean smilodon fighting? Like Lucky told us about?”

“Yes.”

“What about Noah and me?”

“Honestly? I don’t know.”

I don’t know.
Those three words seemed worse than knowing their fate, no matter how brutal. Would they take her baby? Would they sell him to a gladiator master and train him to kill?

Would they sell her as a broodmare? Or sell her on the black market? Duncan had said those fights weren’t reserved for just the men.

Her mind’s eye played the scene of Max and the smilodon engaged in bloody battle. But Max was a gladiator. A fighter. He’d survive.

Maybe.

If she were thrown in with the beast, she’d get slaughtered. Torn apart. Eaten alive.

Lucky had said the Hyboreans provide you with a rusty knife. Could she plunge it into her heart before the tiger drew first blood?

“Addy.” The shadow of a hand waved in front of her face. “You in there? The kid’s hungry.”

She snapped out of her nightmare into the reality of Noah’s crying. She picked him up, scooted back against the wall for support and felt for the jacket zipper. Loose linen—not the thick spandex-like material of her thermal suit—bunched in her palm, soft to the touch. No glove acted as a barrier to the nerve endings in her hands, and her fingertips tingled. The sensation was strange, almost foreign.

She pulled the poacher-issued shirt to navel height, and hesitated, aware and uneasy of Max watching her in the dark. Should she tell him to turn around? It’s not as though he hadn’t seen or touched her breasts the whole time she had been unconscious. A shiver ran up her arms the same time heat spread through her body.

Without a word spoken between them, Max shifted and looked away giving her privacy. That was a first.

Addy bared a breast, positioned the baby, and gave him her nipple. “Ouch.” She pulled him off.

“Need help?”

“No. I can do this.”

She tried again. “Owww.”

“Let me.” Without giving her a second to protest, Max faced her, took Noah’s head in one hand and her breast in the other and shoved the baby’s entire face to her skin.

“He’ll suffoca—” Noah latched on and drank without causing pain. She looked up at Max. “How did you learn that?”

He shrugged. “Common sense. If I were in his place, I’d want more than just your nipple in my mouth, too.”

Flames shot through her from cheeks to core. Was it hot in here or just the thermal suit? Oh yeah, she wasn’t wearing a thermal suit.

“I’m glad to see your breasts full again.”

She hoped he couldn’t see the color of her skin in the dark. It must have turned three shades of red. Keeping her attention focused on her son’s beautiful face as he suckled, Addy cleared her throat. “How did we get captured?”

Max leaned back against the solid wall with legs stretched out in front of him. “The day after you gave birth, I heard a subaquatic motor in the distance. When it emerged from the depths and remained stationary in the SAC, I figured it was Ferly Mor waiting for us to come through the Southwest Passage. I debated whether I should paddle away from him or toward him. You were sick and I knew he could help you.”

“So you brought us back? How could you?” She kept her voice soft-spoken so as not to upset the baby. “Don’t you understand I’d rather have died free?”

“You did die free. I respected your wishes. With everything I had, I rowed with the current away from Ferly Mor. You got worse and worse, and that night you died.”

Numb, she rubbed Noah’s back for comfort as well as to ground herself in the reality of having been reawakened yet again. How many times was that now? She waited for Max to continue.

“I don’t know how long I lay next to your body before I heard the sound of a second chance. The subaquatic’s motor was ahead of us this time. I scrambled out of the tent to see the craft’s hatch sublimate and a poacher aim his tranquilizer gun. We were fish in a barrel.”

“I don’t suppose you can refrain from the animal idioms?”

He smirked. “Sorry. I woke up in here alone. After some time, they brought Noah back to me. He was clean, fat, and a healthy pink. They must have given him growth hormones or something because he’s big.”

“I know. He must weigh nine pounds.”

“I didn’t recognize him at first. I had to check for his birthmark. Did you know he has your familial birthmark on his pelvis? Anyway, some more time passed and they brought you in, too. Alive.”

Was that relief in Max’s voice? “I don’t get it. How do poachers know how to reawaken people?”

“Could be every Hyborean knows how to do that. Or maybe they’re doctors gone bad. Or maybe they learned because there’s no profit in selling a dead animal, er human.”

“Then why don’t they revive the people killed in the smilodon fights?”

“Seems advanced technology has its limitations. They haven’t figured a way to reawaken digested bodies.”

“Ew. Thanks for the visual.” She swallowed bile.

“You feeling okay? You look pale.”

She glanced up at him. “There’s barely any light—how can you tell I’m pale?”

“I’ve great night vision.”

Max certainly was talkative today. Was this because he was happy she and Noah were alive? Did it even matter? This was an opportune moment to get answers, and she wasn’t going to waste that chance.

“And supersight,” she said. “How can you see things that are miles away?”

Max didn’t respond right away. Perhaps he wasn’t in a talkative mood after all.

