by L. V. Lane
I was exhausted, mentally, and physically.
Ominous clouds, heavy with the threat of snow, hung over the city like a grim reaper waiting to collect his death toll.
I would feed him a gluttonous bounty of any who got in my way.
Soon, I would fight against the worst scum of the Empire.
My purpose solidified. Lilly was here, and she needed me. Whatever it took, and even if I had to rip every fucking one of them apart, I would.
Dax brought us into the Pit through the underground complex where the fighters prepared. The passages were dark and damp, water dripping from thick, broken pipes that lined the walls. We passed through, heading upward and out onto one of many rough balconies that lined lower-tiers closest to the central pit.
These stony outcrops formed part of the pit wall, and were reserved for those supporting the higher-ranking fighters. It provided a tiny area of control that was soon crowded with Hudson’s team, Lucian’s team, the two Omegas, and a dozen of Dax’s people. To the front, narrow stairs led down to a passage that surrounded the fighting pit, providing direct access, while the curving back wall had a single exit, which could also easily be guarded.
I had frequented the infamous Pit, so I knew what I was expecting. For those not native to Lyus, it would be like entering into the bowels of hell.
It wasn’t actually a pit, it was more a natural cavern that had been carved further by generations over the years. Tiered paths rose up along the walls, spiraling ever higher, and forming a multitude of viewing opportunities. Rough mesh railings edged the top of the central pit which formed the fighting stage. Cables of lights dangled from the ceiling and walls, buzzing and blinking as they strained the mighty generator.
“This is no place for a fucking Omega,” Hudson growled.
He was right, bad enough for Anna and Eloise within our protection. A million times worse for Lilly.
A fight was taking place—these early rounds catering for those without rank. Most wouldn’t stand a chance of getting through. Some would have been paid to get a beating to warm up the crowd, and some would be hoping to garner the interest of a sponsor.
My gaze didn’t linger and instead lifted to the three cages suspended from the northern side of the cavern wall to hang over the fighting pit.
There on her knees, fingers wrapped around the bars of the cage was a princess with long blonde hair.
A feral roar erupted from Ryker. It was anger, death, and pain, and I felt its echo to my core. He charged as though prepared to tear his way through the crowds between her and us. I slammed my body into his, gripping his throat as he snarled.
“You can’t get to her,” I growled back.
I couldn’t look at her again. Wouldn’t. But I knew that Ryker was.
He strained against my hold—I tightened my fist around his throat.
“I don’t need this shit, Ryker.” The dichotomy between Alpha and Omega was represented perfectly in Ryker’s rage and the tiny frightened Omega in the cage. There wasn’t much humanity within Ryker to begin with, but the sight of Lilly had scoured out the rest. He didn’t feel emotions, but for once, the animal in him did.
Strangely, his fury calmed me, like dealing with him had centered me.
Alphas were animal, and like all animals, we had a hierarchy that we understood. I would have Ryker’s submission, or I would cut off his fucking air supply until he gave it up.
His wheezing breath did not move me. “Bury it,” I snarled in his ear. “Bury it or fake it, or do whatever the fuck you need to do. I need to fight, and I need to know you have my back. You said it—you can fake anything.”
Our standoff lasted long minutes before his anger drained, and cautiously, I eased my hold. My head lifted; the collective team had drawn to the edges of our chamber, but their stance relaxed as I dropped my hands.
“You’re up,” Dax said, breaking the last remnants of the spell.
I nodded, then looked to Ryker; his face was the dead, empty one. “Do you trust me?”
Scrubbing a hand down his face, he muttered, “Yes, I trust you.”
“Good, then trust I’m going to fuck you up in ways your anomaly-riddled brain can’t begin to comprehend if you distract me from what I’m here for again.”
He met my eyes reluctantly, offered a fleeting grin, and said, “I knew you fucking cared.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
MY FIRST AWARENESS was noise; a deafening, rushing cacophony that assaulted my ears and spoke of heinous deeds.
My next awareness was of cold; icy cold. I shivered so hard my teeth banged together. My dress, little more than a scrap of material, offered my body no protection.
