The second dress was more chains than fabric. Thin strips of something gossamer-light that didn'thing to hide my body, held together by links of cold metal that pressed against my skinwith every breath. The chains were decorative, I realized with sick clarity. They weren't holding the dress together—they were the point. A reminder that I was bound. Displayed. Owned.
I'd objected. Had stood there in the holding room while the attendants dressed me and declared, "No. I'm not wearing this."
They'd looked at me with flat, indifferent eyes and kept working.
By the third dress, I stopped objecting.
What was the point? They were going to put me in whatever degrading scrap of fabric they wanted, and my protests changed nothing. So I stood there silent and numb while they wrapped me in something that barely qualified as clothing—a few strategic strips of sheer material that covered my nipples and the apex of my thighs and nothing else. The rest was just skin. Just me, exposed to thousands of eyes.
The temperature in the arena was always too hot. Oppressive heat that made sweat bead on my skin, made the sheer fabric cling even more obscenely. I felt every eye on me as they paraded me through the crowd—feel the weight of their stares like hands touching me without permission.
The cage was barely big enough to stand in, the bars too close together to sit comfortably. I'd press myself against the back corner, as far from the crowd as I could get, but it didn't matter. They could still see everything.
The noise was overwhelming. Thousands of voices screaming, chanting, baying for blood. The lights were too bright, harsh and glaring, turning the pit below into a stage and me into part of the spectacle.
The smell was worse. Sweat and blood and something acrid that might have been fear or excitement or both. It coated the back of my throat, made me want to gag.
And through it all, I'd search the crowd of fighters below for one specific face.
For a tawny pelt and dark hair and golden eyes that looked at me like I was a person instead of meat.
The first fight, I'd found him immediately. He'd been easy to spot—taller than most, moving with that controlled grace that set him apart from the others.
By the third fight, it took longer.
Not because he wasn't there. But because he looked different.
The damage was accumulating.
I'd watched it happen in real-time, cataloged every new injury, every sign that his body was breaking down under the relentless violence.
After the first fight, he'd come back with that gash across his chest, bruises blooming across his ribs and jaw. I'd stitched him up, watched the wound start to heal with that unnatural Vaktaire speed, and thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
After the second fight, the bruises had layered. Purple over yellow over green, a timeline of violence painted across his torso. New cuts joined old ones, some of them reopening when he moved wrong. But he was still strong. Still moved with that deadly skill.
By the third fight, the bruises were so dense now they'd merged into one continuous map of damage. Cuts that should have healed were still raw, his body too depleted to keep up with the repair work.
He moved stiffer. Slower. Like every step hurt.
But he kept winning.
I watched the third fight from the cage, my hands white-knuckled on the bars, my heart racing so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.
Three opponents at once this time. All of them fresh. All of them hungry.
The one blessing—if you could call it that—was that Ahrick's reputation as a warrior kept away all but the skilled and stupid. The weak ones, the opportunists who'd normally swarm a prize like me, they stayed back. They knew what he was.
So the ones who stepped into the pit with him now were either genuinely dangerous or too arrogant to recognize their own mortality.
These three were both.
Ahrick looked exhausted before the fight even started.
The horn sounded.
He moved like he always did—calculated, efficient, using his opponents' momentum against them. But I saw the hesitation now, the split-second delay when his body didn't respond quite as fast as his mind commanded.
The first opponent went down hard. Ahrick's fist connected with his jaw and the alien crumpled.
