A mated Minotaur is something else.Devotion sharpened into violence.Possession with a pulse.
A beast who will tear down cities to find the one person fate carved his name into.
Monsters have already caged Briana, I won’t become another one.
“I need to fight,” I say.
Cruz sighs.“Of course you do.”
“Find someone.”
“It’s after 2:00 in the morning.”
“There are always idiots downstairs.”
“That’s sadly true.”
I move toward the hallway, but Cruz catches my arm.My entire body locks, but I don’t shake him off.Barely.
His fingers tighten once.“You can bleed some of this off, but it won’t fix the problem.”
“I know.”Goddess help me, do I know.
“Do you?”
I look at him, and he releases me.
“Fine,” he mutters.“But if you kill someone, I’m telling Aldron it was emotional distress and poor management.”
“Helpful.”
“I try.”
We head downstairs.The underground level beneath The Gin Room is not for humans.Not most of them.The main floor is polished wood and amber light, velvet and music, and flirtation.Down here, the monsters show who they really are.
Concrete walls.Steel gates.Blood drains in the floor.Old magic woven into every brick to keep sound from rising and death from leaving stains that matter.The cage sits in the center of the room, circular, reinforced, and scarred from claws, horns, fangs, and worse.
This is where monsters come to remember what they are.The world may have forgotten we exist, turned us into fairy tales, but here we can still be real.
A few fighters linger even though the official matches ended hours ago.A jackal shifter with a split lip drinks from a bottle near the lockers.Two demons play cards on an overturned crate.A ghoul stitches his own forearm with black thread and hums off-key.
Everyone looks up when Cruz and I enter.Then everyone looks away.I peel off my shirt and toss it onto a bench.My skin feels too tight.The beast paces beneath it, dragging horns along the inside of my skull.
Cruz walks to the board and checks the names from earlier tonight.“Your options are limited unless you want to fight the ghoul, and I’m pretty sure he already lost three fingers.”
The ghoul raises his stitched arm.“Two fingers and a thumb.”
“Apologies,” Cruz says.“Very different.”
“I’ll fight him,” the jackal says.
His eyes are too bright, pupils blown wide.Adrenaline.Maybe something else.Some creatures take tonics before matches.It makes them faster.Stupider too.
Cruz looks at me, and I nod.
“Submission,” Cruz says.“Human forms only.No killing.No permanent maiming.Knox, that last one is mostly for you.”
I say nothing.
