Chapter 22 #2
“Formal request.” The second guard—younger, with amber eyes that tracked to Mia and Ari with undisguised interest—stepped forward.
His gaze lingered on curves and exposed skin in a way that made Elsa’s jaw tighten.
“That’s sweet. Really. But see, we don’t answer to Sabers down here. Pit business stays in the pit.”
“You answer to the Alpha King.” The lead Saber’s voice cut through the corridor like a blade. “And the female wear his mark.”
The scarred guard’s ears flicked. A tell. He wasn’t as confident as he pretended—somewhere under all that swagger was a creature who understood hierarchies and consequences.
But he didn’t step aside either. Pride was a dangerous thing in places like this. Back down once, and every interaction afterward became harder.
“His mark. His collar. His little toy.” The guard prowled closer, close enough that Elsa could smell the musk of old blood on his fur, the sour scent of something she didn’t want to identify. “We know what pets are for. The question is—does she?”
Heat crawled up Elsa’s neck, but she didn’t flinch.
Didn’t back away. She’d faced worse than crude intimidation tactics—faced them in boardrooms and navigation decks and captain’s quarters.
She’d survived the crash. Survived Sylas and his brutal claiming and the ceremony that had bound her soul to his in ways she was still learning to understand.
A pit guard with an ego problem wasn’t going to break her.
“I’m asking,” she said carefully, each word precisely placed, “to see two human males who are being held in your facility. Rowan. Milo. I want to confirm they’re alive and deliver basic necessities. Food. Water. Medicine if they need it.”
“And if I said no?”
“Then I’ll document your refusal and escalate through official channels.
With witnesses.” She let her gaze drift to the Sabers, then back.
“I’m sure the Alpha King will be interested in how his claimed female was received at this checkpoint.
How his authority was...interpreted...by those who serve below. ”
The threat landed. She saw it in the micro-expressions that crossed the guard’s face—the flicker of uncertainty, the quick calculation, the way his posture shifted just slightly toward defense.
The silence stretched. Elsa could hear her own heartbeat, could feel the Sabers coiling tighter beside her, could sense Mia and Ari holding their breath.
Somewhere down the corridor, water dripped against stone.
The torch flames crackled and hissed against the lesser blue gemmed marbled shadowy walls.
The younger guard laughed—an ugly, grating sound that echoed off the walls. “Listen to her. Talking like she’s someone. Like she’s not just a soft body the King uses to warm his bed.”
Beside her, Mia went rigid. Ari’s hand found Elsa’s arm, fingers pressing hard enough to leave bruises.
“Enough.” The lead Saber stepped forward, one massive hand dropping to the psyweapon at her hip. Her voice had gone cold—the kind of cold that preceded violence. “You will address her with respect, or I will remind you what happens to males who insult the Alpha’s mate.”
“Mate.” The scarred guard’s lips curled, exposing more of those yellowed fangs. “Is that what we’re calling it now? The human wore chains at the ceremony. Chains and a pretty collar. That’s not a mate, Saber. That’s property.”
The Saber moved.
One second she was beside Elsa; the next she was in the guard’s space, fangs bared, a low growl rattling from her chest that made the stone walls vibrate. The sound hit Elsa’s hindbrain like a physical force—ancient instincts screaming predator and run and freeze.
“Say that again.”
The younger guard lunged forward, putting himself between them. More snarling. Someone shoved. Bodies shifted, the narrow corridor suddenly too small for the violence building in it. The torchlight turned everything orange and shadow, painting the confrontation in war colors.
Elsa grabbed Mia’s arm, pulling her back against the wall as the confrontation escalated. Ari pressed close on her other side, her breath coming fast.
“This is going wrong,” Ari hissed.
It was. The Sabers had bristled exactly the way Elsa had anticipated—defending her honor was baked into their programming, their duty, their understanding of what it meant to serve the Alpha King’s claimed female.
But the pit guards weren’t backing down.
They were performing for each other, feeding off the aggression, neither willing to be the first to show submission in front of an audience.
“You think you can challenge us here?” The scarred guard’s voice rose, filling the corridor. “In the pits? This is our territory. Our rules. The Alpha’s pretty collar doesn’t mean shit down here.”
“Your rules bow to the Alpha’s law. Or have you forgotten who sits the throne?”
More snarling. Someone’s claws scraped stone, leaving fresh gouges in walls that already bore a thousand such marks.
