Page 22 of Chained to the Champion
Alien pheromones? Stockholm syndrome? Just plain stupid desperation?
It didn't matter. I couldn't afford it. Not now. Lives depended on me thinking straight.
But the image wouldn't fade. Bronze scales. Gold eyes. That growl when the guard hit me.
Touch what is mine, and I will rip your throat out with my teeth.
A shiver traced its way down my spine. Not fear. Damn it. Something else entirely. Something hot and confusing and dangerous.
I pressed my palms flat against the cold, gritty floor.Remember who you are, Cross.Intel officer. Survivor. Not some weak-kneed damsel pinning her hopes on a winged alien predator.
But as the night bled towards dawn, as the arena sounds died to an echoing, waiting silence, a traitorous part of me hoped. Against logic. Against survival instinct.
Hoped he'd come.
Hoped he'd fight.
Hoped he'd win.
Hoped that look, that possessive fury, meant something after all.
Sleep finally dragged me under, shallow and restless. Haunted by gold eyes and the bloody promise of dawn.
10
ZARVASH
The room could wait.Its stink of desperation andhercould wait.
Vega's rashness was a clenched fist inside my chest, pulsing heat with every step I took away from that cursed arena. I prowled Ignarath's festering edges instead, the grounds a target under the cold moonlight. Mapping its weaknesses. Cataloging its flaws. The stone itself seemed to drink the light, ancient and thirsty. Iron-banded gates waited, promising violence. Good. Violence I understood.
Night bled away the crowds. Only dregs remained, gamblers rolling dice in the shadows, scarred fighters nursing hatred, the scent of stale blood and desperation thick on the air. Faces cataloged. Weaknesses noted.
Arena patrols. Three of them. Circling in regular intervals. Arrogant in their routes. One favored his left leg, a distinct limp. Vulnerable. Another wore heavy plate armor, movement sluggish. Advantage. Predictable. Sloppy.
Ignarath confidence was its own kind of rot.
Dust coated my scales when I finally returned to the dilapidated hole we called a room. Sanctuary? It reeked ofconfinement. I slammed the door, the impact rattling the frame, shaking dust motes down into the gloom.
Relief warred with … something else. A hollow space where her defiance should have been.
She'd nearly gotten killed. Nearly dragged me down with her. For a glimpse of caged humans? A fool's errand born of misplaced loyalty that almost bought us both a piece of Ignarath dirt.
I paced, restless. My tail lashed the splintered floorboards, a counterpoint to the screaming protest in my useless wing. Physical pain I could manage. Use. It sharpened my focus. But the walls felt too close, pressing in, stealing air. Ignarath's unique stench, old blood, hot metal, piss, decay, clung to everything, somehow made sharper by Vega's lingering scent.
That impossible sweetness cutting through the filth, a brand on my senses.
Sleep? A dead hope. Tomorrow demanded clarity. Strength. Every scrap of tactical cunning I possessed. The twin suns of Volcaryth magnified every weakness. My wing, a liability. My focus … fractured. My judgment … poisoned by proximity. Hell.
Clear eyes. Cold calculation. That was the path. Vega's life in the balance. Against the ghosts she chased. Against the thousand jagged edges of this pit. Against the storm surge inside me whenever her scent hit, whenever memory flashed, skin flushing under my touch, pulse hammering against my claws?—
Focus. The tournament. Strategy. Bloodsport.
Ignarath's notorious games. Warriors crawled there from every territory, drawn by the promise of glory, coin, or just a cleaner death than their lives offered. Blood fed the sand. I'd tasted it once. Young. Arrogant. I'd paid in pain and shredded pride. I knew the patterns. Knew the unwritten laws etched in scars and bone.
First round: dominance. Posturing and brutality.
Second: ferocity. Unleash the beast.
