Chapter 8
Merrilee
The fights came every other day.
I learned the rhythm of it quickly enough. The pattern became as predictable as breathing, though no less degrading for its familiarity.
After a night spent the in prize room, the guards would come for me, their boots heavy in the corridor outside the prize room.
They'd unlock the door with exaggerated slowness, letting the sound of metal scraping metal announce their arrival.
Then they'd stand there in the doorway, smirking, their eyes crawling over me in a way that made my skin want to peel itself off my bones.
They thought we were fucking.
I saw it in their faces—the knowing grins, the way they'd glance at the bed and then back at me, the crude jokes they'd make in languages not uploaded into my translator but whose meaning was crystal clear.
They assumed that every night Ahrick came back bloody and exhausted, he was using me the way winners were supposed to use their prizes.
And I let them believe it.
Not because I wanted to. Not because it didn't make me feel complicit in my own objectification.
But because their assumption was a shield.
As long as they thought I belonged to Ahrick—really belonged to him, in the way that mattered to men who saw women as property—they kept their hands to themselves.
Mostly.
They were still rough when they grabbed my arms to haul me out of the room. Still shoved me harder than necessary when I didn't move fast enough or let their fingers linger on my skin in ways that made my stomach turn. But they didn't cross the line into outright violation.
Because they thought I was his.
The thought made me want to vomit and cling to it at the same time.
They'd drag me back to my original room—the one I'd been kept in before that first fight. Small, filthy, reeking of rust and old fear. The contrast with the prize room was deliberate, I realized. A reminder that the comfort, the safety, the clean sheets and hot water—all of it was conditional.
I'd spend the next day there, alone, while Ahrick went back to whatever life he led between fights. I didn't know where he went. Didn't know if he had friends, allies, a place to rest that wasn't the prize room we shared. He never talked about it, and I never asked.
The isolation gave me too much time to think. Too much time to catalog every way this could go wrong.
Then fight day would come, and they'd fetch me again.
The dresses got worse.
The first one had been humiliating—sheer panels, chains, barely enough fabric to cover the essentials. I'd thought that was as bad as it could get.
I was wrong.
The second dress was more chains than fabric.
Thin strips of something gossamer-light that didn'thing to hide my body, held together by links of cold metal that pressed against my skin with every breath.
The chains were decorative, I realized with sick clarity.
They weren't holding the dress together—they were the point.
A reminder that I was bound. Displayed. Owned.
I'd objected. Had stood there in the holding room while the attendants dressed me and declared, "No. I'm not wearing this."
They'd looked at me with flat, indifferent eyes and kept working.
By the third dress, I stopped objecting.
What was the point? They were going to put me in whatever degrading scrap of fabric they wanted, and my protests changed nothing.
So I stood there silent and numb while they wrapped me in something that barely qualified as clothing—a few strategic strips of sheer material that covered my nipples and the apex of my thighs and nothing else.
The rest was just skin. Just me, exposed to thousands of eyes.
The temperature in the arena was always too hot. Oppressive heat that made sweat bead on my skin, made the sheer fabric cling even more obscenely. I felt every eye on me as they paraded me through the crowd—feel the weight of their stares like hands touching me without permission.
The cage was barely big enough to stand in, the bars too close together to sit comfortably. I'd press myself against the back corner, as far from the crowd as I could get, but it didn't matter. They could still see everything.
The noise was overwhelming. Thousands of voices screaming, chanting, baying for blood. The lights were too bright, harsh and glaring, turning the pit below into a stage and me into part of the spectacle.
The smell was worse. Sweat and blood and something acrid that might have been fear or excitement or both. It coated the back of my throat, made me want to gag.
And through it all, I'd search the crowd of fighters below for one specific face.
For a tawny pelt and dark hair and golden eyes that looked at me like I was a person instead of meat.
The first fight, I'd found him immediately. He'd been easy to spot—taller than most, moving with that controlled grace that set him apart from the others.
By the third fight, it took longer.
Not because he wasn't there. But because he looked different.
The damage was accumulating.
I'd watched it happen in real-time, cataloged every new injury, every sign that his body was breaking down under the relentless violence.
