Walking across the cell, she wrapped her new prize around her and settled down against the wall near Zad. She’d have to see about getting a belt like the alien woman had so she could keep her blanket. It hadn’t escaped her attention the other woman kept a close eye on it, even when training.
Zad opened one eye, her head still leaned back against the wall. Her hair was damp, so Nat assumed she’d been subjected to the showers in the group before hers.
“You earlier with that T1,” she said. “You want to be careful around them.”
“Why?” After a full day of what amounted to torture through physical exercise, Nat was too tired to soften her words.
Zad huffed and looked at her like she was an imbecile. “They’re the top of the vaarking food chain here. If a T1 takes a liking to you, yeah… well, you won’t have much choice in the matter.”
Nat chuckled, tucking her blanket around herself. She was tired but she was also warm. Sleep would come easily tonight, even with her bed of hard sand and even harder wall. “I don’t think you need to worry. He’s an asshole and he doesn’t like me. Not at all.”
Zad made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a snort. “Yeah, you keep telling yourself that.”
“What?” Nat looked up. “He doesn’t. Told me I need to learn respect.”
Zad blinked, exhaustion easy to see on her face. “Yeah, well… perhaps lay off fighting with him. Talon—”
“He said his name was Beauty,” Nat broke in, confused.
Zad nodded. “He was Talon before, when he was here. He was pit champion. Earned his freedom.”
Nat frowned. “You said before. So, if he was free, what’s he doing back here?”
She decided to keep his odd comment about her sister to herself. She had a sister, technically, but she didn’t know Nat existed so he couldn’t have been sent by her.
Zad sighed and closed her eyes, wrapping her blanket more securely about herself. “Not a vaarking clue.”
Silence reigned for long moments but then Nat couldn’t keep her curiosity in any longer.
“What are you?”
“Other than trying to sleep?” Zad opened one eye again.
“Yeah. What species are you? You’re the only one who looks like you here. All the others, there’s a couple of the same type.” She’d even seen another butterfly guy, but he looked decidedly more beat up and battered than the asshole she’d met during her testing fight. But not Zad.
“Oh there’s others like me,” Zad muttered and then sighed. “I’m Krynassis. There’s some male Krynassis here but they won’t come anywhere near me. Not willingly anyway.”
“Why not?”
“They’re shit scared of me. Females of my species are…“ Zad grinned, showing the edges of her fangs. They seemed… bigger when she was angry or amused. “They think I might drag them off for my harem.”
“Harem? No way!” Nat gasped.
Zad nodded. “We don’t have many females and those we do have are normally hive-queens. They rule over a hive and have a harem of males to fulfil their needs when their heat hits.”
Nat didn’t know what to say to that, so she leaned back against the wall and looked at the other woman in shock. “And you? Are you one of these hive-queens?”
Zad’s expression twisted, just for a moment, but then it was gone.
“No,” she said quietly. “My mother was, but I am not. I was…” she frowned, pausing as though trying to search for the right word, “exiled. My mother is young, still in her prime. She did not appreciate my arrival nor the competition of my existence.”
“Oh wow. Is that how you ended up here?”
Nat couldn’t believe it. She wasn’t close with her own mother but that was through necessity, not choice. Teria had been on the run from Nat’s father since before she’d been born and once Nat had reached adulthood, they’d decided that it was safer for them to be apart. Anton Ingrassia didn’t know about Nat, and if he caught her mother, she could lead him to Nat. Her mom hadn’t been prepared to risk it. She’d wanted to keep her daughter safe. Nat snorted. They’d tried so hard and look where that had gotten her… A cell in a bloody alien gladiatorial arena.
Zad gave a small, tight nod in answer. Her expression was shuttered but there was something about her, about the way she shut her eyes, that discouraged Nat from asking more questions.
“I’d happily form part of your harem,” a deep voice said from the front of the cell.
Nat jerked her head around to find the big guy who’d been with Beauty in the arena earlier on the other side of the bars, one huge shoulder against the stone pillar and his thumbs hooked into his belt. His dark eyes were fixed on Zad.
“Go away and bother someone else, Rishnakt,” she said, not bothering to open her eyes. “I’m busy.”
“Busy doing what?”
“Checking the back of my eyelids for holes.”
“You could do that in my bed,” the big man rumbled, his deep tones full of temptation.
“I wouldn’t want to deprive you of its comfort.”
Zad opened her eye again to look at Nat. “T1s get their own cells… although rooms would be more accurate. Better food, better accommodation, plus the chance to come and bother us T2s,” she said.
“Oh, but how would you be depriving me of it?” He chuckled. “When I’d be right there with you.”
“In your dreams,” she threw back, closing her eyes again.
Rish sighed, hand over the center of his chest. “My dreams of you. Should I tell you my dreams of you?”
“Please don’t.”
“I dream of your beautiful skin, sparkling in the soft candlelight. Your beauty is like…”
“I’m going to be sick,” she deadpanned.
“The very night sky itself, mysterious and enigmatic—”
“It really isn’t. It’s just dark.”
Nat sniggered and Rish shut his mouth with a click. His growl was soft and low.
“I could make you,” he threatened, moving closer to the bars and glaring at Zad.
She didn’t open her eyes. “You could try. If you want to lose your balls.”
“Females! You make no sense!” Rish pushed off from the pillar, throwing his hands in the air in frustration. “You’d rather sleep here, against the cold walls, than spend the night with me?”
Zad just ignored him. With a final muttered curse about women and lack of sense, he stalked off. Zad opened her eyes to look directly at Nat.
“And that’s why you don’t want to attract the attention of a T1. Rish has honor. Not many of them do. We’re playthings to them. Nothing more. They’ll fuck you at night but cut you down in the arena the next day if you get in their way. Be warned.”
Nat nodded, shivering as she made herself more comfortable against the wall. She didn’t need the warning about Beauty. As handsome as he was, something about the tall, irritating alien set her teeth on edge.
There was no danger of her falling for him, or any sweet words he might try and seduce her with.
No way. No how.