Page 31 of Claimed By the War Brute
A different roar rises in me now: purpose. I’m not dying for them. I’m not dying alone. Not while she’s still breathing. Not while he still breathes.
I step forward and stand tall. “You want a show?” I roar to the empty seats, voice raw and thrilling. Then I turn toward the guards clustering at the ready. “Come get it.”
The crowd surges. I let them watch. I let them wait. I let them fear.
Aelphus leans forward, his golden robes catching the gleam of flickering lights. He’s a king judging a gladiator, but there’s a flicker there—something new. Could it be respect? Admiration? Maybe even a shade of hesitation?
I lock eyes with him. My voice is deep, vibrating through my chest. “I’m not yours. And I’m not dead.”
The guards shift. Stunned. Hesitant. They smell fear. But they see determination too—too raw, too lethal, too complete.
Let them come. Let them all come. I'm ready.
I feel every broken bone in my body. But I don’t slow down. I don’t stop. My breath rises in a warrior’s rhythm. Every guardwho steps in front of me feels the weight of my promise. I’ve leapt out from under death—and I will tear everything in my path to get back to the one who matters.
The arena begins to tremble. Aelphus stands from his dais. Everything pulses brighter now. I step toward the edge.
The gate behind me opens again—another guard wave surging forward. I don’t flinch. I roar.
Tonight, they think they host a spectacle. But they don’t yet know the storm they’ve unleashed.
And I don’t just fight for survival anymore. I fight for retribution. For destiny. For her.
CHAPTER 25
SYD
Idon’t hear a scream. I hear a roar. It rumbles through the reinforced plating—the penultimate herald of something impossible. It quakes in my bones. It’s primal. It’s feral. It’s not the dying howl of defeat—it’s the triumphant battle cry of survival.
Garrus is alive.
My fingers freeze on the seam of the wrist cuff. Hours of painstaking micro-surgery—hours squeezing that embedded microcircuit from my heelplate against metal wall, hacking at the alloy to create a hidden pressure point. The tip of that sliver has wiggled through the lock's circuitry so many times I’ve lost count. It’s maddening. Each heartbeat dials up the pressure: what if I get it wrong? What if they arrive first?
But then the roar shakes the corridor. It's him speaking through every fiber of this ship—raw, angry, weightless. His fight becomes my fuel. My eyes burn with new light, breath speeding. I redouble my efforts, anchoring myself by bracing my shoulders into the table’s padding. I file away the sound, as much as it reverberates in my skull. He’s out there, refusing to die. Refusing to leave me behind. And I won’t let him.
The door slides open with the courtesy of a domino falling.
“Impressive,” Walter Malmount says, stepping in like he expects applause. He holds a datapad in one hand—detachable, high-tech, clinical. On the screen, Garrus's silhouette rises, drenched in blood beneath the arena’s lights, one broken opponent still twitching by his boot. He stares straight at the camera—into me. His eyes: gold and blazing. The live feed flickers across the wall screen, taunting me.
“He’s quite the fighter,” Dad says, voice flat as iced propellant. His pride radiates in short circuits: surgical, reactive. “The PR alone… Aelphus thinks he’s too dangerous to live long.”
I don’t blink.
“He…” I step forward, voice low. “That’s because Aelphus is smarter than you.”
He smiles, but it wanes like a dying star. “You don’t have to play this little martyr game. I can stop it. If you say the word, that monster gets pulled from the arena. We make him 'disappear.' Quietly. Entire family buys into his silence.”
Blood hammers in my ears. My fingers tremble, riding the friction on the cuff. I taste defiance. I taste rebellion.
“No,” I say, voice tight. “Because that doesn’t end it. If he lives, he’s still marked, still hunted.” I lean closer, full of fire. “You’d just have the world waiting around every corner for a Vakutan man made bulletproof by love—one mess-up away from being murdered in his sleep. And I’m not your trophy. I’m not a product. I’m not the brand asset you think you can pull or auction.” My eyes sharpen. “You’ve already lost. You just don’t know it yet.”
He stands silent, as if recalculating. His smile vanishes. He nods once—shallow, thin.
The door slides shut. I taste stale victory. Isolation. And resolve.
“I’m coming, Garrus,” I whisper. “Hold on.”
The arena feed blares again, flooding the corridor—louder. I lean into the signal. It’s bigger now; volume set to brutal. Garrus is standing on steel and bodies, blades dripping crimson, his whole form a silhouette of rage. He doesn’t boast. He doesn’t threaten. He doesn’t blink. He just is.
