That was not to say he hadn’t killed since he left here. The Warborne were not a mediation group. But combat against beings who chose to be there was entirely different to having to kill to survive. He closed his eyes and sighed.
The fate of a human female depended on him. More than that, the fate of a human female that someone he cared about loved depended on him. It didn’t seem to matter to Marika that she’d never met her sister and didn’t even know her name. She wanted to save her all the same. And dammit, that touched something within him. That she would reach out, be so persistent for someone she didn’t even know… it did something to the heart he was sure he didn’t have in the same way as the others aboard the Sprite.
And if he didn’t step through those gates and surrender his soul, the sister had no chance of survival. Sure, he’d seen her fight, and she’d survived testing. But she was only human—tiny and delicate with no natural weapons or armoring. She would be easy prey for the monsters in the pit.
They would hunt her down, revel in her softness and then discard her broken and bloodied body. If she was lucky, she wouldn’t survive. If she was unlucky, a higher-level fighter would choose her for his own personal "entertainment," and then her real torment would begin.
He snapped his eyes open. He knew if he did this, he would be changed. Irrevocably. Somehow. Part of him would die here. He was sure of it. Shaking off the fanciful notion, he strode through, surrendering his freedom to the pits and becoming a fighter once more.
The doors didn’t clang shut behind him but they might as well have. He saluted the Pelv, still high up on the parapet, as he walked. He’d survived this hellhole once, and he could do it again. Easily.
Guards lined the corridors as he walked, making his own way past the arena and then down into the cells. The corridors were thronged with tier twos, all of them looking at him with wide eyes. Whispers of awe and surprise followed him.
“It’s him. It’s Talon.”
“He’s back!”
“Did you know he was Warborne now?”
“Why did he come back?”
“Didn’t you hear? He chose to come back.”
He ignored them all and kept walking. It was exercise hour so all the cells in Tier one and two were open to allow the prisoners to mingle. Only the T3s weren’t out. They weren’t allowed in the same open spaces as the higher tiers. They’d be chewed up and spat out in a heartbeat.
Since the little display Marika’s sister had put on in the arena had gotten her classified as a T2, he’d find her. It shouldn’t be too hard. There weren’t that many human females in the pits, and he’d lay bets on none with her attitude and spark.
“Well… well… well… look what the tarvanash dragged in,” a harsh voice snarled behind him.
Beauty turned, every muscle in his body tensed for a fight. It happened all the time during exercise. Fighters looking to take out their opposition before the arena sometimes formed alliances with others that enabled them to take out a higher-level threat.
But the deep voice was one he knew, and he smiled at the familiar face behind him.
“Rish!”
The big Xian strode forward, his teeth a white slash in the darkness of his face. The Xian were bigger and heavier muscled than the Lathar, their skin a blue-black hue to protect them from the harsh triple suns of their home planet.
“Talon! I hadn’t believed it. What the vaark are you doing back in this hellhole?”
Beauty grinned and clapped Rish on the shoulder as the bigger man enfolded him in a bear hug powerful enough to break ribs.
“It involves a female…”
Rish grinned again. “All the best stories do, my friend. All the best stories do.”
7
“Oi! You! Up, now!”
Someone grunting at her and kicking her foot snapped Nat out of sleep. Yanking her legs up, she flipped to a defensive crouch before she’d managed to blink the sleep out of her eyes. There was no fuzziness of sleep, no "where the hell am I?" Not even the haze of sleep had burned away the events of the last twenty-four hours… that or she hadn’t fallen deeply asleep. She was betting on the latter.
The lights in the corridor outside were on full now, approximating daylight as illumination highlighted every detail of the grubby cell, including the woman who stood over her.
She recognized the voice, sliding a quick look to where the pile of blankets had been the night before. It was gone, and the tall, slender woman standing over her wore the same, tattered blanket as a cape wrapped around her.
Nat blinked. She was an alien. Why that should come as a surprise after last night she didn’t know, but it did. It was perhaps because she had only seen male aliens yesterday. There had been no women or females of any description other than human.
But this was an alien female and she was… beautiful. Tall and slender, she held herself with a grace Nat could never hope to emulate. Long, dark hair was braided away from her face, falling down around her shoulders in a multitude of braids. But it wasn’t her hair that held Nat’s attention. It was her face. Her features were classic and ethereal, like a fairy princess, with high cheekbones and full lips. As she tilted her head to the side, her dark eyes on Nat, the light shimmered over the small scales of her skin, like diamonds under the surface.
Scales…
“Always wake before those doors open,” she ordered, nodding toward them. As she spoke, Nat caught sight of the slight fork to the end of her tongue. “Never let them catch you unawares. It will not go well for you.”
As if her words had set in motion a chain of events, a loud klaxon sounded and a second later the cell doors clunked and swung open.
Nat was on her feet within a half second. “Got it. Thanks,” she murmured and then bit back a groan as her body complained about sleeping curled up against the hard stone of the wall.
Rolling her shoulders, she tried to get some of the kinks out and looked at her companion. She was stock still in the middle of the cell, watching the doors. Not with fear, but almost like she was… watching… waiting for something?
“Hey, wait. Why do I understand you?” Nat asked suddenly.
Amusement flared in the woman’s dark eyes for a moment. “Shards, you really are new. Aren’t you?” She chuckled as she strode out of the cell and into the corridor.
“New here? Yes. New to shit like this? Arenas and fighting, no.” Her statement was blunt. She couldn’t afford to show weakness in a place like this.
The woman nodded. “That explains a lot.”
“What do you mean?” Nat asked, following her like some kind of curious puppy only to almost slam into the alien’s back as she stopped and looked down at her. Her gaze flicked over Nat in assessment.
“You’re small and soft. No natural weaponry. Yet you’re here in the T2 cells. That means there’s something you’re hiding in that soft form there. Or you’d be in T3.”
“Try anything, sister, and you’ll find out how not soft I am,” she replied with a warning edge in her voice. She might need friends in a place like this, but that didn’t mean she was going to be stupid about it. This woman had given her a meal and a warning, but that might be all she could count on her for.