Chapter 20
T ris’s crumpled body slammed against the side of the ropes, his head hanging down and blood pouring out of his mouth.
He spat on the ground, and I thought I heard a tooth fall to the concrete floor below.
The group of people gathered around the ring started to chant.
Their words, “Get up!” echoed throughout the building, and Tris pushed himself up to standing, with a cocky grin plastered across his face.
He was shirtless. Wearing only a small pair of shorts and no shoes, he started bobbing around on his feet again, readying for a fight. The crowd loved it and cheered louder. What had Tris gotten himself into? I thought he was coming here to talk to Razi, not get beaten to a bloody pulp.
I pushed my way up front. As I shouldered past mostly men, the stench of sweat and blood and…
something unrecognizable assaulted my nose.
The smack of a fist against skin brought my attention back up to the ring.
I elbowed a few men and a couple of women who growled at me as I shuffled by.
Ignoring them and my instincts that wanted me to be afraid, I finally made it to the side of the ring.
It sat about four feet off the ground, so when I spotted an empty crate lying nearby, I used it to climb up higher.
Tris had his back to me and was fending off rapid rounds of kicks and punches from a much-smaller man.
He tried to block and managed to stop a few from hitting his ears, but the man attacking him fought like an animal.
Tris’s opponent was also shirtless and completely full of muscle.
Lean and strong, he attacked Tris with little mercy and all the skill of a champion fighter.
A kick to the gut sent Tris stumbling backward into the ropes above my head.
Sweat dripped from his skin, making the blood streak all over his body like tears.
My own shock at the way he looked—so beat up and defeated—had me reaching for his hand.
“Tris?”
He blinked a few times before focusing on me. “Sosie?” Wiping at his face to clear his eyes of blood and sweat, he squinted my way again. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to find you.”
Tris yanked his hand away from mine and opened his mouth to say something, but his opponent beat him to it.
“Tris?” the small man asked from the other side of the ring. His voice sounded very familiar.
“I’m not finished, Razi.”
“Holy shit,” I murmured, then squeezed Tris’s bicep since that was the only part of him I could reach. “You’re fighting Razi? Are you crazy?”
“Hey, man, are you going to fight or sit here and chat with your girlfriend all night?”
I didn’t see who’d said that, but I turned and glared at the crowd behind me. “Tris, don’t listen to them. I thought you came here to find out more about your…family.”
He started to stand again, flicking my hand away and smiling at the people gathered around the ring. Without looking down at me, he said, “I did. And this is how I’m learning.”
“By getting your face smashed in?” I shouted back.
The crowd started chanting again, and this time, Tris waved his hands in time to their cadence. “Go away, Sosie,” he yelled through gritted teeth. “I’ve got this under control.”
I knew Tris was an adrenaline junkie and a total sucker for a good workout.
He was an excellent athlete all through high school and college.
Not playing any sports had been hard on him since we graduated.
So, a part of me got it. He liked the thrill of the challenge, and he often performed at his best when under pressure.
But this wasn’t chosal ball with pads and a whole group of teammates protecting him.
This was a stripped-down street brawl, and Tris was fighting the master of them all.
Someone nearby must have heard us well enough to start another chant. Only this time, I was its victim: “Go-a-way! Go-a-way!” I turned, still hanging on the ropes with my feet on the top of the mat, only to see everyone glaring at me.
“Go-a-way!”
Furious, I whipped my head back around to look at Tris.
He’d moved farther into the center of the ring and was throwing fake punches in the air with each syllable they chanted.
Razi was standing in the opposite corner with his arms resting out to the sides, looking like he was king of the rebels.
When he saw me staring, he raised one brow in question.
The man didn’t have a single bruise or drop of blood on him. Tris never had a chance.
Shaking my head and standing my ground, I wrapped my arms in the ropes and hung on. I wasn’t going anywhere, and screw all these people if they thought they could control me.
Razi grinned at me, his pointy nose angling downward, and the wrinkle around his eyes getting deeper.
Tris was still playing with the crowd and had no idea what was about to happen.
I saw it first. Razi’s focus honed in on Tris, particularly his lower body.
He watched how Tris ever so slightly favored his right knee.
That was the one he’d ripped to shreds during his last season at the academy.
And now that was the place Razi had spotted his weakness.
“Tris! Look out!”
Tris turned around to the left to glare at me, so he never saw Razi coming.
Like a wrecking ball, Razi ran at him, and then in the last second, he hunched forward and did some type of roll on the ground that was almost too quick to see.
Razi’s back slammed into Tris’s right knee, knocking the feet out from under him and causing my friend to scream in pain.
Tris fell on his right side, holding his knee and squeezing his eyes shut.
I jumped over the ropes, much to the dismay of the crowd, and ignored all the nasty things they started calling me.
Razi gracefully rolled to his feet and watched the scene in front of him.
The people tried to reach out and touch him as he circled the ring, but all his attention was on Tris and me.
