Page 8 of Chained to the Champion
The urge to check, the need to see, to taste threat or fate, roared in me. I grabbed her arm, rougher than I meant, and held until her eyes locked on mine. The world shrank to her pulse beneath my claws, the heat between us a forge, fever and fear tangled.
She didn’t flinch. She held my stare, bared her teeth, a challenge caught somewhere between dare and victory.
She broke it first, voice ground out through dust. “That one’s going to sing all the way to the city; we’ll have every vulture with scales after us soon.”
Cold logic tamped down my urges.
My claws ached as I let go, skin buzzing with the ghost of her. “We need to get into the city fast, before he has a chance to talk.”
Her nod was all edge and bite, a predator’s snarl back in her eyes. “And have you come up with a plan?”
I ripped my hand away, fingers flexing in the heat. I sifted through the dead Ignarath’s satchel, turned out tokens, a councilchit, some ragged bit of favor, not enough, not with blood on the sand this fresh.
Our options were ash, every one worse than the last. “We need to be what they expect to see. Slave and trader. A Drakarn with a leashed pet.” The words burned, shame and violence braided tight.
Her eyes went dead black, danger flaring cold and pure. “You just want me to trust that you won'tactuallysell me? I remember the damned mating trials. You've been trying to push humans out of Scalvaris for months! Why the hell should I trust you?”
“No one’s selling you.” The words were stone. “And whatever my feelings about your presence in Scalvaris, I would not dishonor myself by lying to you. You've saved my life. I owe you a debt.”
The air between us buzzed, venom and challenge drawn tight as a nerve. Her jaw flexed under her bruises, eyes daring me, daring the world, to say one wrong word.
“There’s the leash, or there’s a grave.” My voice scraped like broken glass. “No third option. Not with the Ignarath.”
Her eyes burned, hot and cold, afraid and furious. She would never kneel, never give in. Not for them.
Not for me.
“Trust me. Play the part. Or we die.”
4
VEGA
Water.
It was a cheap excuse, but if I stood next to Zarvash for another minute, I'd punch the words out of his mouth. My shield, my battered ticket to three minutes of breathing room away from that fire-eyed monster.
It was astonishing, really, how a body could ache for relief and risk in exactly the wrong proportions.
I grabbed the scavenged flask and shot Zarvash my deadliestI hope you swallow a sun-scarab in your sleepglare. He didn’t rise to the bait. One brow arched, that infuriating shade of amusement in his eyes, the kind that said he’d seen every kind of tantrum, dissected it, and found it wanting. My fists curled.
It would be satisfying, deeply, to break a knuckle or two on his stupid, inscrutable face. Maybe that would shake loose whatever weird spell he’d slipped under my skin.
He didn’t move. Didn’t so much as twitch an ankle to block my path. Smart, maybe. Or, worse, indifferent, except that the glint in his eyes said otherwise. Every second of proximity made my molars grind, a friction born of a thousand cautions and one too many irrational, hot spikes of … want.
God. Even thinking the word felt like a betrayal.
I stalked off. My wrist pulsed in pain, deep and sharp, not just bruised but a reminder of every mistake since landing on this gods-be-damned planet. I had to ignore it.
I had to disregard Zarvash, his shadow, the way he kept his wings angled just so, his tendency to watch and not interfere, like I was some problem he’d decided to solve only at the last possible moment, as if he could hold himself aloof from the mess of us humans clinging to survival by spite and habit.
I didn't choose to be here, buddy.
My mind was a cauldron, bubbling over with poison and the ghost of his touch. Still. That brief sweep of his claws, gentle, somehow, as if he knew how breakable I really was, left heat in my skin and confusion in my blood.
Betrayal, treason at the molecular level; my bones feeling hunger instead of hate.
No. Not him.
