Page 113 of The Beast Who Begged Me

“Fuck off.” He looks away. “He’s just trying to teach me a lesson. That’s all.”

I sit back on my heels, wondering if Jesse is right, or if he’s just holding on to desperate hope. “I’m sorry,” I say at last. “But thank you for taking care of Sammy.”

He says nothing.

Getting back to my feet makes my head spin, and I have to grab onto the sink to keep my balance. My hand goes cautiously to my nape again. The little lump beneath the skin is gone. There’s only a wound, sticky at the edges.

They took it out.

Dami won’t be able to find us.

I sit back on the ledge heavily as my legs give out.

“Was this really part of the plan?” Sammy asks. “Getting locked up in here with me?” I don’t say anything. After a second, his hand creeps into mine. “It’s okay,” he says. “Damiano will come for us.”

“Of course he will,” I agree, for Sammy’s sake.

I just have no idea how he’ll find us.

There’s a strange noise overhead. People—a crowd—chanting something I can’t make out, stamping down on the floor above, shouting. Cheering. They find a new rhythm and hold it. Faster. Then a scream, loud enough to cut through the concrete between us, that stops mid-note.

The cheer after it is enormous.

“These are fighting pits,” I say, and I sound so calm that Sammy and Jesse just blink at me.

Sammy frowns. “They want to watch us fight?”

“They want to watch us die.” I still have that unearthly calm to my voice, but I don’t know how much longer it will last. Sammy’s breathing is getting faster, so I turn to face them both. “We need to prepare.”

“To die?” Jesse laughs. “No. Daniel is just trying to teach me a lesson. He wouldn’t⁠—”

“Of course he would.” I keep my voice low. “We can sit around arguing with each other, or I can show you what Dami showed me about self-defense.”

“Show me,” Sammy says without hesitation.

“Have fun,” is Jesse’s response. He presses himself back into the corner, and I leave him there. I’m not going to waste whatever time we have trying to persuade him that Daniel King doesn’t care about him.

Sammy and I stand a few feet apart. “I’ll need to touch you to show you⁠—”

“It’s fine,” he says.

He’s locked in. Sammy’s always been a survivor. And so have I. If there’s a way we can survive this together, we’ll find it.

I start with getting free of a grip. Sammy watches my hands, frowning with concentration, then tries it himself. He pulls straight back the first time, exactly as I did, and I hear Dami’s voice coming out of my mouth as I correct him.

“You don’t have the strength to outmuscle someone. Find the weak point and attack that instead.”

Sammy tries again, and this time my fingers slip. His eyes come up to mine, surprised. “Like that?”

“Like that. Again.”

We practice until he can do it without stopping to think, then change places so I can show him something else. My head aches every time I move too quickly, and I have trouble remembering some of the moves.

Eventually, Sammy lets go of me and wipes his forehead on his sleeve. “Uh, how much of this do you really remember?”

“Enough to know Dami would be shouting at both of us.” He gives a breathless laugh, and we start again.

But a noise in the corridor that runs past our cell makes us move quickly back onto the ledge. Even Jesse joins us now, and we huddle up together.