“Tris?” I asked, falling to the mat beside him. I tried to ignore the little pools of blood getting on my bare legs. “Where does it hurt?”
Eyes still shut, Tris grimaced. “All over.”
“Sharp pains or dull throbs?”
“Holy fuck, Sosie. Why don’t you just go away?” he growled. “I can handle myself. You’re embarrassing me.”
Sitting back on my knees, I sucked in a very deep breath to get my anger under control. “Stop being a dick. You’re going to rip your knee apart again doing stupid shit like this.”
“Go away,” he pushed out through gritted teeth, and the crowd started up again with their chant for me.
I bent over and whispered in his ear. “We are going to talk about this when you are done. If Razi doesn’t kill you first.” I pushed against him to get up, my way of saying he’d crossed a line.
As I stood, I pulled down my sundress and found Razi in my glare.
He was laughing, which pissed me off even more.
I stomped to the corner and maneuvered through the ropes, probably flashing most of the people on my right, but I was so pissed I didn’t care who saw my bright red panties.
The crowd moved to the side, allowing me to pass through them with very little effort.
Assholes. I’d made it back to the front door when I heard another shout.
It was Tris again, and he probably just got his nose broken.
“Well, fuck him,” I muttered to myself, only to hear a deep laugh off to my side.
I jumped, and then I got pissed that the voice had scared me.
So, I whipped around with a glare on my face and a few nasty words ready for the person who’d just laughed at me.
“Whoa,” the man said. “I am not your enemy.” He was as tall and big as Tris…
actually almost the size of Wylen. But where Wylen had lightness, this man was dark.
Brown skin, black hair, and eyes a shade of green I’d never seen before.
In jeans and a black T-shirt, I couldn’t tell for sure, but he looked really familiar to me.
“Everyone in here is an enemy,” I grumbled, much to the amusement of the man.
“Wise words,” he agreed.
Both of us swung our attention back to the ring where Razi had just been knocked to the ground. The noise of the cheers and chants started to give me another headache, and I decided not to watch anymore because Tris was being an asshole. And I didn’t like how bad I felt right now.
“Your boyfriend is a good fighter…for being a half-human.”
I spun around to look at him, anger making me say the next words. “He’s not my boyfriend. And how did you know about the half-human part?”
With a smile full of bright, white teeth, my new friend nodded. “Everyone in here is something different.” He eyed me up and down like a predator, and I did my best to stifle a shiver. “Even you, little fae.”
I opened my mouth to argue with him but then decided against it. I was tired and angry, and I needed to figure out what to do about the body in the trunk of the car we saw earlier. “I should go,” I muttered.
“How about a drink instead?”
Surprised at the offer, my face must have spoken volumes because the man chuckled and held out his hands. “It’s not a pick-up line. I would never piss on another man’s territory. But you look like you could use a drink, and you really should wait for your boyfriend’s fight to be over.”
“He’s not my boyfriend,” I reiterated .
The man sniffed. What was it with all these creatures using their sense of smell in that way? “Okay, whatever you say, pretty fae.”
“My name is Sosie.”
He smiled again and took my offered hand. “I’m Rohan.”
We stood in awkward silence a little too long while I tried to figure out why he looked so familiar. There was something about those eyes and their intensity. Something that was triggering a memory…
“Oh, it’s you,” I said, still holding his hand. “You’re the tiger!”
Rohan stepped back and bent forward at the waist to give me a small bow. “Yes, that is me.”
“Wow,” I breathed, completely fascinated and a tad bit frightened. “We saw you last night. Tris and I. You were…” I paused, remembering how he’d ripped out the throat of that grizzly, and took a second to swallow the fear that was pushing upward. “You’re really good.”
Rohan shook his head and offered me his elbow like he was my escort. I complied because…well, because I figured it was better to be the tiger’s friend than his enemy. Once I latched on, he nodded and said, “Thank you.”
We started to walk away from the ring and toward the back of the warehouse in an area I hadn’t been to yet. “Is there a bar here?”
“Of course there is. Razi wouldn’t miss a chance to make a quick buck.”
As we made our way through the wide-open area, I noticed that there weren’t as many fights happening tonight. But it was still crowded, and when we reached the bar that stretched at least thirty feet, there was a pleasant sound playing from the speakers under the counter.
I smiled and sighed. “Music.”
“Yes,” Rohan said, pulling out a stool and gesturing for me to sit down. “You like this kind of music? ”
“I like anything where the people aren’t chanting for me to go away,” I grumbled.
Rohan laughed and waved over the bartender. He was another giant specimen with a bald head and bulging muscles. Geez, where did Razi find these guys?
“What’s your poison?” Rohan asked.
I looked at the bartender, wondering if he was an ogre like the Monster outside. And that thought alone made me let go of everything pressing on my chest right now and just enjoy the moment. “You know what?” I said to the bartender. “Surprise me.”