Chapter 16
“The king of warball,” a female voice cut through the air, issued from the arena’s speakers. “And a man with enemies.”
Every screen in the stadium flickered and changed. Raaze’s face vanished, replaced by a grainy feed of the R’Tev box high above the pitch.
Raaze blinked once. Then his lips curved. Cait. She’d come back. After everything he’d said, after he’d watched her ship pull away, the stubborn, impossible, beautiful female had come back.
His female.
The knowledge hit his chest like a full-contact tackle, sweet and brutal all at once as warmth spread through his chest.
“Enemies who did everything they could to destroy his career. Destroy him. They faked a Blood Rage diagnosis and had him exiled because he was in the way of their player... Vikrav R’Tev.”
Every pair of eyes in the stadium swung to Vikrav.
The male stood ten yards away on the pitch, still breathing hard from the last play. His face drained of color first, then twisted into something ugly... Rage. Pure rage.
Raaze knew the look. He’d worn it himself plenty of times before they’d called it Blood Rage and shipped him off to Parac’Norr.
Yeah. Not so fun when someone rips your world apart, is it?
“And a faked Blood Rage diagnosis wasn’t the worst.” Cait carried on, relentless.
The holo-screens flickered, cycling through images Raaze recognized.
Faces he knew. Players he’d competed against, respected, and mourned.
“Every player that got in the R’Tev’s way was removed, discredited, or eliminated. ”
She started reading names.
Korrv T’Sann. Killed in a transport accident six months before he would have taken Vikrav’s starting position.
Therrik G’Raasos. Doping charge. Exiled to the outer colonies.
Mek S’Raavi. A “training accident” had left him paralyzed from the waist down.
The screens above the pitch filled with faces, dates, medical reports, and timestamps that didn’t match. Evidence. Cold, hard, and impossible to ignore.
The crowd’s energy shifted, and the roar that had greeted his unmasking curdled into something uglier. Booing started in the lower sections. Low at first, it built into a wall of sound that rolled down from the stands like an avalanche.
Vikrav snarled something Raaze couldn’t hear, and R’Tev guards started pouring onto the pitch.
They weren’t stadium security, but private muscle. Armed and armored, there were at least a dozen of them, maybe more, forming up around Vikrav.
The booing turned into outright screaming.
The commentator’s voice rose above the roar, professional neutrality abandoned entirely. “Security! We need security on the pitch now! The R’Tev clan are attempting to—”
Raaze stopped listening. He was already moving.
If Cait was broadcasting the evidence to the whole stadium, then the R’Tev hadn’t listened to her. Which meant she’d improvised. Which meant—
She was in danger.
His legs burned. His ribs screamed. The gash across his shoulder had opened up again, and blood ran down his arm. None of it mattered. None of it mattered because Cait was up there, alone, with a family that had killed to protect their secrets and would sure as trall kill again.
The thunder of footsteps sounded behind him and he spun, ready to take on whoever was trying to stop him…
Daavyn pulled up short, his hands raised, just in front of Sorrath and Bravnak.
Vaath, sporting a spectacular bruise across his jaw and a hard look in his eyes, headed up the rest of the team as they surrounded him.
“The female,” Daavyn said. “The little red-headed one from the transport?”
Raaze nodded once. “The R’Tev have her.”
Daavyn nodded once. “Lead the way.”
Raaze blinked, looking around the group. “Why… why would you help me? I left you all.”
Daavyn snorted and shrugged his shoulders. “You’re Izaean.”
“But I’m not!” Raaze shook his head. “That’s the whole draanthing point. The diagnosis was faked.”
Daavyn grinned and tapped the side of his nose.
“Yeah, we know. We can tell.” He clapped a clawed hand on Raaze’s shoulder. “But we decided you’re one of us. So you are. Now let’s go get your female, okay?”
He signaled to the rest, and as one, the Exiles formed a wedge and started carving a path through the chaos with Raaze on point. Claws out and eyes hard, they moved like a unit that had trained together for years rather than the ragtag exhibition squad the audience had laughed at an hour ago.
Stadium security tried to intercept. One officer got in Raaze’s face, yelling about protocol and containment. Raaze didn’t slow down. He shoulder-checked the male hard enough to send him spinning into his partner. The Exiles flowed around him like water around rocks.
They hit the lift bank.
