Chapter 9

Chapter Nine

Nina

“ W hat’s that supposed to mean?” I pull free of his slackened grip. Reke lets me go, and I scramble away from him, my feet slipping and sliding.

“It means you need to stay away from him.”

I jump. Venn’s in the cell to my left, although I never saw him arrive. There’s a thick collar around his neck made of some silver metal that shines like it’s got a spotlight on it, even though I’m the only one under a spotlight.

“Good lord. What happened to you?”

A red, angry and almost sealed cut circles one of his shoulders, like someone tried to bite off his entire right arm. Ugly stitches made from a cord nearly as thick as one of my fingers follows the incision marks. He could have been Frankenstein’s monster. All he’s missing is the bolt sticking out of his skull.

“Nothing happened.” He holds his other hand to his shoulder and rotates the joint, testing its mobility as casually as if he were in a gym back on Earth and preparing to lift weights. As casually as if such injuries are an everyday occurrence.

“It doesn’t look like nothing to me.”

“I have been healed. The scars are aesthetic only.”

“Right … ” Again, I’m left trying to wrap my head around the cruelty of the Arena and the Hov. If this isn’t a horror movie, I don’t know what is. And how the fuck am I supposed to survive when Venn, literally the largest and deadliest looking alien I’ve even seen, comes back with a reattached arm?! And what the fuck has aesthetics got to do with any of this?

I glance back at Reke. “Say again how you aren’t terrified all the time?”

Venn snorts, and I could almost swear from my peripheral vision I see him rolling his eyes. But surely I imagined it.

“Seriously,” I insist. “This place is a fucking madhouse.”

Reke’s shoulders shake as he makes a breathy, rather high-pitched sound. A laugh? He sounds a bit like a hyena.

“You have seen how fast Reke moves. He has nothing to be afraid of.” Venn sits on the floor of his cage with his legs stretched out before him. He stares at the watchers, who are all examining Venn, Reke and I and completely ignoring the gladiators locked in the surrounding cells.

Venn’s expression is unreadable. I watch him for a while, trying to spot … I don’t know. A little of his terror, perhaps. A little of his pain and suffering and anguish. With some perverse hope that if he’s scared, then I’m allowed to be scared too.

But he isn’t. He isn’t even angry. I just think he’s accepted his lot in life and is waiting for the day when he eventually loses his fight and is killed.

I have to clench my jaw to keep from crying. I fucking hate this place and all the misery it’s put Venn through. My bottom lip quivers, and I dig my bitten nails into the palms of my hands.

“Nina.”

I’ve never killed anyone, and until a few short days ago I never in my wildest dreams would have imagined I could kill somebody. But right this second I’m seeing red, and I want to strangle the Hov who abducted Venn.

“Nina.”

I want to tear this place down with my bare hands and throw the broken pieces into a pit of fire. I want to scream louder than the entire stadium overhead until my voice breaks and I push all the rage and sadness from my body. Until I can’t feel anything at all.

“Nina.” Spoken with force, Reke’s voice penetrates the thick haze of my thoughts. He’s crouched near the bars between our cage, his tail curled so it isn’t brushing against the floor, and his head tipped to one side in what I’m coming to recognise as his considering stance. And right now, he’s considering me.

There’s something about the way he holds himself perfectly still that catches my attention. I let out a shuddering breath. A wave of exhaustion settles over me like a heavy rock, and I sink to the ground before I can do anything too stupid with all those oglers still watching us.

Reke reaches through the bars and takes hold of my wrist. It isn’t threatening, like when he was holding me by the throat. In fact, I get the impression he’s trying to comfort me, although he doesn’t seem to know quite what to do.

I gently tug my wrist free and take hold of his hand instead, slipping my fingers between his. His hand is hardly larger than mine, but it’s warm and soft and firmly reassuring. His claws scrape lightly against the back of my palm. It doesn’t even occur to me to worry about the possibility of him hurting me.

You smell like my Mate, he’d said. Combined with the gentle way he’d stroked my cheek, as if he hadn’t known what to expect from the touch and the look he’d given me as he’d rubbed between his legs with his own tail … The breath catches in my throat.

His ears twitch, like he’s listening to me.

Can he hear my breaths? Can he hear my still-racing heart? And the tension in my belly, does he know about that too? It sinks lower, culminating between my legs.

He slips his tail through a gap and caresses my ankle. I’m distinctly aware I haven’t shaved in a few days, but the thought is distant, like something hovering at the edge of my peripheral vision. What does shaving matter when we’re literally fighting for our lives?

The tension in my chest is a hard lump I’ve got to breathe around.

I risk a glance toward Venn. His expression is still entirely too blank for me to read, but he’s watching Reke and I, his arms crossed over his massive chest. Despite his size, he appears suddenly small and alone. I wish I could somehow hold both Reke’s hand and Venn’s hand at the same time.

The cheering overhead peaks, and another gladiator is lifted into the Arena. I press my free hand to one of my ears, and a second later, Reke has his free hand pressed to my other ear, his fingers tangled in my hair.

Venn doesn’t react. It’s like he can’t hear the screaming, but that’s got to be impossible. He must just have heard it so often that it’s lost all its power over him.

Or maybe he’s not reacting because he doesn’t want the audience to know how much the screaming hurts him. I wish I could be so immovable, but I squirm against the sound, pressing my hand as hard as I can to the shell of my ear.

