Of course, her old team, Dane’s Devils, had never engaged in such practices. This was probably due to the fact that two of the members—herself and Rook—were females. Plus, Rook and Bryce had been in a relationship, albeit an open one.
But what about Reece and his guys? Fairchild suddenly found herself wondering if the men she was eating dinner with had spawned any future recruits in the course of their travels. She didn’t ask, partly because she didn’t want to know the answer, but mainly because Dutton still hadn’t finished his story.
“After I was born, the people of my city-state didn’t take very kindly to me,” he said. “They felt that the leaders had dishonored them by hiring the Mercs to save them, and I was a visible reminder of that dishonor. Instead of training me to fight, like the other boys, I was sent to the kitchens to cook.”
“He still learned plenty about fighting,” Reece added. “Though not in the conventional manner. The other boys bullied him, but he had the blood of the Mercs in his veins. When the Guild finally sent someone to retrieve him, they found him fighting with a gang of a dozen boys. I’m told the fight was even.”
Dutton just shook his head.
“There were twenty of them,” he said quietly. “And it wasn’t even. I was winning.”
He forked a big chunk of sausage into his mouth and started to chew. Fairchild now understood why Dutton talked so little. When he was young, he’d had no friends, nobody to talk to at all. But he could open up when he really wanted to. He’d spoken more in the past few minutes than in all the time she’d known him.
She also had a feeling that Dutton’s difficult childhood had not been entirely by accident. It was common for Mercs to create offspring in places where their upbringing would be harsh. The Guild believed this helped to build toughness, or something like that. Fairchild wasn’t exactly in love with the idea, but for her the point was irrelevant. She obviously wasn’t going to be impregnating anybody, and she certainly had no intentions of getting pregnant herself. She had her pills to keep that from happening.
“What about you?” she asked, turning her attention to Nash. “What’s your story?”
It took the Merc several seconds to swallow his huge mouthful of pasta and wash it down with a slug of wine. Once he’d done that, he only shrugged and shook his head.
“What’s there to tell?” he asked.
Fairchild gave him a harsh look. “Oh, come on,” she said. “A few hours ago, I couldn’t get you to shut up.” She arched a wicked brow. “Don’t make me torture it out of you.”
Nash sighed and poured himself another glass of wine. Then he topped off Fairchild’s glass.
“Fine,” he said. “I’m from Almalex-9. Heard of it?”
Fairchild nodded that she had. The planet was a very old world ruled by wealthy aristocratic families. She was a bit confused though. Nash didn’t seem the type.
“Well, it’s pretty simple, really,” he explained. “My mother came from one of the great houses of Almalex, but she had a penchant for, ah,minglingwith the lower classes. She got herself kidnapped by one of the undercity street gangs. Insteadof paying the ransom, her father hired the Mercs to rescue her. Probably cost him more money doing it that way, but it was a matter of principle. Anyway, the Mercs brought her back safe and sound, along with a new member of the family in her belly. ’Course, Grampa didn’t learn aboutthatuntil a few months later.”
“Wait,” Fairchild said. “You mean the Mercs bred her as payment? But I thought—”
Nash waved his hand. “No, no, nothing like that. Gramps had plenty of cash to pay them with. The pregnancy was just something that happened along the way. Mom was a bit of a free spirit, shall we say. God, you shoulda heard the way she used to pine after my fathers. There were five of them, all incredibly handsome, to hear her tell it.” He ran his fingers through his hair and grinned. “She must have been telling the truth. I mean, just look at the results.”
Fairchild rolled her eyes in disdain, though deep down she didn’t mind Nash’s cocky attitude as much as she had before their little fight.
“Okay,” she said. “But how does that explain, you know…?”
She gestured toward the tattoos lining Nash’s bare arms.
“Oh yeah,” he said. “These. Well, I guess I inherited some of my mom’s free-spiritedness. The blood of the Mercs probably had something to do with it too. I couldn’t stand being cooped up in my grandfather’s stuffy old mansion all the time, so I started mingling with the undercity kids too, though not quite in the same way my mother had. I ended up joining the same gang that had kidnapped my mother in the first place.” He grinned. “Whenthe Guild finally came to take me away, ol’ Gramps sure was happy to see me go.”
Fairchild snorted. “Ibet!”
She glanced over at Reece. The squad leader was done eating, and now he was lounging back in his chair, thoughtfully swirling the wine still left in his glass. Fairchild didn’t need to ask what his story was. She already knew it from their time in the academy.
Reece’s upbringing was…unconventional, at least by Guild standards. His fathers had been three Mercs sent to some backwater rimworld to clean out a mine that had gotten overrun by mutants. The villagers who hired them couldn’t foot the bill, so the Mercs had taken a woman instead, much as Dutton’s fathers had done. Only, they hadn’t left the impregnated woman behind in typical Merc fashion. Instead, they’d taken her on as an unofficial member of their crew. The Guild hadn’t been happy about that at first, but they couldn’t deny the results. Reece’s parents got the job done.
And Reece had grown up right in the thick of it, watching his parents travel around the galaxy taking care of business. As a boy, he’d just gone by the name Corbyn. Once it was time for him to begin his training, however, he’d taken the family name of one of his three fathers, the team leader—Aeron Reece.
“How about you?” Nash asked.
Fairchild hesitated. It was only natural that the guys would be curious about her background, and it was only fair that she should tell them, considering the way they had shared their own stories with her. But she really didn’t want to get into her past right now. Not when she was feeling so… so happy.
Thankfully, Reece saved her the trouble.
“Maybe we should save that for another time,” he said. “We don’t want to blow all of our conversation material on our first meal together, do we?” He checked his watch. “Besides, it’s been a long day, and it’s getting late. We need to get plenty of sack time so we can continue our training tomorrow.”