But there were no cars. Raaze hissed between his teeth as he watched the numbers above the doors crawl down. Too slow. All the cars were stuck on the upper levels, no doubt jammed with spectators.
“Stairs,” he snapped, slamming through the door.
He took the stairs three at a time. His legs burned. Every bruise and cut from the match screamed at him, but adrenaline drowned most of it out.
The ferals were right behind him, their breaths coming in harsh grunts that matched his own.
Fourth level. Fifth. Sixth.
R’Tev guards met them in the corridor outside the private box level. Eight of them in matching black armor, positioned to block the approach.
The fight was short, brutal, and ugly.
Raaze took the first male down with an elbow to the throat, then used the body as a shield while he closed on the second. No flashy moves. Just economy of violence.
He snarled and lashed out. The third took a strike to the knee, then a blade-hand to the neck, and slowly toppled over backward.
The Exiles did the rest of the damage. Daavyn and Sorrath tore through the rest. Blood sprayed the walls as a scream was choked off. Either that, or the throat making the noise was no longer attached to a working pair of lungs.
Raaze didn’t know and didn’t care. Even though he was running on fumes and adrenaline and the certainty that if he was too slow, he was going to walk into that box and find her dead.
His focus narrowed on the door in front of them. A security door, it was bolted and secured from the inside.
Draanth that.
Running, he slammed into it. It shuddered, but held.
Daavyn appeared beside him, breathing hard, blood running from a cut above his eye. No words. Just a nod.
They ran and hit it together. It flexed, but held.
They hit it again, and something inside gave with a metallic shriek. The panel burst inward, hinges screaming.
Raaze went through first, barreling through the gap. He stepped inside, body already coiled for whatever came next.
He found her.
Cait stood in the middle of the luxury box, bruised to hell and back. Her lip was split, and the side of her face was already darkening into a deep purple. Her jacket had torn at the shoulder, revealing the edge of what looked like a nasty cut.
But she was still standing and held the nastiest-looking energy pistol he’d ever seen, leveled steadily at the R’Tev clan leader in the corner.
The weapon was big and ugly. He wasn’t familiar with the type, but it looked like it could punch a hole in a shuttle’s hull.
Vikrav’s father kneeled on the expensive carpet, his hands behind his head. Blood trickled from a gash at his temple as he stared at the muzzle of Cait’s weapon like it was the only thing in his reality.
Two R’Tev guards lay slumped near the door, unconscious or worse. He didn’t particularly care which.
Cait didn’t lower her arm when they came through the door.
She cut her eyes toward him for a split second, just long enough to register he wasn’t another threat, then locked back on her targets.
Her grip stayed rock-steady even though the rest of her trembled.
Adrenaline crash already setting in, he guessed, or pain. Probably both with the state of her.
“Took you long enough,” she said, her voice cracking on the last word. Not a lot, not enough that someone who didn’t know her would notice. But he knew her.
The center of Raaze’s chest ached as relief and terror wrapped around pride in his female, and all tried to claw their way out of his ribs at the same time.
“Had to fight my way through the fan club outside.” He gestured at the unconscious guards. “Looks like you handled yours.”
“They underestimated me.” A ghost of a smile flickered across her split lip. “People keep doing that.”
Behind him, the Exiles spread out through the box, taking up positions that blocked the exits to keep anyone else out.
Raaze crossed the room to Cait. His boots left bloody prints on the carpet as he reached her.
She still didn’t lower the weapon. Her knuckles were white around the grip, tendons standing out like cables in her wrist. This close, he saw the fine tremor running through her shoulders and the rapid flutter of her pulse in her throat.
She was terrified, but she’d done this anyway… walked into a box full of people who thought nothing of killing to protect their secrets and faced them down alone.
When the plan went sideways, she hadn’t run. Instead, she’d improvised, and she’d won.
Their eyes met, and he saw the triumph in her eyes. Underneath the bruises and the shaking and the hard line of her jaw, she was lit up with it. Fierce and bright and absolutely unbroken.
Draanth, this female. She was glorious.
“You came back,” he said in a low voice. Just for her.
The pistol wavered, just for a second, then steadied again.
“Someone had to save your ass.” Her voice was rough. “You’re terrible at planning.”
“I had a plan.”
“You had a warball play. That’s not the same thing.”
He felt the corner of his mouth twitch. Not quite a smile. There you are, kelarris. Still fighting.