Chapter 1

Chapter One

Nina

V ennkor collapses onto the sandy floor of the Arena, the base of his neck torn open. Muscles, cartilage and clavicle are on display as though he's a specimen in a medical teaching school, laid out on the operating table for everyone to examine.

Reke's crouched over him. Blood drips down his chin, staining his chest. Venn's blood. Venn's blood .

My body loses all momentum, and I fall to my knees. Pain worse than my collar pulses through me. I double over, my arms wrapped around my stomach. I'm still in one piece for all that it feels like I've been shredded into a million. Reke might as well have torn my heart from my chest.

I think I'm screaming. I know I'm crying. I can hardly breathe.

My head spins.

The parasitic crowd is hysterical with greed. Cheering, roaring, stamping their feet. The entire stadium, maybe the entire space station, vibrates with glee.

Reke wraps an arm around the back of Venn's limp neck and lifts his victim's head a few inches off the ground, all the better to reach the deep wound at the base of Venn's throat.

He eats those he kills. That's what Venn had told me. Reke eats those he kills. And now he was going to eat Venn.

It's like I'm twelve years old again, utterly helpless against the onslaught of death.

The floor beneath the three of us lowers. The Hov, having orchestrated Venn's death, are finished with us. Already they're preparing the Arena for the next fight, for the next murder, for the next pair of fucked-up souls, abducted and tortured and doomed to die before an over-excited audience.

"Nina." Reke spits out of a mouthful of blood.

It's darker than Human blood. Thicker too.

"Get away from him!" I lunge toward Reke as the ceiling overhead closes, and the exuberant cheering of the crowd is muffled. "Get away from him!"

Reke catches one of my wrists, holding it against his chest in an iron grip.

I hit him with my free hand, thrashing against his hold, trying to push him away from my love.

"Nina." Urgency fills his voice. Venn's blood has matted Reke's usually velvety skin. He's holding his free hand above the wound in Venn's neck, not trying to close it, just keeping it there. "Help me."

"Help you do what?" I demand, still trying to shove him aside. "Kill him faster?"

Reke's hold on my wrist is bruising, each one of his bloodied fingers digging into my flesh.

"No. Help me save him."

"What?" I freeze.

Reke releases me. Grabbing Venn behind the neck again, he angles Venn's head so that his wound is open.

"You're making it worse!" I try pulling his arm away. It's like trying to heave a boulder up a mountainside. Entirely immovable.

Reke growls deep at the back of his throat. "I keep healing." And he slashes open his own wrist. Blood drips from his cut into Vennkor's open wound. What I'd originally taken as Venn's blood coating Reke's hands is actually a combination of Venn's and Reke's blood.

"What?" It's like rocks fill my head instead of thoughts. I can hardly comprehend what I'm seeing. Is Reke trying to give Venn blood? "It won't work." My lips are numb. "You've got to get it directly into one of his veins. You don't even know if you have the same blood type. He's—" I was going to say he's bleeding out, but Reke interrupts me.

"I have healed again." And he makes another deep cut along his wrist, watching me with his beautiful eyes, one sky blue, the other a deep gold.

Blue, just like Vennkor's eyes. And I'm reminded of my theory from days ago that maybe Reke might have some Ves'os genes, that maybe Venn and Reke are more similar than either of them realizes.

I suppress a wild hope that maybe this will work. That maybe Reke's blood will speed up Venn's healing enough to save him.

"We need— Oh God." I abandon speaking. There's no time. Instead, I search our surroundings for anything that might be useful. We're back in my cell. The raised dais is empty, and the main door to the hypogeum is closed. A few of the other cells still hold gladiators. They're all staring at Reke, Venn and I like they've never seen two aliens trying to give a third alien a blood transfusion.

Increasingly desperate, I search my pockets. Preferably, I'd find some antiseptic and disinfectant wipes, a syringe and an IV pole from which I can hang Reke. All I find is the wrapper from a used bandaid and a plastic pen casing, which is an absolutely pathetic haul.

Unless …

"Move." I push Reke aside, and this time he moves. There's a feral look in his wide eyes. His pupils are so dilated it's like peering into the ocean when you can't see the sandy floor—impossibly deep and fucking terrifying.

