That knowledge grated up his spine.
“And silence her.”
Leto dropped from champion to slave in the span of three words.
He adjusted his grip to keep her immobilized and silent. Sharp teeth grazed the inside of his palm—her tongue, her lips, her vicious snarls. When Nynn tried to kick, he looped one thigh around both of hers. She still tried. He’d known that about her from the first moment she’d stabbed his cheek with a piece of concrete. She would still try. That didn’t mean she would win. Not against him and not against the Asters.
Why did that make his stomach lurch?
The doctor stepped closer, his chin lifted, inspecting.
Likely mid-fifties, Dr. Aster was glossy as a photograph. His suit was immaculate. Light brown hair was carefully combed back from a face that greatly resembled that of his father. Hawkish. Predatory. With the same jester’s smile. Only, the doctor seemed able to keep his smile just shy of unsettling. More contained. Nothing about him said sadist. Madness. Brilliance. Just a well-ordered sense of competence.
His eyes, however, gave Leto pause. Dull gray. Slow to move. He took his time to linger over every surface, especially Nynn’s face. Collecting details? Leto didn’t know how to do that without racing at high speed, when he could suck up information as quickly as slurping water from a glass. To move so slowly worked against every instinct he had ever honed. It actually bothered him to watch the doctor’s careful, slothful movements.
He’d met the man only once or twice. With nothing between them other than a connection to the Old Man, they’d had little to say. In fact, in his twenty years as a Cage warrior, he couldn’t remember having spoken with the doctor. Now Leto’s skin was itching as if bugs were crawling beneath.
“Cutting your hair hadn’t occurred to me,” he said. “Do you miss it, Mrs. MacLaren? I suppose your husband must have enjoyed its beauty a great deal.”
Aster was tempting fate by taunting her. Leto caught her renewed blitz of venom as if holding back lightning. At first he couldn’t identify the wetness along the outside of his hand, but it was her tears. Two blinks of salt water trailed down her cheeks and settled in the crevice between his skin and hers.
That lazy gray gaze returned to Nynn. “Greatly changed.” Aster wiped one of her tears, then touched his finger to his tongue. “But still broken. I like to see even our champion hasn’t been able to change that. Although you have tried, haven’t you, Leto?”
“Yes, sir. She’s a good fighter.”
Dr. Aster stared directly into Nynn’s eyes. Leto could almost feel the earthquake her hatred was going to rip open beneath their feet. Had she been free of the collar, she would have done just that. “True. But alas, her son . . .”
She shrieked. Leto’s arms were beginning to burn. They’d both have bruises from how roughly he needed to keep her contained. And all the while, his anger lifted to new heights. Nynn was his neophyte. This mental and emotional torture would set their training back by weeks. Possibly longer. He’d only just determined that her anger stood in the way of greatness. Now the personification of that anger was playing marionette with nightmare thoughts of her son.
“Maybe that isn’t such a welcome topic,” the doctor said. “I’ll leave talk of young Jack for another time.”
More salt water against Leto’s hand. This was a torture he’d never experienced.
What was right? Dragon be, he couldn’t tell.
Dr. Aster smiled. “And you remember my companion, I assume?”
He turned to beckon a young woman forward. She walked with slinking grace, moving with a cat’s animal ease. Only when she reached Aster’s side and he snapped his fingers did she squat by his side. Her twisting elegance was unnatural, if only because she retained an air of dignity even when kneeling. She curled against the doctor’s upper leg, as if a part of his anatomy, not a separate being.
Leto shivered.
The Pet.
Leto’s interactions with Dr. Aster had been limited, but his contact with the Pet was entirely new. He only ever saw her from a distance. She was the doctor’s constant companion. No one knew who she was or how she’d come to be more animal than woman.
A beautiful woman.
“Up, Pet.”
Dr. Aster’s voice was as deliberate as his slothful gaze.
She stood. An agile unfurling. Leto thought of petals opening—something his mother had described. A blossom went from tight and closed to radiant and ready to receive. In this case, to receive instruction from her master. She eyed Leto, then Nynn, but everything about her posture said that her true attention was riveted to the doctor.
