Gravity (Dark Anomaly #1) - Marina Simcoe Page 0,79

The outer wall gaped with a freshly cut opening. A couple of his crew members stood by, peeking inside it.

“Svetlana?” he asked, shoving them out of the way.

“She returned to your room a while back,” someone said.

“She did?” Vrateus turned to face the speaker, Xoqaek.

“Malahki said she left,” the second one, Gahot, added.

She was safe.

He let the thought trickle through his mind with a calming bliss.

“Malahki? Where is it?”

“Um...” Gahot looked around, confusion spreading on his face. “It was just here...”

Vrateus glanced inside the opening, into the interior of a brightly lit ship he had not seen before.

Only now Valmo’s words about the crash had fully registered with him. Then, the understanding for the reason for the fight rushed in.

An unknown human female crouched low by the far wall of the room. Lesh kept hissing, tied to a piece of wreckage nearby. Wyck stood over her, his chest heaving fast and heavy, his gaze unhinged, and his knuckles bloody.

Standing on one knee, Nocc glared at him, blood trickling out of his nose and down his face.

At least two more humans lay on the floor behind them, their heads twisted at unnatural angles. Either they had died during the crash or had been killed shortly after, but they were obviously dead now.

“What is going on here?” Vrateus climbed inside, adjusting the grip on the guns in his hands.

“This does not concern you,” Nocc rasped, smearing the blood on his face with the back of his hand. “You already have a female. You can’t have them all.”

A familiar combination of annoyance and worry rushed over Vrateus.

Another female.

He didn’t talk to her. He refused to spare her a glance. A wave of fear and resentment rose in his chest. This female was not just a threat to the barely re-established order, her mere appearance here put the relatively safe existence of Svetlana into danger all over again.

He had managed to force his crew to view Svetlana as their superior. There were no more weekly sessions in the mess hall. With the new arrival, they could easily revert to treating her as an object to relieve their sexual tension—not to mention the disturbance that was already happening.

“So, you have fought, I see.” He moved his gaze from Nocc to Wyck. Judging by their positions, Wyck had won the last round. However, if Vrateus didn’t stop them now, there could be many more. With the others now coming in, aggression buzzed in the air.

If he let the situation slip out of control now, many more of his crew might end up joining the dead humans on the floor.

“Wyck won?”

Wyck nodded as Nocc leaped to his feet, raising his fists.

“He is not getting her!”

“He did best you.” Vrateus turned to the two at the entrance. Xoqaek and Gahot had entered, with many more of his crew climbing in or poking their heads through. “Was it a fair fight?” he asked Xoqaek and Gahot.

“Um... Sure.” They nodded.

“It’s not over yet!” Nocc roared.

“I say when the fight is over around here!” Vrateus raised his voice and his weapons. “And I’m saying this one is.”

“Wyck can’t have her,” Enkail rumbled. The dimo obviously hadn’t stayed behind to finish servicing the spacesuits. Vrateus made a note to discipline him later for not doing his work. “If she is the prize, then we all have to get a chance to fight for her, too!”

That was met with a loud rumbling of approval from everyone.

“No one is getting the female!” Vrateus shouted over the noise, lifting his arm to call for silence. “No one!”

Glares clashed with his as he turned around the room.

“The rules will stay the same. The female belongs to no one and to all of us.”

“What do you mean?” The same question came from many mouths.

“She will be brought to the mess hall, weekly.” The solution had worked well enough before. “You’ll be getting your entertainment back!”

Svetlana had disliked the sessions in the mess hall. He had reasons to believe the new female might not be fond of them either. However, the priority was to dissipate the aggression crackling in the air.

And hopefully save some lives.

Another wave of rumbles rolled through the room. To his relief, it was thick with approval for his decision.

It occurred to him that the presence of another female on the Dark Anomaly might work to his benefit. Ever since he had discontinued the sessions in the mess hall, he had overheard plenty of comments and caught enough disgruntled glances tossed Svetlana’s way. Having another