Pirate's Gold - S.J. Sanders Page 0,56

screams silenced.

The captain shook his head, and he looked down at the guard’s corpse. “Brushed the damn vine in attempt to push it away from me. Good male died an honorable death.”

In his peripheral vision, Veral watched as Terri’s mouth dropped open, a red flush of anger rising in her cheeks.

“Bullshit! You could have avoided them if you made the attempt instead of making your lackeys clear everything in your path. It’s because of you that he was injured, and you just shot him.”

Veral bristled as the captain calmly pointed his blaster at Terri. His eyes glinted with warning as he addressed her coldly.

“I suggest you gain control of your tongue, female, before you wear away the last of my fond regard for you. I will not tolerate being challenged… Not by any male nor by you. Despite what you think of me, what I did was a kindness. He would have suffered greatly, and his blood would have drawn predators to us. Now should we continue on—or do you really wish to discuss this further? I can inflict so much pain without doing any true harm.”

Veral stepped forward, a rattling growl releasing from him, and the blaster hummed with power as Egbor cocked a brow at him.

“Do not do anything foolish, Veral,” Egbor cautioned. “If you press me, I will kill her.”

“Argurma,” Azan murmured.

Hissing angrily, his vibrissae rattled as information flooded his systems. He could practically taste the coiled tension and anger radiating from the male. From Azan too, although he knew it was for another reason. The other guard moved, also directing his blaster at Terri.

Veral’s eyes narrowed and the captain paled slightly before recovering. Veral knew that the male saw the promise of death in their depths. This was the second time that the captain had threatened to kill her since they arrived on the planet.

He would not be leaving it alive.

“For fuck’s sake,” Terri snapped as she pushed between them. “You’re not going to kill me just yet,” she said with a hard glare at Egbor. She turned to Veral then, flattening her hands against his chest. “Later,” she whispered.

Energy snapped through his muscles, every inch of him thrumming for a fight. A fight that did not come. Her touch restored his control. Instead of lunging for the pirate as he wanted, he wrapped a possessive arm around Terri, drawing her to him before pulling her around until she was in front of him, within the shelter of his body.

She was correct. Later, he would remove the male’s head from his body. He would gild it in the pirate’s own wealth and present it to her. She had a strange objection to such trophies, but perhaps if it were gilded it would more suitably honor her, if she disliked seeing the unadorned bone.

19

After the confrontation with the captain, there was unease among the pirates as they climbed into the higher elevation, away from the low bogs. Terri was aware of it, but kept her attention on the forest. She hadn’t even been aware of the animal that Veral and Azan brought down until it was knocked to the ground directly in her path.

The forest was beautiful, but dangerous. She had no doubt that, even as it became more fantastic as they ascended into its depths and the forest became all the more glorious, there were far worse threats that lurked within it.

And it was beautiful, unlike anything she could have ever imagined existing on Earth, though she knew there were forests and great trees that once grew there, before the devastations. But in the material that she had read since acquiring the info dumps in the translator Veral implanted, nothing had been described that matched what she saw on this planet. Only those of the outer forest bore any resemblance to what she had imagined once grew on Earth. That changed as they went deeper into the forest.

As the forest thickened, the trees of the outer forest were replaced by enormous trees that dwarfed those that came before them. They towered at heights even greater than the broken remains of the tallest buildings of Phoenix. The leaves, most more than twice the size of her hand, cast so many shades of green that it reminded her of a polished alien gem she had seen on the space station. It had swirled with so many hues that it was entrancing, even as its cut made it sparkle with life. That gem could almost have been the perfect