Chapter 41

“What do you mean?” I ask, stumbling forward. My face still burns from Damien’s heated, passionate kiss. He may claim to be cold, but when he touched me like that, he was an inferno.

I slide into Kai’s head while wrapping my hands around Damien’s arm.

Engaged in a silent standoff, neither of the guys answers me. Damien’s cold blue eyes are locked on Kai’s dark ones. The air around them seems to crackle with electrical currents, a storm brewing.

“Cancel it.” Damien’s voice could turn water into ice. It chills me to the very core.

“I can’t,” Kai replies through gritted teeth. “She publicly made a declaration in front of at least one hundred of our men. If I refuse, we’ll have an uprising on our hands. This system works because supernaturals can take out their aggression in the ring. It weeds out the weak and makes the strong feel powerful. You know the rules: refuse to fight, and it’s open fucking season.”

Damien’s jaw is clenched so tightly, I’m afraid it’ll break. His marble-like face could be carved from stone.

“We’ll protect her,” he hisses at last. He wraps a protective, possessive arm around my waist, tugging me closer to him.

My mind struggles to understand this conversation.

Ring?

Fight?

Me?

Random words filter in one ear and out the other. Try as I might, I can’t catch enough to form a complete, coherent sentence.

“We’ll lose our entire fucking gang, our army.” Kai suddenly sounds tired. Older, almost, as if he’s aged centuries in minutes. I pull myself out of Kai’s eyes and into Damien’s, warily eyeing my volatile dragon shifter.

Kai agitatedly runs his fingers through his hair, making it appear even more disheveled. When he drops his hand, I realize it’s shaking.

“Then we leave the gang. Join the fucking shifters. I don’t care. She’s not getting in that damn ring,” Damien argues. His gaze dips to the knife now in his hand. I didn’t even realize he grabbed it.

“We can’t!” Kai roars, the feeble hold on his rage exploding. To my horror, glistening red scales sprout on his arms and cheeks. Reptilian eyes, narrowed into slits, focus on Damien with unnerving intensity. At that moment, he looks positively lethal. Deadly. This is the man who has risen up the ranks of a gang to become their leader.

Kai isn’t just my best friend and lover. He’s a dangerous, murderous predator currently out for the kill.

“We can’t,” Kai repeats through clenched teeth. He takes a deep breath, chest rising and falling, before spinning on his heel and pacing the small expanse of hallway. “Rion is already having trouble keeping control of his shifters, due to this fucking alliance. They don’t want us, and we sure as fuck don’t want them. If we join, Rion can’t guarantee our safety. Her safety. I’m not fucking risking her life.”

“Then we kill the bitch who challenged Nina,” Damien settles on at last, and I blanch at the word “kill.” I’m not completely oblivious to Damien’s recreational activities, but hearing it said so bluntly causes a shiver of unease to skate down my back.

“Can someone please tell me what’s going on?” I break in at last. Detangling myself from Damien, I move to stand between the two fuming alphas. “Kai. Damien.”

I feel Damien’s hands on my waist, but through his vision, I’m only able to see Kai’s piercing eyes. An inner conflict plays out in their depths before he releases a heavy sigh, nodding once.

“You’re right. You deserve to know.” His shoulders slump, as if a heavy weight is resting on them. I ache to comfort him, but I don’t know how that will be received. “We have a system down here in the Labyrinth, at least on our side. Fights.”

“Fights?” It sounds so simple, but I know that, with these men, nothing ever is.

“It’s a way for the prisoners to take out their aggression. And it’s a way for us to keep order,” Kai explains, another sigh racking his body. “Someone can challenge another person to a duel, and that person has to fight. If they refuse or they try to run, we no longer offer them protection. They’re cowards in our eyes, undeserving of our help.” His words are matter-of-fact, but his eyes are anguished. “They’re usually hunted down and killed in days.”

“And someone challenged me to a fight?” I ask numbly, my mind unable to wrap around the sudden surge of information. Why would someone want to fight me? I mostly stayed to myself and the guys. I’ve never done anything to harm someone, at least not intentionally.

“There has to be something we can do,” Damien argues in a cold, dark voice.

“The others are in the throne room. We’ll talk there,” Kai says briskly. Despite the urgency of the situation, he waits for me to place my hand in his. Unlike some of the others, Kai will never manhandle me. With him, everything is my choice.

As we walk, my mind wanders to Kai’s confession.

They host…fights? And from what I understand, fighting is mandatory. To forfeit the fight is to forfeit your life.

Pain grips my heart in an iron claw and refuses to release. I’ve always known the guys weren’t made of sunshine and rainbows, but I never suspected them capable of being this cruel. Would they really kick someone out of their gang because he or she refused to fight?

I have no doubt that with no alliance, you’ll die pretty quickly in the Labyrinth. If not by your fellow inmates, then by the maze itself. I’ve only just begun to see what the Labyrinth has to offer. What else lurks behind every door, in every corner?

I don’t even realize I’ve slipped out of Kai’s head until we reach the throne room. Angry voices reach me, penetrating the fog in my mind.

“You’re not fighting,” Bronson announces immediately, his voice a growl, when I enter.

“You would find yourself in the ring already, Trouble,” Cain quips. Despite his sarcastic tone, I can sense a hint of worry. If even Cain is nervous…

“Who challenged me?” I ask, allowing Kai to guide me to the throne. I don’t bother protesting as I sit daintily on the edge, the other men gathering around me.

There’s a long, potent pause before Rion answers, voice thick with self-loathing. “Tessa.”

“Tessa?” I gasp, sure I heard him wrong. I consider Tessa a friend, one of my closest. What could I have possibly done…?

