about causing the woman he loved pain was the same way a mother would feel about accidentally slamming her child’s hand in a car door. Even though the pain was inflicted by accident, it still caused a flood of shame and horror and distress—so much so that he could hardly concentrate on anything else.
So much so that he almost missed the NeverBreeders guards coming towards them with a cartload of new breeder males for the Compound.
At the last minute, his eye picked it up, though and he grabbed Penny’s arm and dragged her off the road.
“What? What is it?” she gasped as they hid themselves in the undergrowth.
“NeverBreeders with a fresh load of males for the Compound,” V’rex growled softly. “Comin’ our way.”
“They are?” She leaned forward and squinted at the road. “You must have amazing eyesight—I don’t see anything.”
“Kindred vision,” V said shortly. “Now listen—here’s what we’re gonna do…”
Eighty-Two
Drace struggled against the manacles that bound his wrists behind his back. They were made of some kind of unbreakable polymerized alloy he’d never encountered, but that didn’t stop him. He was a Havoc which meant he never gave up, no matter how hopeless the odds.
The little orange bastards who had kidnapped him were walking along beside the hover cart, which was winding its way through a jungle. It was fucking hot and Drace had a headache—a pounding in his skull which was probably the direct result of whatever knock-out drugs his kidnappers had used.
Nor was he their only prisoner. There were two other males in the cart with him—a huge two-headed Trollox who took up most of the available room in the cart on his own, and a squinty-eyed Turpine who had been trying to sell Drace on the idea of new ion thrusters for his ship before both of them had been drugged and abducted.
There were nine guards—nine little orange bastards walking around the cart—all of them with either blasters or pain-prods. Those actually wouldn’t have been bad odds if the three prisoners in the hover cart had been unbound, Drace speculated.
The Trollox alone could probably rip the heads off six of their abductors in a matter of seconds if given a chance. All four of his beady red eyes were glaring with anger at the little orange humanoids and red drool was running down his tusks. The side of the cart he sat on was listing downwards so that the bottom of the hover cart was nearly dragging in the dirt. He looked so menacing, that even their captors seemed to have doubts about him.
“I do not think that we should have captured the Trollox, Voone,” one of them was saying to another. “His potential for violence is vast and I do not know if he will be susceptible to the hypno-whispers.”
“But did you see the size of his maleness, Roone?” the other guard argued. “His fertility is extreme! He will be able to father many fetuses for our Glorious Leader.”
Drace wondered what in the Seven Hells they were going on about. Who was the Glorious Leader and what need did he have for a super-fertile Trollox? What kind of a fucked-up mess had he been dragged into, anyway?
Knew I shouldn’t have gone to Hell’s Gate Station, Drace berated himself for the hundredth time. All those rumors of abductions… But of course, he’d thought it was only females being abducted. He’d had no idea that males were also on the ticket. He—
Suddenly he felt the manacles on his wrists click open. Eyes wide with surprise, he pulled his hands out from behind his back and looked down—sure enough, he was free.
And he wasn’t the only one.
The shifty-eyed Turpine was also staring down at his bare wrists. And then, the Trollox suddenly pulled his arms free as well.
“Free,” one of his heads growled, looking down at his thick, gray wrists. “Grox is free!”
“Kill,” the second head snarled, looking at the little orange captors. “Kill all orange half-men!”
“Watch out!” one of the little orange captors shouted. “They’re free! Who opened their manacles?”
“It wasn’t me, Voone!” one of them shouted.
“You hold the remote, Roone!” another one yelled. “Did you press the lock-release mechanism?”
“Kill all!” roared the Trollox and half jumped, half-fell out of the cart.
As all of their little orange captors rushed forward to stop him, Drace jumped out of the cart himself and rushed one of the guards. He wrestled with the little humanoid—who was surprisingly strong—and finally managed to get his pain prod away from him.
He gave his former