The second Saber stepped forward, flanking her commander, while the third and fourth positioned themselves near the women—forming a protective barrier that felt increasingly inadequate against the violence brewing.
Through the bond, Elsa felt Sylas’s attention sharpen.
He knew something was wrong. She could sense him moving now, his presence growing closer, anger building like dark storm clouds on the horizon.
The thread between them vibrated with his fury—not just at the situation, but at the distance, at his inability to be there immediately.
Hurry, she thought, though she wasn’t sure if the thought was directed at him or at whatever resolution this standoff was hurtling toward. Something’s about to—
The alarm split the corridor like a blade.
High-pitched. Urgent. A pulse of red light strobed through the blue Moon Tear glow, painting everything in arterial colors. The sound bounced off stone walls, multiplied, became a wall of noise that made conversation impossible.
Everyone froze.
“Fallen breach.” The lead Saber’s head snapped toward the sound, all her aggression redirecting in an instant. Training taking over. “Sector twelve. That’s—”
“The eastern perimeter.” Another Saber was already moving. “Close to the civilian quarters. We need to—”
“The females.” The lead Saber turned back to Elsa, conflict clear in her amber eyes. Duty to protect versus duty to defend. The impossible math of being responsible for too many things at once. “We can’t leave them unprotected.”
“Go.” Elsa heard herself say it before she’d fully thought it through. The words came from somewhere instinctive—the part of her that understood triage, understood that the threat to many outweighed the risk to few. “The breach is more important. We’ll fall back to the upper levels.”
The Saber hesitated. Duty warring with orders. Sylas’s explicit command to protect her at all costs versus the screaming alarm that signaled something far worse than crude pit guards.
The pit guards had already forgotten the confrontation. Their attention was on the alarm, on the threat—the ancient enemy that made every other conflict trivial by comparison. Whatever the Fallen were, they terrified even these hard creatures.
“Protect the fortress,” Elsa said, putting steel into her voice. “That’s what Sabers do. Go.”
They went.
Two of them split off immediately, racing toward the source of the alarm with the fluid speed that made the Yzefrxyl so terrifying in motion.
The lead Saber barked orders at the third, something about securing the corridor junction, and then she was moving too, her massive frame disappearing into the strobe-lit darkness.
The fourth Saber stayed, but Elsa could see the conflict in every line of her body. “I’ll escort you back to—”
Another alarm. Closer this time. Louder. The Saber’s ears pinned flat against her skull.
“Go,” Mia said, her voice surprisingly steady. “We know the way. We’ll be fine.”
She didn’t want to. Elsa could see it in the rigid set of her shoulders, the way her claws flexed against the stone floor. But the alarm was screaming and her team were already gone and somewhere in this fortress, something dark and ancient was trying to break through.
“Stay together,” she ordered. “Move fast. Don’t stop for anything.”
Then she was gone too, disappearing up the corridor with the speed of the desperate.
The corridor fell silent except for the wail of alarms and the thunder of Elsa’s heartbeat.
The pit guards had vanished. When? She hadn’t seen them leave—one moment they’d been snarling at the Sabers, and the next they were simply...not there. The iron gate stood unguarded. The torches guttered in some draft Elsa couldn’t feel.
The hair on the back of her neck stood up.
“We need to move.” Ari grabbed Elsa’s arm, her fingers digging in hard. “Now. Before—”
She never finished the sentence.
A hand clamped over Elsa’s mouth from behind.
Massive. Clawed. Smelling of iron and old violence and something chemical that made her vision blur at the edges. The grip was absolute—no leverage, no escape, just crushing pressure against her face and a body behind hers that felt like a wall of fur, muscle, and malice.
She thrashed. Her scream died against the palm pressed to her lips. Somewhere to her left, Mia’s gasp cut off mid-sound—a choked, abbreviated noise of terror. Somewhere behind her, Ari’s shout died in her throat before it fully formed.
Through the bond, she felt Sylas’s attention spike—sharp, desperate, wrong wrong wrong—
His rage slammed through the connection like a physical force. She felt him change direction, felt his terror, felt the primal fury of a predator whose mate was threatened beyond his reach.
Too far. He was too far away.
The chemical smell thickened. Her lungs burned with each desperate inhale. The corridor tilted sideways—or maybe she was falling, dragged backward into darkness by arms that could have crushed her without effort.
The last thing she registered before the darkness took her was a voice—low, satisfied, terrifyingly calm.
“The King’s pretty is ours. Finally.”
Then there was nothing at all.