Chapter Six
Draco
Three AM, and I'm wide awake, staring at the cottage ceiling.
The bed is more comfortable than anywhere I've slept in months. Maybe years. The sheets are soft, the pillow doesn't smell like someone else's head, and the room is quiet except for the distant sound of wind through trees.
That's the problem.
It feels too good. Too safe. Too much like something I could get used to.
My eyes track across the ceiling in the darkness, cataloging the expense even here in what's supposed to be a simple cottage—hand-plastered crown molding, real wood beams, the kind of construction that costs more than most people make in a year.
On the nightstand, a leather-bound book of poetry sits next to a lamp that probably cost more than I made in a month of busking.
Different worlds.
The kind of different that ends badly for guys like me.
I've been here before. Not this cottage, not this century, but this exact situation—lying in a bed too comfortable to belong to someone like me, in a house too fine, accepting kindness from people too wealthy.
The memory rises unbidden, sharp as broken glass.
I was fourteen, maybe fifteen. Old enough to know better, young enough to be stupid about it.
Marcus Fabius was a merchant—successful enough to own a house in a decent part of Rome, not wealthy enough to rub shoulders with senators. He found me working a corner near the Forum, palming coins with the kind of speed that comes from desperation and natural talent.
Instead of calling the vigiles, he offered me a job.
"Work for me," he said. "Legitimate work. I need someone quick with their hands for my warehouse, someone smart enough to keep inventory, someone who won't steal from me because I'm paying them fairly."
I thought I'd won the lottery. A real job. A room in his house—small, but mine. Three meals a day. He even hired a tutor to teach me to read properly, said a smart boy was wasted on the streets.
For six months, I thought I'd finally found it. Safety. Belonging. A future that didn't end in an alley or the arena.
Then, his wife returned from visiting her family in Ostia.
Livia was twenty-three, married at sixteen to a man twice her age, bored out of her mind in a house where her only job was to look decorative and produce heirs she hadn't managed to deliver. She was beautiful in that untouchable way wealthy women are—like art you're not allowed to touch.
She touched me first.
It started innocently enough. She'd find excuses to come to the warehouse, ask me questions about inventory, laugh at my jokes. Then the questions got more personal. Then the touches got less accidental. Then one afternoon when Marcus was away on business, she appeared in my room.
I was young and stupid, and she was beautiful and wanted me. Of course I said yes.
For three months, we were careful. Stolen hours when Marcus was at the docks, quiet afternoons in my small room, the kind of secret that feels thrilling when you're too young to understand how dangerous it really is.
Until the day Marcus came home early.
He didn't shout. Didn't rage. Just stood in the doorway of my room, watching Livia scramble for her clothes, watching me realize my life had just ended.
"Get out," he told her. Then he turned to me. "You stay."
I thought he'd kill me. Honestly, death would have been kinder.
Instead, he sold me.
Not to another merchant. Not to a mine or a farm where I might work my way to freedom. To a ludus. A gladiator school. The kind of place where the average life expectancy is two years, where you fight and die for the entertainment of people who wouldn't piss on you if you were burning.
"You wanted to be treated like family," he said as the slave traders chained my wrists. "Family means consequences. This is yours."
Livia never said a word. Never tried to stop it. Just watched from an upstairs window as they led me away.
I learned two things that day: Rich people's kindness is always a loan, not a gift. And the interest is your life.
I throw off the covers and sit up, my heart pounding like I've been running.
This is exactly how it started before. Comfortable bed. Wealthy benefactor. The feeling of being saved.
And I'm already thinking about Charity the way I thought about Livia—like she's different, like this time will be different, like the class divide won't eventually eat us both alive.
I'm smarter now. Older. I've survived things that would have killed that stupid fifteen-year-old boy three times over.
Which means I should know better than to stay.
I start packing my few belongings in the pre-dawn darkness. It doesn't take long—I learned centuries ago not to accumulate things that slow you down. The coin goes in my pocket, the spare shirt gets rolled into my magic kit, and the makeshift bedding gets straightened to hide any trace I was here.
I should leave a note. Explain somehow. But what would I say? "Thanks for the shelter, but I can't risk caring about you because the last time I got involved with a rich woman it destroyed my life?"