Beautiful, yes. But eerie.
Leto had never seen a Dragon King so pale. He’d never known it possible. She was white. White like marble struck by floodlights. Her hair was just the opposite. Stark, incomprehensibly black. Her eyes blazed green and gold. She wore clothes made of what looked like latex, as black as her hair and as shining as her unsettling skin. Elfin features. Narrow shoulders. Tiny, tiny mouth.
Beyond strange.
Rumors abounded about her.
Lobotomized. A failed experiment in the doctor’s lab. No one knew if she had a clan, if she had a gift, or if she was even a true Dragon King.
Of all the rumors, Leto couldn’t believe in the possibility of a lobotomy. In contrast to her master, her eyes were shimmering, keen, cagey. An unsettling aura pulsed from her in chilling waves. She stared at Nynn. Stared outright. She even frowned—the touch of a crease between her dramatic black brows.
“She hates you,” the Pet said to her master.
Toneless.
Leto half expected the doctor to smack her for such a blunt assessment. He only stroked her nape. “Of course she does. And we’re not even through with the evening. Leto, bring her with us.”
After taking a deep breath, he grabbed the chain that dangled between her arms and pulled. Nynn was shrieking like a Pendray priestess. Long-forged habit demanded that he exert his dominance, especially in front of Dr. Aster. Leto was their champion. He did as he was ordered—but not with the violence he would’ve used on anyone else. She stumbled as she fought his hold. He pulled her up and into his embrace, then tightened his arms.
Holding her.
Curses forged with fury and hurt were the most vicious Leto had ever heard—and he’d heard the worst dying men could spew before taking their last breaths.
“Save your strength,” he whispered against her temple. He couldn’t save her, but he could do as he’d always done: teach her how to survive. “Nynn, hear me. You’re going to need it.”
It galled him to realize that was all he could do: offer her words. He couldn’t do a Dragon damn thing but carry his neophyte toward the training arena. Two guards fell into step with the doctor. The taller of the two pulled a Taser from his belt.
“Let go of her,” he said to Leto.
Reluctantly, enraged by the frustration that he could do nothing more, Leto dropped the manacles and let Nynn slip to to her feet. The guard shoved her down and kicked her in the stomach. She jackknifed. He wedged the sole of his boot between her shoulder blades, then pushed the Taser against her left ribs. The Tigony could wield electrical impulses, and even generate their own electrical currents by hauling energy out of the air and amplifying it.
That didn’t mean they were immune to its effects.
Nynn screamed, vibrated, slumped. The guards hauled her off the floor, working together until all six of them were locked inside the training arena. Leto was the last to enter. Everything he’d known about life in the complex—his home—had changed in the span of a few hours.
There, on the far side of the arena, waited the whipping post. As did Hellix and Fam.
“Dr. Aster, what is this about? She’s my neophyte. She makes her debut in two days and needs her focus.”
The doctor looked over his shoulder, but he didn’t stop his deliberate walk toward the whipping post. “She also tried to escape toni
ght, did she not?”
“She did.” Leto decided on complete honesty. No telling how Dr. Aster had learned what he did. Lying would only hurt them both. “I dealt her punishment. That’s my right as her trainer.”
“Oh, I saw your punishment,” the doctor said with a smirk. “Very entertaining. You’re still reeling from that one. I know it. So close to taking what you wanted. Yet so good and loyal, trying to teach her what’s right.” He looked down at Nynn, where she slumped between the two guards. Nothing about the woman Leto had trained remained in her eyes. “She’s very, very stubborn when it comes to learning lessons. Now it’s my turn.”
Dr. Aster reached the whipping post. The Pet curled up at his feet, holding his calf with one hand and the base of the post with the other, so feline and watchful. Unlike the doctor, she didn’t smirk or smile, only assessed the scene. Leto found no hint of judgment in her expression, or pleasure. Whoever—whatever—she was, the Pet was not a sadist made in the doctor’s image.
