The pit rose from the wasteland like a tumor, a massive structure that looked like it had been carved out of the ground itself and then built up with whatever materials were at hand. Scrap metal. Salvaged hull plating. Chunks of stone and concrete. It was enormous, easily the size of a stadium, and the sound coming from it made the hair on the back of my neck stand up.
Hundreds of voices, all screaming at once. The sound battered at me, a physical assault that made my ears ring and my head pound.
The vehicle ground to a halt outside what looked like a service entrance. The guards hauled us out one by one, their grips bruising, their faces bored. This was routine for them. Just another day, another batch of meat for the grinder.
The roar of the crowd got louder with every step, building and building until it was all I heard, all I felt. My skin crawled,every nerve ending screaming at me to run, to fight, to do anything but keep walking toward that sound as the guards led me into hell.
Persico's box sat high above the arena floor, giving him a perfect view of the carnage below. The cage they shoved me into was barely big enough to stand in, the bars close enough that I felt the heat from the crowd pressing in around me.
The stands were packed.
Hundreds of aliens—maybe thousands—all different species, all screaming for blood. Their faces blurred together into a nightmare of teeth and eyes and hunger, and the sound was deafening, a wall of noise that made my ears ring and my head pound.
I gripped the bars to keep from falling, my legs shaking so hard I could barely stand.
Below, on the floor of the pit, thirty fighters stood waiting.
Thirty aliens, all of them looking up at me with expressions that made my stomach turn. Lust. Hunger. Anticipation. They were drooling, some of them, their eyes tracking over my barely-covered body like I was already theirs. Like they were already deciding what they'd do to me first.
They all looked like monsters.
Scaled. Furred. Fanged. Clawed. Things that could tear me apart without breaking a sweat. Things that would enjoy it. Things that had probably done it before to other women, other prizes, other victims who'd stood in this cage and looked down at their future and known they were already dead.
All except one.
He stood near the back of the group, taller than most, with a light tawny pelt that caught the harsh lights of the arena. Long dark hair pulled back in a partial knot, the rest falling past his shoulders. And eyes—golden eyes that I saw even fromwhere I stood, bright and fierce and somehow different from the predatory stares of the others.
He wasn't looking at me like I was meat. His gaze was curious, kind... almost protective.
He was Vaktaire, like Jala, but I didn't know him. He was obviously a prisoner like the others, but something in his gaze reached across the distance between us and wrapped around my chest like a lifeline.
Please.
I didn't know if I was praying or begging or just breaking apart completely. Maybe all three. But I couldn't look away from him, couldn't stop cataloging the set of his shoulders, the way he stood apart from the others, the fierce protectiveness in his eyes that made something crack open inside me.
Hope. Devastating, terrifying hope that hurt worse than despair because it gave me something to lose.
Because if I had to belong to one of these monsters, he might be survivable.
And the way he was looking at me—like I mattered, like I was worth fighting for, made me believe, just for a moment, that I might actually survive this.
A roar went up from the crowd—bloodthirsty, eager—and I felt the cage shudder beneath my feet as they began to lower it. My stomach dropped with it, but I forced myself to stand straighter. To lift my chin higher.
They wanted me afraid. Wanted me cowering and broken before the fight even started.
Fuck that.
I wrapped my hands around the bars and stared out at the sea of alien faces, at Persico in his box with that smug smile, at the fighters below waiting to tear each other apart for the privilege of owning me. My jaw clenched so hard my teeth ached.
I wasn't going to give them the satisfaction of seeing me crumble. Not now. Not ever.
Let them look. Let them see exactly what they were trying to break.
When this was over—when I found a way out of this nightmare—I was going to make Declan Hewes regret every second of this. That was a promise I made to myself, standing in that cage in scraps of fabric and chains, with thousands of eyes crawling over my skin.
I was going to survive this. And then I was going to make them all pay.
Chapter 6
