Throttle was still awake even after his shal-la drifted back to sleep.
He felt a little torn between chiding the woman for not being as upset as she should have been to find three males in her bed. Then he had gotten curious. Was waking up with more than one male in her bed a normal occurrence for her?
Because if it was, he and his bros would have to put a stop to such self destructive behavior.
But for now he merely chalked her reaction or lack there of, to the fact that the woman was still very exhausted. Perhaps too much to function right at the moment even after only a few hours sleep.
He lifted himself up a little bit so that he could look at her and make sure that she was asleep and smiled a little bit before he moved to lay back down normally. He had another two in a half hours before Modo and Vinny woke up.
Waking up four or five hours before everyone else was a habit that the three had developed when they had been prisoners.
Ruby shifted in her sleep and he jerked his head around to look at her again and went perfectly still as she curled up against Vinny's side and jerked all of the previously stolen covers off of the white furred alien. Causing him to snort and jerk awake and look around, a funny expression on his face before he looked down at the top of Ruby's dark head and sighed before he curled himself around her and closed his eyes again and went back to sleep.
Leaving Throttle wide awake and completely at the mercy of his own thoughts.
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Stoker made a choking sound as he stared at Gabriel wide eyed.
His mind abuzz with questions. He couldn't believe that Gabriel would allow a female of his own flesh and blood to go into the military, let alone combat where she could be hurt or killed.
He was partially tempted to ask the man if he was insane for allowing one of his female kin into such a dangerous line of work. But abruptly shut his mouth when he remembered that he was no better. After all, Carbine was his niece and he allowed her to do dangerous things.
But then again he was the only male kin that Carbine had and he was far too valuable as a soldier to simply walk away. Which was why he had dragged Carbine into the service with him. He'd felt it was the only choice that he had to keep her safe.
For all he knew things were the same with Gabriel and his sister. "Okay...now that I've had time to sort through what you've just told me. Maybe you should tell me which girl is your sister and what you plan to do if anything happens to her."
Gabriel gave him a chilling look as he said. "Ruby. And as for what I'll do if anyone lays a hand on her without permission, I think you already have a pretty good guess."
Stoker took a deep shuddering breath and mentally swore as he ran one hand through his dark hair. The human was right. He already had a damn good idea of what he would do if anything happened to his sister. And the martian race would pay for the sins of a few as a whole.
Jesus-fucking-Christ this was an intergalactic incident just waiting to happen. "You're commander is your sister?"
"Yes."
"Okay. I get that. But I don't understand what your both doing on the same team. To my knowledge of the time I spent on earth, the military wouldn't place siblings together on the same team. It's considered a taboo of sorts."
"We were placed on the same team after she went back on active duty. The military figured that since it was their partial fuck up that caused her to be taken prisoner, that they owed her a huge favor."
Stoker blinked, "Partial fuck up? What do you mean?"
Gabriel steepled his fingers and looked up at the ceiling for a second. "Ruby's time in captivity happened because the higher ups were trying to weed out traitors leaking information to the enemy. I guess they figured that a few sacrifices justified the means. Ruby's team was killed off, leaving her to try and hold back the enemy on her own while trying to get over forty something civilians to safety. They went to a place that was supposed to be safe for U.S military and refugees. The village leader betrayed them and handed them over to the enemy and then Ruby was locked up and forced to watch as a group of butchers started killing off the civilians."
Stoker stared at the human with a sickened expression on his face as he digested everything that he was being told before asking, "How long was she there?"
"Six months."
"It took them that long to send someone to get her?"
"No. They could have sent someone in much sooner, they were merely killing time in the hopes that she would be dead by the time someone got there. Apparently they were worried that she would figure out what they had done."
"So they were just going to let her rot." The sorry bastards. Stoker thought darkly as he imagined the hell that the woman had suffered through. Being left for dead by her own people must have hurt her deeply, so it only stood to reason that she would surround herself with people that she could trust without question.
"Did she figure things out?"
"No. At least I don't think so. Her mental condition was so unstable by the time she was taken from the place she was being held that she couldn't think right at all. If she had figured things out some time along the way, she's suppressed whatever she knows."
"Then how did you find out?"
"I questioned everything. A lot of the circumstances and stories that I was told, didn't make any sense to me. They all sounded so damn suspicious that I started to investigate my higher ups. I hit pay dirt and that same night walked into a secret meeting between the generals that had betrayed her and told them straight up that unless they wanted their dirty little secret plastered all over the global news channel- That they would assemble a team and send us to get my sister whether she was dead or alive. They agreed, but just to mess with them a little bit I hacked into their bank accounts and stole millions from the lot of them and secreted it away for Ruby. Then I had them stripped of their ranks. After that I filed police complaints and had some of them arrested- You know the normal stuff."
Stoker actually gaped at the man now, thinking that there was no fucking way that he had done all of those things as Gabriel cheerfully continued his list of punishments against the military that had left his sister for dead. But the more the man talked the more Stoker was starting to believe that he was all kinds of crazy and decided that if Gabriel ever went off the deep end that instead of standing in the man's way; he'd get behind him and let him go crazy.
Who knew, maybe he'd enjoy the show.