She looked up the length of the whipping post and exhaled. Leto barely heard her say, “Inevitable.”
Crystal clear memories still twitched across his back. He bore scars from combat—honorable scars. He also bore shameful ones. Whip marks. Welts had lifted from strike after strike of chains hurled at full force. Sometimes Leto’s trainer had administered punishments for youthful disrespect. Sometimes it had been Leto’s own father, under orders from the Old Man. Another lifetime, yet he was as helpless now as he had been at fifteen, still learning what it would take to become a respected, respectful warrior.
The guards pulled Nynn forward. Hellix reached far overhead and inserted a hook through a link from her manacle chain. Her toes barely reached the floor, with her arms stretched taut overhead. Her collar pressed upward on her throat. Sweat dampened her brows. The doctor grabbed a hunk of hair at her crown. He lifted until her eyes were level. Leto had come to expect fight and fire.
She was blank.
Dr. Aster pushed the Pet from his leg and faced a selection of whips and chains hanging from a pegged board. Perhaps the concealment of shadows had prompted the Old Man to have the whipping post erected in that particular place—half hidden but visible enough to send a shiver down the backs of any warrior who’d been chained to its unforgiving wood.
In the center of the training arena, the Cage lights cast gruesome slices of black and white over the doctor’s smile, one of pure anticipatory glee. Had Leto any reason to suspect that tales of the laboratories were false . . . those reasons were gone now.
The doctor selected a thick whip. Three inches in diameter at the base. No more than four feet long. Although it tapered to a point, the thickness would deliver as much punch as sting. Aster tested the heft, but lifted his eyes as if to turn over the responsibility. Why not? The Old Man had never delivered any of Leto’s whippings. He’d liked to watch.
Leto was sweating. He had to make one more attempt. “Sir, I cannot whip her. She’s to be my partner. This . . . She’ll never forgive me for something so extreme. Fighting at her side will be impossible.”
For a moment, the movement of Dr. Aster’s sluggish, measured gray eyes made him seem almost kind. Almost sympathetic. “That’s very logical, Leto. And accurate. You won’t be the one to deliver this woman’s sentence.”
He handed the whip to Hellix.
Leto sprang. No calculations. No thought toward how his actions would affect his future or his family. He simply couldn’t let Hellix whip Nynn.
He’d never made such a rash choice. He’d never seen a choice come to so little fruition. One guard cocked a napalm pistol. The other hefted the recharged Taser.
They needed ten minutes and both weapons to take him down.
FOURTEEN
Audrey woke up screaming.
She’d screamed for hours, even in her dreams.
Bricks of pain slammed down on her head. Fire like the lick of the Dragon’s breath scorched her back, ass, and upper thighs. What must’ve been burns from the Tasers nettled and itched—between her shoulder blades, down her ribs. One at the base of her skull.
She moaned. Her head was too heavy to keep upright. When she stopped fighting gravity, she hit pitted wood with her forehead. Must still be the post—the whipping post where agony threaded through every inhale, every shrieked exhale. Was the training arena in near darkness, or were her eyes failing? Hard to tell past her mangled senses.
Moving, ever again . . . wasn’t possible. She hurt too much. That pain would never stop.
A noise—the scuff of leather soles—pulsed panic across raw nerves. She moaned once more, then fought, fought to move. Manacles still circled her wrists. The chain would still be looped through the ring at the top of the post. Drawing from reserves she didn’t know she had, she dug her knees into the post. Flexed screeching abdominal muscles. Tried to find a position that wasn’t just hanging by a chain. If she could climb high enough, she might be able to release the chain from its loop.
She needed a weapon. Manacles would do.
Leto had been right. By accompanying Kilgore and trying to play his game, she’d volunteered to be used. Maybe so many months in the labs had left that possibility open. Nothing had been out of pride’s reach when begging for her son. She’d done unthinkable things on the chance of some small reprieve. What was the difference, giving in to one more sick bastard?