Yeah, that'll go over well.
Better just to disappear. She'll be disappointed, maybe hurt, but she'll get over it. Rich girls always do. She'll find some other project to occupy her rebellion, some safer way to feel alive.
And I'll go back to being what I've always been—a survivor who doesn't stick around long enough to get attached.
The early morning air is crisp as I slip out of the cottage, my bag slung over one shoulder. I take the long way through the woods, partly to avoid being seen from the main house and partly because I want one last look at this place that felt, for a few brief hours, like it might be home.
The city's quieter at dawn—just delivery trucks and early commuters, people with purpose who don't pay attention to one more guy walking the streets. I head south on Lexington, no real destination in mind. Away is enough.
I'm checking behind a restaurant on Lexington in the low 80s—force of habit, always good to know where the best dumpster diving is—when I hear the soft whimper.
There, wedged between two garbage cans like he's trying to make himself invisible, is a dog.
I freeze.
He's a mutt, maybe forty pounds of mixed breeds that probably includes some terrier and definitely includes some survivor.
His fur is matted, dark brown streaked with gray that might be dirt or age.
One back leg is held at an awkward angle—old injury, from the look of it—but he's moving around well enough on his three good legs.
Not bleeding, nothing that screams emergency, just sore.
Most people would walk past without a second glance. Just another stray, just another casualty of city life.
But I see the intelligence in his dark eyes, the way he watches me approach without running. Scared but not vicious, hurt but not broken.
I know that look. I've worn it.
"Hey there, boy," I say softly, dropping my bag and crouching down a few feet away. The coin appears in my hand automatically, rolling across my knuckles, and his eyes track the movement with interest instead of fear.
Smart dog. Curious despite his circumstances.
I sit cross-legged on the pavement, making myself smaller, less threatening. "Rough couple of days?"
He limps closer, nose twitching as he tries to figure out if I'm friend or foe.
I pull a protein bar from my jacket pocket—breakfast I was saving for later—and break off a piece. He takes it gently from my fingers, careful not to bite, and wolfs it down like he hasn't eaten in days.
Probably hasn't.
I feed him the rest of the bar piece by piece, letting him get used to my presence. When he finally lets me touch his head, scratching behind his ears, his tail wags harder despite the limp.
And that's when it hits me.
Charity's voice from last night: I always wanted a pet. A dog, or even just a cat. Something alive and warm and… mine.
The longing in her voice when she said it, like she was admitting to wanting something forbidden. The way she explained how her parents thought pets were too unpredictable, too risky.
She's as alone as this dog. As alone as I was at fifteen, before Marcus took me in and then destroyed me.
Maybe I can't give her freedom—that's something she'll have to take for herself. But I can give her this. Something alive and warm and hers. Something that will love her back without conditions or complications. Something simple and good in a life that's been neither.
"What do you think, buddy?" I ask him, scratching behind his ears. "Want to meet someone who needs you as much as you need a home?"
He looks at me with those intelligent eyes, and I swear he understands every word.
My bag sits forgotten on the pavement as I make a new decision. I'm not leaving. Not yet. Not when I can do something good for once.
Getting him cleaned up takes the better part of the morning. I find a self-service dog wash a few blocks north—twenty bucks for thirty minutes, soap and brushes included. The attendant takes one look at us and shakes her head.
"That's gonna take more than thirty minutes, honey."
She's right. It takes three cycles to get through all the matted fur, and even then, he's not winning any beauty contests. But underneath the grime, he's actually a handsome dog—compact and sturdy, with expressive eyes and ears that perk up when he's interested in something.
While he's drying, I decide he needs a collar. The dog follows me to the leather shop around the corner where they sell scraps for cheap. I explain to the owner that I want to make my new friend a collar, but I don’t have the tools.
He gives me the once over and looks intrigued to find out what someone like me can do with a few scraps of leather.
He sets me up at a corner table where he can keep an eye on me while my canine friend lies down under the table.
My hands remember skills older than this civilization.
Cut, punch, stitch—basic leatherwork that kept gladiators' gear from falling apart in the arena.