“Take care of her. Feed her...” Vrateus had instructed.
She must be hungry. He needed to get her some food.
Since Vrateus’s woman, Svetlana, had taken over meal preparation on the Dark Anomaly, the crew was no longer allowed to come and go in the kitchen whenever they pleased.
Three times a day, Krahkil served the crew the food Svetlana cooked. Outside of the meal hours, snacks were available in the mess hall.
Lunchtime had passed, and there was still some time before dinner. He should get something for the female—Nadia—from the mess hall, but first he needed to get Lesh.
He’d left the mahdi chained in the humans’ spaceship. Lesh could take care of himself, but Wyck didn’t like leaving him alone for long anywhere but in his room.
Pushing away from the doors, he turned right, heading in the direction of the human’s spaceship.
Three errocks—Nocc, Trox, and Gler—were working on stripping the ship of equipment.
Chained in the spot where he’d left him, Lesh lay on his belly. However, his posture was far from relaxed. His paws drawn under him, all six eyes trained on the errocks, the animal was ready to pounce on anyone who came too close.
“There you are,” Gler growled as soon as he’d sighted Wyck. “Get your beast the hell out of here. He’s in the way.”
Lesh leaped to his feet the moment Wyck entered. He refrained from petting or even greeting the animal in the presence of the others, silently unwinding the chain from the bar on the wall, instead.
“Where is Vrateus?” he asked Gler.
“Took some boxes with weapons over to his storage.”
Weapons.
He remembered about Nadia’s knife in his pocket. It was resting right above the wound she’d made between his ribs.
Crazy female.
A warm thrill tickled inside his chest at the thought of her.
Vrateus didn’t allow anyone but Svetlana to carry weapons. Although the laser knife was more of a utility tool, Wyck was certain his captain would classify it as a weapon and would demand Wyck surrender it to him. Any of the errocks present would love to get their hands on the blade, too.
He didn’t always obey his captain, but he’d never concealed anything from his family before. Except for Lesh. His grip tightened on the chain connected to the mahdi’s middle neck.
Wyck had found Lesh in one of the narrow passages that were plentiful around the Dark Anomaly, in which only the mahdi pup could fit. He’d been not much bigger than Wyck’s forearm back then, whimpering in fear, his three heads pressed tight to each other.
The youngest on the Dark Anomaly, Wyck was only fourteen back then. Finding someone younger than himself had intrigued him. Having someone small and defenseless, who wouldn’t order him around, had felt refreshing.
“Hey!” Nocc stomped out from a side compartment, hauling out an armload of spacesuits. He dropped them on the floor. “How is my female doing?”
Wyck’s neck muscles stiffened, and his jaw tightened at the word “my.”
“Ours,” he corrected. “That’s what the captain said.”
“Fuck the captain.” Nocc came closer and wrapped his arm around Wyck’s shoulders.
Just a hand-width shorter than Wyck, Nocc was two decades older than Wyck’s twenty-four years of age.
“The captain put you in charge of the female, didn’t he?” Nocc said in a conspiratorial tone. “Whatever you do with her now is up to you, right?”
“That’s not what he meant—”
“Since when do you care about what he means?” Nocc snapped. “All errocks are a family. Here, we’re all brothers. And family comes first.”
Wyck had been raised with this motto hammered into his brain—the errocks are one large family. His father had died in the crash. The remaining errocks raised him, with Crux taking the role of his father.
As one of the errock family, Wyck had even gone against the captain’s authority before. Only a few weeks ago, Crux had poisoned Vrateus, intending to get rid of the captain. Wyck helped Crux and the others to bring the crew under their control. Had Vrateus and his woman not wrested back the power, things would’ve been very different right now. Nadia would’ve ended up in the errocks’ possession. In which case, she might be dead already.
He’d heard errocks fucked in savage ways. Ever since Wyck grew big enough for his cocks to get hard, Crux showed him plenty of videos depicting sexual acts. Crux accompanied them with even more graphic comments, describing the gruesome details no video had.
“If you’re that scared about upsetting your precious captain, there’re many ways we could cover it