Wincing at how filthy my hands must be, I search inside Venn's wound for a vein. It can't be an artery; that's usually too dangerous. I dig a little deeper, hating that I'm not wearing gloves and hating that his pain collar keeps getting in my way. Hating most of all that the tear in Venn's lower neck is so fucking huge.

"Why?" I demand of Reke.

"I had to, Nina." There's a note of desperation in his voice I've not heard before. "They would never have let us leave the Arena. They had to believe."

They had to believe Venn was dead—or at least that he was close enough to being dead that he wouldn't survive.

I find a vein. At least I hope it's a vein. It's about the size of a large Human artery, but that makes sense, considering Venn's size. Unless this really is an artery …

Shit a brick! I don't have time to second guess myself, and so I jam the tapered end of the pen casing into Venn's torn vein. I think it fits. It had better fucking fit!

"Arm. Now." Sitting back on my bare heels, I hold Reke's cut wrist over the other end of the pen casing. Blood runs down my fingers and arm, and it slides down the pen. I can't see if much is going into the pen and thus into Venn's vein or if it's all dripping down the outside, but we have to hope. We have to hope the rapid thumping of Reke's heart is creating a strong enough pressure that his blood is being pushed into Venn.

If Venn dies … My ears fill with buzzing, and I shake my head, trying to dislodge shock from my body. Already my extremities are getting cold, the tips of my fingers turning white.

Reke's shaking, but not from blood loss. It would take a lot more than a pathetically desperate attempt at a blood transfusion to actively injure Reke. I disentangle his broken claw from its hiding place in my sleeve, and when his other incision clots and his muscle knits itself back together, I cut a fresh line.

Vennkor is impossibly still. I take turns staring at the pen casing, so thickly coated in blood it might always have been red, to staring at Vennkor's chest, monitoring his breathing. I don't have a spare hand to count his pulse. I can hardly hold the pen casing still. And I have to hold it still. I can't risk accidentally dislodging it from the vein I've barely managed to insert it into.

Venn's breaths are alarmingly shallow, and I count the seconds between each one, desperate to determine if the gaps are lengthening. Surely even he can't survive such a wound, even with Reke's blood.

"Nina." Reke leans closer, casting a shadow over Venn.

I want to snarl at him to get back. I want to throw myself between Reke and Venn. But was it really Reke's fault? Could he have done anything differently?

Yes , I answer my question. He could've refused to fight. All three of us could've refused to fight.

The Hov wouldn't have accepted his refusal . The Hov would've killed Venn somehow; the Hov needed Venn to die. It had all been part of their elaborate plan for my Arena debut. The Hov manipulated our relationship, first trying to force Reke and Venn to fight the career twins with me as the prize. And then, when the career twins humiliated themselves at the banquet, the Hov instead forced Reke to kill Venn in front of me.

Maybe Reke is right. Maybe there'd been no other option.

"Nina," Reke's voice cracks. "I think it is working."

"What?" I blink. Sure enough, Venn has stopped bleeding, and he's still breathing.

I examine Venn more closely, my bottom lip caught between my teeth. Does Venn's skin around the ragged tear look more like a freshly healed scar? Is the wound not so deep as it had been a few minutes ago?

"Oh my God." I didn't think this would work. I was just so desperately heartbroken that I'd tried, anyway. But it is working. It's absolutely working!

Carefully, I extract the pen casing from Venn's vein. It's impossible to know how much of Reke's blood he's received, but I also don't want the wound to heal around the pen casing, especially considering I've got no antiseptic or disinfectant. The pen itself is probably filthy, and the less time Venn is exposed to germs the better.

"Is he … " Reke bites back his question with a snarl, and when I glance around, I see two Hov guards standing on the walkway between the empty dais and our cell. They're watching us with something akin to mild interest and they make no move to intervene, not even to help.

Reke's tail flicks, the only indication that he's about to attack, and then he leaps across the cell. He lands halfway up the bars, and he has a hand through a gap before either Hov can react. He slices his claws down a guard's front, popping pustules, deflating them as you'd deflate an old balloon.

