A delicately arched eyebrow rose slightly. “It was not an insult. You literally do have soft skin.” The alien held out her arm and Nat’s eyes narrowed as the scales flared on the surface of her skin, becoming thicker and harder. When she extended her fingers, talons flashed at the ends for a second before she retracted them. “Nor natural weaponry. Which leaves only one conclusion. You actually know how to fight.”
Nat huffed and then gave a small nod. Okay, she would allow that. It was a fairly good and surprisingly accurate analysis.
“You didn’t answer my question,” she said as they started walking again. “Why do I understand you? Are you speaking Terran?”
And it wasn’t just her, Nat realized, as they passed others in the corridors. Where yesterday the air had been filled with incomprehensible sounds—snarls, grunts, and clicks—now she understood them all.
They reached an intersection and slowed down to let three alien males pass.
“I’m telling you, that asshole Gervax just upped his weights again a couple of days ago. The male is going to be built like a vaarking oteth before the month is out!” the first one said. He was purple, with what looked like armor plating in ridges down his arms and legs.
“Fuck. How?” The horned male with him spat. “We’re all fed the same shit. Where is he getting extra nutri-blocks from? Or real food?”
The armored guy shrugged. “Beats me, man. I think he’s got an outside source, or a sponsor—”
The guy at the back of the group, who had been silent until now, looked at the other two in shock. Of them all, he looked the most human, until he blinked. Two sets of eyelids.
“A sponsor? You mean someone actually wants to fuck that?”
Armor shrugged again. “You know them society females… sometimes it’s more about the danger and getting a bit of rough fighter cock than what a male looks like…” He broke off to nod at the two women. Well, mostly at the woman with Nat. “Zad. How’s it going?”
She shrugged one shoulder. “Same shit, different day, Taxx. You?”
“Can’t complain,” he said over his shoulder as the little group passed by. “See you in the exercise arena.”
“They can’t have all been speaking Terran,” Nat muttered, getting the newly named Zad’s attention again.
“No, we all speak our own languages.” She touched behind her ear and Nat winced as she remembered the injection last night.
“Translation matrix. It’s a bit crude and doesn’t always work, but since you can understand us, it did on you. Most space-faring species have them. If not, they install one when you get here.”
She grinned suddenly, showing straight white teeth, with tiny fangs at the corners of her lips. “It’s no fun for the crowd if you can’t understand the threats other fighters throw at you, especially the T1s and above.”
“What are T1s?” Nat asked as they started walking again, following the same path as the trio of male aliens. They were still up ahead, talking ten to the dozen. Forget women being gossips. Anyone who’d seen a group of men together knew they were way worse. And that seemed just as true about aliens as it was about humans. “And you mentioned T2s and T3s as well.”
“It’s how they,” Zad filled a gesture at the guards at the edges of the yard as they emerged up into a smaller version of the arena she and Melissa had been dumped into yesterday, “…categorize the fighters. Us. T3s are the lowest,” she said, pitching her voice low as she led Nat across the arena to a clear area of sand. “You won’t find any in here. They’re just cannon fodder to feed the masses.”
Melissa was a T3. Shit. She had to be. Nat blinked as Zad shrugged out of her blanket, folded it neatly before she set it down on the sand, and started to stretch.
“So what’s in here?” she asked, looking around as she copied the other woman’s movements. Rule one of a new environment, look like you belong. Less chance of being singled out that way.
“T2s like us,” Zad grunted as she switched to doing slow press-ups. Under the all-concealing blanket her clothing was similar to Nat’s, the same form-fitting leisurewear she’d put on after her win in the cage that seemed a lifetime ago now. It made it easy to see she was fit, packed with lean, hard muscle, with scars that said her life hadn’t been easy. “Mid-range fighters. Good for the long haul and in groups but not flashy.”
“And T1s?” Nat dropped down to the sands to join her, looking around as she did. The triad of males they’d seen in the corridor were about a hundred feet away, stretching and warming up. The scene was repeated over the sands in little groups, all carefully watched by the guards. Which made sense, if this was just training, they wouldn’t want the fighters getting injured without a paying audience.
“Them,” Zad nodded toward a new group emerging out of the tunnels and onto the sands.
Nat squinted as she looked that way and then caught her breath. Two men sauntered over the sands. Both were naked to the waist, tall and ripped as fuck. The one on the left had skin like a midnight sky, the type that absorbed all light, with tiny horns on his brow, fighting with his hairline. The other was the opposite, with tanned, satin skin and, if she didn’t know better, she could almost have mistaken him for being human.
Almost. Except for the way he moved, with a loose-hipped grace that grabbed all her survival instincts and screamed at her to run and hide. To get away from the predator right there in front of her. The only problem was, all her feminine instincts were in open revolt at the idea, heat washing through her body as the need to get nearer assaulted her. She blinked suddenly. It was the guy she’d seen watching her yesterday.
“I-I…” She clamped her mouth shut to stop making the stupid noise. Zad chuckled.
“Yeah… pretty. Aren’t they? Rish makes most females go stupid in the head, and that must be Talon. I’d heard a rumor he was back. Stupid fucker.”
“Huh? Back? Stupid?” she asked, turning her head to look at the alien woman.
Zad lifted an eyebrow as she sprang to her feet, holding her hand out to Nat. "That idiot won his freedom. He was out. Must be a vaarking good reason he’s given that up and come back down here into hell.”
The exercise arena was just the same as Beauty remembered—crowded with T1s and T2s all trying to bulk up, speed up or skill up in some way, shape or form. Exercise wasn’t just a way of life here. It was a survival mechanism. An essential. A slow fighter was a dead fighter, one that couldn’t go the distance… yeah, also dead. Stamina, mental and physical, was a must.
Every single being here wanted him dead. He knew that as he swaggered across the sands. More than that. They wanted to be the ones to snuff out his life—to beat him down into the sands and tear his body apart, butcher him in blood and glory so they could claim the title of champion for themselves.
And he didn’t care. Let them come. He would take them all on. His economy of movement as Beauty of the Warborne had disappeared and made way for the characteristic movement of an earlier identity—a guise designed to intimidate everyone around him and make them think twice about taking him on. But, where some males would have layered on arrogance and bravado, he merely stripped away some of the layers he used in order to appear more civilized. More Lathar.