My mind snaps back to the day in the cafeteria when Rion came to get me. The rage in her eyes before it transformed into hurt. The frigid aura emitting from her. The unusual bend to her lips that gave her a cold, haughty look.

Oh, Tessa, what did you do? My heart drops like a stone into my stomach.

“Rion,” Abel growls, my sunshine twin lost to his darkness.

When Rion doesn’t answer, Braelyn cuts in with a resigned sigh. I didn’t even realize she was in the room with us. “Tessa was one of the girls Rion used to have sex with,” she says without preamble, ripping off the metaphorical bandage.

“You couldn’t have been a little more fucking tactful?” Rion snaps. His voice suddenly comes from directly in front of me. His rough hands, the same hands that brought me to orgasm only a few days ago, touch my shoulders. Only, this time, I can’t control the sudden flinch at his proximity. Pain and jealousy spear me at the thought of him with Tessa. “Buttercup?—”

“Don’t call me that.” I shrug out from underneath him, stepping closer to the nearest guy. Abel, if the hard, lean body is any indication.

“I’m not a saint, and I never claimed to be one. Before you, I admit, I was with a lot of fucking women and men. I liked sex. A lot. It was just a way to pass time.”

“Is that all I am to you?” I whisper as hurt cascades through me. The arms around me tighten, and I rest my head on the twin’s shoulder. “A way to pass time?”

“No!” Rion shouts adamantly. “Fuck. No!” Working to moderate his volume, he adds, “The time with you…it was everything. Nina, since I met you, I haven’t been with anyone else, and I don’t want to be with anyone else. You’re it for me, even if I have to share you with these idiots.” He releases a sharp, humorless laugh.

“None of us are saints,” adds Bronson quietly. “We all have pasts we’d rather not talk about.”

I take a deep breath, knowing that’s true. What happened in the past has to stay in the past. I can’t allow the sins and transgressions of long ago to bury this relationship. Heaven only knows the ones I committed. I lashed out at Rion because I was jealous and hurt, but I know my reaction was irrational. He never intended to hurt me, and whatever relationship he had with Tessa was before he met me. He hadn’t even looked at her in the cafeteria, his eyes on me like no one in the world could compare.

“I’m sorry,” I whisper, tears filling my eyes. “I just got…”

“Jealous?” Rion supplies. At my nod, he pulls me into his arms, uncaring that Abel still has me in his. “I would rip the balls off any man you slept with before us. You’re jealous because you’re my mate. Hell, it could even be because you have feelings for an asshole like me. Either way, jealousy is completely natural.”

“I don’t know why we don’t feel it towards each other,” Kai muses, and Bronson grunts in agreement. “Maybe because this is fate: all of us together.”

All of us together.

I like the sound of that.

Regathering my previously lost wits, I ask, “So, what happened with Tessa?”

“She liked the appeal of an off-limits shifter.” Braelyn speaks up. “She would sneak over to our side of the prison.”

“Only a few times!” Rion says immediately. “And it didn’t mean anything to me. We would hook up, she would leave, and I would be with someone else an hour later. It was before I met you, of course. Now I’m a one-woman type of man. My heart is yours. My soul is yours. My fists are yours. My dick is yours. My pubic hairs are?—”

“We get it,” Kai cuts in. “Continue.”

“Tessa fell in love with him,” Jenny adds, speaking up for the first time. I imagine she’s standing beside her girlfriend against the wall. “Or, more specifically, his power.”

“It’s not uncommon for betas and omegas to fall in love with alphas,” Braelyn elaborates. “Those weak on the power hierarchy gravitate to those stronger. They want to be protected, and they contort those feelings into something resembling love.”

“She probably thought Rion united our gangs for her,” Damien breaks in vehemently. I suspect he’s glaring at the tattooed shifter. “Fucking hell, Rion. Did you have to fuck everything that moved?”

“You’re one to talk,” Rion retorts. “I hear stories about your cock. It’s as cold as the rest of you, capable of freezing a girl’s vagina right off.”

“Enough!” Kai roars, and the room immediately falls silent, no one willing to face the wrath of a feral dragon. “Nina will have to fight.”

Protests immediately begin, but Kai cuts them off with another earth-shattering roar.

“I said enough!” he shouts. He takes a deep, calming breath. “The fight isn’t until next week. That gives us time to train and prepare Nina. Fortunately, Tessa isn’t allowed to use her powers. Unfortunately, if anyone suspects that Nina has any sort of unconventional sight, her secret will be out.”

“Does that mean…?” I trail off, voice wobbling.

Kai’s voice is grim when he speaks next. “You’ll have to learn to fight blind. If anyone were to discover the truth about your abilities, I have no idea what they’d do. It’ll be a witch hunt. People fear what they don’t understand, and you, my love, are the biggest enigma here.”

I’m barely holding on to my sanity. My breath rushes in and out as my heart picks up speed. Panic creeps around the edges of my mind, threatening to consume me completely.

“Damien, you’ll need to teach Nina how to fight without her powers. Every fucking day. No breaks for either of you, understood?” I imagine Damien nods because Kai moves on. “Cain, you’re going to be at the edge of the ring during the fight, ready to heal. If anything goes wrong, you jump in there, okay? I don’t care what people say or think. I’m not losing her.”

Cain? A healer? I never would’ve suspected.

He’s more aloof than even Damien at times, and his bedside manner is atrocious.

“Yes,” the man behind me agrees.

It’s only then that I realize I’m not being held by Abel, but by Cain.

The man who cried when Haley touched him is now holding me tenderly against his chest.

My heart thunders in my ears as warm tingles radiate throughout my body.

“And Nina?” Kai addresses me last. When I turn in his direction, he says, “You fight until you can’t fucking fight anymore, you hear me? You give it all you’ve got. Because if you don’t, and something happens to you, I might just burn down this entire fucking world.”