When the relative silence returns, I allow myself the luxury of leaning into Reke’s cupped hold for the count of ten breaths, nearly comfortable for the first time since waking up in captivity, despite the hard, cold floor and the bar pressed into my shoulder. Then I make myself sit up and release his hand.

This close, I can appreciate just how flawless Reke’s velvet skin really is.

I look past the audience and scan the other trapped gladiators.

They’re all hardly better off than Venn, their skin or scales or feathers marked with healed wounds. One gladiator is missing a horn. Another is missing one of his arms. The one in the cage closest to the door has an empty eye socket and what could be burns down one side of his body.

That’s when I sight a Hov guard in the passageway between the cages and the raised dais. He’s got another gladiator following him, and I know the other guy is a gladiator even though he isn’t locked in a cage because part of his cheek is missing, permanently revealing the bone of his jaw and bronze-colored teeth.

In comparison, Reke could be the model on the cover of a glossy magazine. His perfect skin is confirmation of what Venn said about Reke not needing to fear anything. He’s got no scars because he’s never even come close to losing a fight.

What had Reke said? This is what I was made to do. That word— made —abrades my thoughts like sandpaper and sends an icy shiver racing down my body. I pull on my sweater, partly because I want the comfort of the familiar fabric, partly because I need something to do with my hands to hide their shaking.

The Hov guard walks by my cage, the soft pop, pop, pop of his suction-cup feet giving me the heebie-jeebies. I’d happily pop his head off his neck had I the strength and the reach to do so.

His accompanying gladiator drags his feet, drawing out the distance between himself and the guard.

“Where are you taking him?” Reke asks. The guard ignores him or doesn’t hear. The gladiator shoots him an apprehensive look, not quite meeting Reke’s gaze.

Drawing level with my cell, the gladiator gawks at me, his long tongue flicking in and out of his mouth, reminding me of how lizards use their tongues to taste smells. This close, his skin appears to be made of razors. They’re kind of like scales, but each one has a serrated edge. Like most aliens, he isn’t wearing clothes, and his junk is on full display. I know this because he turns his hips toward me, proudly displaying his hardening cock. It’s relatively narrow, and about five inches long, but what catches my horror are the serrated scales that line its length. Each jagged edge is a tooth with which to catch onto his partner’s skin.

He’s that old saying death by a thousand cuts personified.

I scramble to my feet.

“I have heard a lot about you,” he says in a slithery voice, dripping with conceited masculine entitlement. “But nobody seems to know what you are.”

“I’m none of your fucking business.” My instincts shout at me to back the fuck up and put as much space between us as possible. Instead, I make myself hold my ground. The bars between us help add a little ferocity to my determination. He can’t reach me, no matter how hard he tries.

The Hov guard has finally noticed his charge has stopped following him and back tracks, unclipping one of the gun-like weapons from his belt. Lazily flicking a switch, a thin blade extends from the handle, buzzing with what I presume are bolts of electricity.

So that’s why the Hov was so sure he wouldn’t be attacked.

The razor-skinned gladiator thrusts his hips toward me, his cock bouncing off his stomach. He shoots his guard a glance, seemingly deciding he’s got just enough time to taunt me some more before the Hov can reach him.

“I would rut you.” And he lunges.

Instinctively, I flinch back, completely forgetting about the bars between us. I just want to get the fuck away from him.

There’s a loud crack, and the gladiator’s head rolls forward, like his neck has lost all its strength. Then he topples forward. His face hits the bars of my cage, and the scarred skin of his chin cracks open, spraying grey blood across the front of my beloved sweater.

I freeze. I know a dead body when I see one, and that guy is, without a doubt, dead as a doornail.

“What the actual fuck, Reke?!” My voice comes out as a high-pitched squeak.

Reke draws his arms back into his cell. His tail flicks back and forth like he’s shooing away a swarm of flies and his cat-like ears are lying flat against his head.

Like I said before, I’ve seen people die. Death is an occupational hazard when you’re a nurse working in the aged-care system. But I’ve never seen anyone get murdered before. And committing murder is absolutely what Reke just did, all because that gladiator came at me, knowing he couldn’t possibly reach me.

The Hov guard stops before the dead gladiator, his weapon still charged. There’s a moment of absolute silence, except for the swish, swish of Reke’s tail against the bars, and then the Hov’s entire body jiggles like Jell-O as the fucker laughs.

It’s the most disgusting thing I’ve ever seen; it’s absolute irrefutable evidence that these pustule-covered motherfuckers really enjoy other people’s pain.

Ignoring the Hov guard completely, Reke kneels, bringing his face as close to the dead guy as he can get. His hands are shredded with paper-thin cuts. Dark blood, nearly black, beads across his palms. Two of his claws have been sliced short and one’s got a gouge taken out of the side where the razor scales cut through. There’s nothing neat about the wounds. If he presented to a hospital with hands like that, he’d be rushed up the queue.

Seemingly unaware of his shredded palms, he displays his teeth to the dead gladiator, the corners of his mouth twitching upwards as if he’s feeling pleased with himself.

“She is mine, fuckwit, ” he growls at the dead guy (who obviously doesn’t react).

The Hov guard just laughs louder.

“She is mine,” Reke repeats and then flicks a glance toward Venn, as if half expecting Venn to oppose him.

Venn is standing at the front of his cage, on my other side, holding two bars so tightly his knuckles have turned pale blue. He flicks his head as if to shake away the gray blood that spots his cheek, but otherwise he remains perfectly silent.