Page 21 of Enslak

She wanted me to take them. To hold them.

I reached out slowly. Carefully. Afraid my claws would hurt her.

But she didn't flinch. Didn't pull away.

My hands—massive and scarred and stained with blood that wouldn't wash away—closed around hers.

Soft.

That was the only word my broken mind could find. Her skin felt nothing like what my eyes saw. Not Zarlak's cold, rough texture. Something else entirely.

What I held in my hands was soft. Impossibly soft. Like something precious. Like something that shouldn't exist in a place like this.

I liked it. Liked the feel of her hands in mine. Liked the way her scent grew stronger when I touched her. Liked the way something in my chest eased, like a wound I didn't know I had was finally starting to heal.

She spoke again, her voice gentle. "Come with me. We have to go now."

I understood. Not all the words, but the meaning. The urgency.

I stood, still holding her hands. She led me toward the cell door.

It opened.

Beyond it, instead of the corridor I expected, the one that led to the pits, there was another passage. Dark. Hidden.

A passage I'd never known existed.

She led me into it.

The darkness swallowed us both.

The smell hit immediately. Sewage. Rot. Filth worse than anything in my cell. The passage led down, into tunnels beneath the facility.

I could see as well in the dark as in the light. One of the few gifts the augmentations had given me. I watched the water running through the center of the tunnel, thick and foul and wrong.

She moved forward. She was going to walk through it. Through the filth.

Something in me rebelled.

Not the beast they'd made me. Not the fighter in the arena. Something older. Something that remembered what it meant to protect.

I stopped and released her hand.

She turned, confusion in her posture. Fear clouding her scent.

Before she could speak, I bent and lifted her.

She made a small sound of surprise, but I was already moving. Cradling her against my chest as I stepped into the tunnel. My feet sank into the river of filth.

But hers stayed clean. Safe.

She was so small in my arms. So light. So fragile.

I would keep her safe. Would protect her from the filth and the dark and anything else that tried to hurt her.

The thought was clear. Clearer than anything had been in, how long? I didn't know. Didn't matter.

What mattered was her. This female who smelled like flowers and spoke in the language of my memory and had freed me from the collar that bound me for a century.