The Hov howls in pain, stumbling back, as his partner activates Reke's collar.

Reke's muscles tense with the pain, and he slides down the bars, landing less than gracefully on his feet. His hands are at his collar, and the nerves in his back are twitching. Then, with another roaring growl, he tears the collar in two and tosses the broken pieces to the ground.

It slides along the too-smooth floor, stopping only when it hits a bar. I can see where Reke destroyed the hinges. I can also see where the edges of the collar are collapsing in on themselves, as though Reke squeezed so tight he changed its shape.

But that isn't entirely right, because it's still changing. In fact, it's evaporating before my eyes, like I'm watching a time lapse in a documentary on biodegradable plastic, and then the collar disintegrates completely. Undoubtedly so that, in this unlikely situation, Reke can't now use the collar to torture his captors.

Fuck the Hov. They can dish it out, but they certainly can't take it.

The uninjured guard's eyes widen. He releases the gun from his belt, the one which has a nasty-looking blade that extends beyond the barrel and which conducts electricity when used as a baton. Before he can strike Reke, Reke slides backwards, returning to Venn's side.

Venn who is … I check his wound. Still healing!

Thank fuck.

His eyes flicker under his lids, and his breathing is still shallow, but the wound at the base of his neck is slowly closing. I can't see so much of his bone anymore.

I mean, there's still a gaping hole where a hole shouldn't be. But if his wound keeps healing at this rate, I think he might survive.

I run a shaking hand through my sweaty hair.

Reke takes hold of Venn's collar, straining until the hinge breaks, and then he tosses that away too. I straighten, lifting my chin, giving Reke access. He has to wrap his fingers right around the collar to get enough leverage, and his knuckles dig into my throat, making breathing impossible. I concentrate on holding my breath, my chest burning with the sudden need to expand my lungs. He strains. My eyes water with the effort of holding still. And then the pressure disappears, and I too am free of my fucking slave collar.

It clatters uselessly to the ground, immediately losing structural integrity. In another few heartbeats, it has disintegrated.

"We can't let them take Venn." I catch Reke's hand before he can step away. "They might—" I bite the inside of my mouth to keep from losing my shit. "They might still kill him."

"I can protect you."

"Not me! Venn. We need to protect Venn,"

More Hov guards arrive, preceded by the soft pop, pop, pop of their suction-cup feet, which, in the otherwise silence, is as dramatic as church bells tolling the death knell.

The injured guard's removed on a hovering stretcher that never seems to touch the ground, even though it's got no wheels and nobody carrying it.

The door to our cell is unlocked.

Reke steps in front of me, hissing and spitting at the guards, displaying his pointed teeth and his bloodied claws. He stalks toward the open door, and the Hov guards slam the door closed again. The lock clicks into place satisfyingly loudly. Never did I think I'd want to be locked in this cell, but now it's a haven. If the Hov can't get by Reke, then they can't take Venn away. I don't trust them not to kill Venn purely because the parasites already think he's dead.

I strip off my sweater and shirt, and then put my sweater back on. It's covered in Venn's and Reke's blood, but it's better than wearing just my bra. My shirt is relatively clean ( relative being the optimal word), and I tear it into strips, which I use to bind Venn's neck, hoping if I can encourage the two ragged edges of his wound closer together, I can help speed up the healing process even more.

That done, I clean my hands as best I can on my jeans and pick up Reke's broken claw. I'm not a fighter like Reke is, but I'll stand beside him in defense of Venn.

"How long?" Reke asks, his voice low and harsh, like he's having trouble remembering how to speak.

"I don't know." I glance back at Venn. He hasn't moved this entire time. His face is clammy and the pauses between his breaths are heart-stoppingly long. "Maybe a day. Maybe longer. Two days? Three? I've no fucking clue." It's my voice that breaks this time. I feel like I've been awake for a thousand years. I feel like I've never slept in my entire life. "I'm not leaving him."

"No." Reke finally agrees, turning his bright eyes onto the Hov guards gathered outside our cell. "I will protect you while you wait."