That wasn’t her anymore. She wasn’t scared Audrey MacLaren anymore. She wasn’t even some halfway-committed neophyte. Dr. Aster had handed a whip to Hellix, and the sick sadist changed her life once again. Weeks of Leto’s training and his strange, twisted faith in her coalesced around her pain and hatred. Making her new.
She was Nynn of Tigony. Fully. And she’d strangle the fucker who tried to touch her again.
Hoping for something other than hazy shadows, she blinked and kept blinking. She couldn’t trust that the lights had been dimmed. But she’d fight near-blind if she needed to.
Up. Up again—two more pushes, with all the strength she had left. Another inch. Struggling. No part of her body was free of agony, so it didn’t matter when the insides of her knees became ripped and bloodied, pierced with splinters. Her palms, too, as well as the inside grooves of her knuckles.
She reached the hook, the loop, the chance to hurt someone. It wasn’t going to be her.
Manacles and collar remained, but she was free of the post. She dropped to the ground. Although her legs gave way, she held a low, crouching defensive stance. Both shredded hands clutched the chain.
“Nynn.”
The shock of Leto’s low, hushed whisper was not as startling as the relief that followed.
“Where are you?” she gasped.
A light flickered on, far across the arena. The Cage waited between them. Slowly, her eyes adjusted to that slight illumination. At least she wasn’t blind as well as half-crippled. Small comfort, but she didn’t have any other kind. Any last softness in her life had been crushed.
Slowly, Leto appeared. He walked with the same deliberation that shouted ego and attitude and victory. But something was different. She stayed crouched low, watching. His pace was the same. His balance was not. He favored his left leg—nothing so obvious as a limp, yet she spotted the change. His shoulders, too. Tighter and set higher, hunched almost defensively toward the lower band of his collar.
She waited. Stunned, really. She remembered . . .
He’d lunged at Hellix, or perhaps he’d even aimed his strength at the doctor. She hadn’t known his target, and despite all of his courage and strategy for battle, she doubted he’d known either. Just pure fury. The memory of his fight materialized in full, grotesque detail. In the Cages, he was unbeatable. That confidence allowed him to attack every opponent, knowing its outcome in advance.
He had acted on quick, violent instinct. For her. That had been his failing. Rage had given him the power to hold off the guards, but he’d been an animal. No strategy, and none of the advantages a Dragon King had over human
s—armed humans.
What had happened afterward, when her consciousness had slipped away like a raven taking flight? Had he kept fighting? Did that explain his strange gait and taut shoulders?
She didn’t know what to make of that. So new and unexpected.
He’d been the one to debase her in front of Kilgore. He’d carried her into the arena. He’d handed her to them, where she’d been beaten on the floor. Did any of that overwhelm how he’d warned her to save her strength, or his attempt to set her free?
Which warrior was walking toward her now?
Nynn hefted the chain. Enough slack.
After a sharp inhale, she was beset with a dizzying wash of black.
She fell face-first against the concrete floor. Her chin split. A sound of rage burst from her lungs. Maybe she would’ve lain there forever. Deflated. Defeated. Angry as fuck, but unable to do a damn thing more.
Only, Leto knelt. He touched her shoulders. She winced, tried to shrivel away.
“You’re not going anywhere,” he said softly.
“I want to hurt you.”
One of those nearly indecipherable emotions crossed his rugged features. Disappointment? She didn’t want to disappoint him. Not after what he’d done. He’d dented his reputation, suffered pain, kept brawling.
Again those two words: For her.
“I got that impression,” he said, with a grim downturn to his full lower lip. That frown made his scar more prominent. “But your skills deserve better weapons than these chains.”
She made noise more than any concerted effort to move. Brain. Bones. Muscles. She was an orchestra without a conductor. Dissonant pain blared over every command. So when he wanted her sitting up, she sat up—all under his power.
That’s how she wound up huddled against his chest. He sat cross-legged and pulled her close. She winced, hissed, but even she realized when her protests stopped: when he kissed the top of her head and tucked her close beneath his chin. Strong arms circled her. Stronger legs braced her lower body. Every shaking and twitching muscle no longer needed to struggle. She slumped.
Caged Warrior Page 13