“I was born with brown eyes,” he finally said. “Needed glasses in third grade and wore contacts since high school. Then I came here, and one day I woke up with better-than-perfect vision and could see great in dim light. Came in handy during the survival races. Which I guess was the reason your master gave me these cat eyes.”

“He gave you eyes from a cat?”

Max snickered. “No. They’re my own eyes. Just enhanced. But whatever he did to enhance them made them turn green.”

The nipple slipped from Noah’s mouth. He concentrated his little green eyes on his mother’s face as Addy smiled down at him. “He has your eyes.” She kept her smile and attention on her boy. “Do you think he has your supersight?”

“Hope so. It’ll be his advantage in battle.”

Addy drew Noah tight to her. “He’s not going to fight.”

Max’s gaze dropped. Though he didn’t say it, she knew what he was thinking. Decisions regarding Noah wouldn’t be hers to make.

“The kid’s finished,” he said. “You need to burp him or he’ll toss his cookies all over the place. Trust me. You don’t want to see or smell that.”

Addy positioned the baby on her shoulder and patted his back.

“You’ve got to burp him, not lull him to sleep. Do it harder, he won’t break.”

She did and was rewarded with a loud burp. She giggled unable to decide what was funnier— Noah’s noises or getting baby-care lessons from an alpha gladiator. She envisioned Max changing cloth diapers and tried to cover her laugh with a cough.

“Are you okay?”

“Uh, yeah.” She decided against telling him what she was laughing at. “Other than a headache, I feel great. Completely pain free. As a matter of fact, I feel as though I never gave birth. Or died.”

Max nodded in understanding.

“Is that how you felt after reawakening from the Survival Race Championship?” She remembered his leg bone sticking through his skin on the operating table. Only two weeks later he was crawling through conduit systems and running across the frozen tundra.

“That’s how I felt after
every
survival race. Groggy from the drugs, but pieced back together and physically healed. This sport is fucked up. When you’re fighting the same guy you ran your sword through and left for dead last month, you become desensitized to the bloodshed. And when cold steel penetrates your flesh or a man-eating beast mauls you, yet you wake up without pain or a single scar, you believe you’re immortal.”

Goose bumps tingled her arms and spine, making her shudder. Gladiators led a violent life, and Max’s casualness in discussing that violence proved it was a normal everyday occurrence.

No wonder some gladiators like Regan thrived on power, control, and instilling fear in others. From birth, gladiators had been drilled in aggression and hostility. Regan probably didn’t have a clue how violent he was.

But Max knew, and so did she. They hadn’t been born into this chaos. They were just destined to die in it.

She bent her head to Noah, her hair falling like a curtain around her face and concealing her tears from Max. What was to become of them? How long until they were separated? Would death come quick, or would it be drawn out and excruciating?

Max brushed his thumb across her cheek, and she closed her eyes, savoring his tender touch. He tucked a lock of hair behind her ear. “Don’t cry.”

“I’m so scared.” Careful not to crush Noah, she leaned into Max’s solid chest. She needed his comfort.

His entire body tensed.

Mistake.
The last time she’d leaned into his body and stroked his hair, he’d straightened his spine and snapped back into Max the gladiator, which was a step above Max the beast. She tried pulling away to prevent him from relapsing but his arm encircled her back, stopping her. He drew her tighter to him, and guided her head onto his shoulder. Apparently, he was still Max the man and felt comfortable enough to console her.

She closed her eyes and inhaled. He smelled good. Clean. Weeks of sweat, grime, and sea spray had been washed away, leaving only the scent of cleanser and man. A scent reminiscent of the breeding box...and the shower...and Max’s magnificent, naked body.

A tingling sensation not due to nursing tickled her breasts. Her hormones must have been out of whack from giving birth.

Or was it from dying?

She still couldn’t believe she had died. Again. What a fool she had been to think she could survive this world. If it hadn’t been for the poachers, her baby wouldn’t have his mother. If it hadn’t been for the poachers, Noah would have died. If it hadn’t been for the poachers, Max would have been free. A heavy weight anchored her body to Max’s.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered into his shirt. His heat radiated through the soft material finding a home in her cheek.

“Sorry for what?”

“For causing you so much trouble. You were right. It was easy being brave when I stood in the safety of HuBReC’s kennel. I had no idea about this world or anything in it. I didn’t realize how cold it was. How harsh.”

She had to gain control of her chin’s quivering. If she cried now, she wouldn’t be able to tell him she was wrong. And she needed to tell him. She needed to unload the emotional baggage she’d been schlepping since the escape.

“But you took care of me this whole time. And you took care of Noah, too. I understand why you left me at the Tuniit village. You were trying to protect us. I wouldn’t have made it through one night in the frozen wilderness alone. I thought I was brave, but I was just plain stupid.”