After the first fight, he'd come back with that gash across his chest, bruises blooming across his ribs and jaw. I'd stitched him up, watched the wound start to heal with that unnatural Vaktaire speed, and thought maybe it wouldn't be so bad.
After the second fight, the bruises had layered. Purple over yellow over green, a timeline of violence painted across his torso. New cuts joined old ones, some of them reopening when he moved wrong. But he was still strong. Still moved with that deadly skill.
By the third fight, the bruises were so dense now they'd merged into one continuous map of damage. Cuts that should have healed were still raw, his body too depleted to keep up with the repair work.
He moved stiffer. Slower. Like every step hurt.
But he kept winning.
I watched the third fight from the cage, my hands white-knuckled on the bars, my heart racing so hard I thought it might crack my ribs.
Three opponents at once this time. All of them fresh. All of them hungry.
The one blessing—if you could call it that—was that Ahrick's reputation as a warrior kept away all but the skilled and stupid. The weak ones, the opportunists who'd normally swarm a prize like me, they stayed back. They knew what he was.
So the ones who stepped into the pit with him now were either genuinely dangerous or too arrogant to recognize their own mortality.
These three were both.
Ahrick looked exhausted before the fight even started.
The horn sounded.
He moved like he always did—calculated, efficient, using his opponents' momentum against them. But I saw the hesitation now, the split-second delay when his body didn't respond quite as fast as his mind commanded.
The first opponent went down hard. Ahrick's fist connected with his jaw and the alien crumpled.
The second was smarter. Faster. He circled, looking for openings, and found one when Ahrick's guard dropped for just a moment.
The blow caught him in the ribs.
I heard Ahrick's grunt of pain even over the roar of the crowd. He staggered but didn't fall.
The third opponent charged while he was vulnerable, and for a terrible moment I thought it was over. That I was about to watch him go down, watch someone else win me, watch everything fall apart.
But Ahrick's eyes found mine across the pit.
Just for a second. Just long enough for something to pass between us—something I didn't have words for.
Then he moved.
It wasn't pretty. Wasn't the controlled violence I'd seen before. This was desperation and determination and sheer stubborn refusal to lose. He took hits that should have dropped him. Kept moving when his body was screaming to stop.
And he won.
The crowd erupted. The horn sounded. Ahrick stood in the center of the pit, swaying slightly, blood running down his side from where the blow to his ribs had reopened old wounds.
His eyes never left mine.
They brought me to the prize room first this time.
I paced. Checked the first aid kit. Laid out everything I might need—bandages, antiseptic, the needle and thread I'd used before with hands that wouldn't stop shaking.
When Ahrick limped in I saw immediately that I'd been right to worry.
He was holding his left side, his breathing shallow and careful. Blood soaked through his pelt, fresh and dark. His face was a mess of bruises, one eye swollen completely shut now. But it was the way he moved that scared me—like every step sent shards of glass through his ribs.
"Sit," I said, my voice sharper than I'd intended.
He obeyed without argument, lowering himself onto the bed with a sound that was half groan, half gasp.
I moved to him immediately, my hands already reaching for the worst of the damage. "Let me see."
He shifted, trying to give me access to his ribs, and the movement made him hiss through his teeth.
I pressed carefully along his side, feeling for breaks, and when my fingers found the spot he went rigid.
"Broken," I said quietly. "At least one rib, maybe two."
"I know."
"You can't keep doing this." The words came out before I could stop them. "Ahrick, you're going to get yourself killed."
"I'm fine."
"You're not fine. You can barely move."
He met my eyes with his one good one. "I'll heal."
"Not fast enough." I grabbed the antiseptic, my movements jerky with frustration and fear. "The fights are every other day. You don't have time to heal between them. Each one is going to be worse than the last."
"I know."
"Then why—" I stopped, pressing the cloth soaked in antiseptic to a cut on his shoulder harder than necessary. He didn't flinch. "It's okay. You can stand down. Let someone else win next time."
"No."
"Ahrick—"
"No." His voice was firm. Final.
"I'll survive it," I said, forcing the words out even though they tasted like ash. "Whatever happens, I'll survive. I've survived worse."