My head was heavy, lifting my chin from my chest was a challenge, and opening my eyes, harder. My feet were moving in staggered steps—I was braced between two burly Betas, and their painful grip on my upper arms was the only thing holding me up.
A chant began, too raucous to distinguish the words, but it sounded like—blood. Lids peeling back, my blurred view presented a kaleidoscope of dark flickering shapes. A feminine scream reached through the frenzy, it was close, and I tried to orientate myself on the sound, but it was impossible among the jostling, roaring crowd.
Blinking, my vision cleared enough to make out walls soaring to either side of me, creating a dark cavernous enclosure filled with many people. Great tiers rose ever higher, where yet more people jostled and jeered, chanting and hooting.
Steps came next, rough, gritty stone under my bare feet, taking me higher until we emerged onto the side of a pit.
“Welcome to the Pit,” the man fisting my right arm said before he shoved me into a cage.
I had no time to assimilate his words before a rusty, metal door slammed shut on my prison and my world tilted as I was hoisted out, dangling over empty space.
I screamed, but the sound was swallowed by the tumult. I was in a cage, a tiny cage, dangling over a huge pit with monsters clamoring on every side.
My prison swung wildly as another cage was pushed out to hang beside mine.
Another Omega whose wide, terrified eyes held mine.
A great cheer went up, and my head swung down to where a dozen men had entered the pit. Weapons, crude and deadly in wood or glinting metal, were tossed in among them. They dove for them, kicking, wrestling, and snatching up whatever was near. The crowd became frenzied as the first blood spilled.
Animals; they were animals fighting to survive.
Bodies fell and became still or writhed in agony until only one remained standing.
My stomach turned over, and I sank to my knees and heaved up bile until I could heave no more. It dripped from the bottom of the cage and onto the sandy floor far below. I could not find the energy to care, and the beaten men below were similarly unworried.
Wiping the trickle of spit from my mouth, my shivers became spasmodic. I was so cold I did not think I could ever be warm again.
My final moments on the ship had passed in a hazy blur. Sketchy memories played back; running along corridors, the broken Beta who had tried to save me, and slipping in my own blood.
An Alpha had bitten me; sunk his teeth into the place that belonged to Ethan. My shaking fingers reached toward my throat, my mind recoiling in fear of what I would find.
Smooth? My skin was perfectly smooth except for that rough patch where my blood flowed closest to the surface. Had he really bitten me? Or had I imagined the events?
I was still drugged, even now, only half cognizant and not entirely me.
Yet, it had felt real.
Power—I also remembered the power.
The tiny hairs on my arm rose in a way that went beyond the chill air.
He had taken my blood, it was real, and it had happened. My healing was simply a consequence of my singularity. How often had I cut into my own veins in the early days of my Omega Awakening? Many times, and yet, no marks marred my wrists or throat.
Below, heavyset Betas were dragging the fallen from the
pit.
Then another fight began.
The pale sandy floor far below was littered with many dark stains. Blood. It had not been the first fight to grace the floor of the pit, and it would not be the last.
Blood and power? I could feel something deep inside, hovering just beyond my reach.
But there was more?
My head swung left, searching the wide lower balconies that surrounded the mighty pit.
Ethan.
A great distance separated us, and yet this was the closest I had been to him for days.
He is here? My dulled mind wondered if he were a specter that I had conjured up out of desperate need and want.
His dark eyes held mine unflinching, and my breath caught in my throat.
He is here.
That look, I could weep for the beauty of that look, even in this desperate, broken setting. It was a look of ownership like he had already won the fight. I had seen it once before while in the hold of the Uncorrupted ship.
Since that day, Ethan had left an indelible mark on my world, and I wanted him to leave many more.
When he turned away, darkness invaded my world…until I realized he had turned to catch a charging Ryker.
They collided, two walls of power crashing into one another.
Power? A different kind of power—raw, animal, Alpha power. There was blood in their power too.
Blood and Power.
An inhuman roar erupted from Ryker, swallowed by the chanting crowd. I felt his cry inside me; pain, sorrow, and torment enough to send a shiver down my spine. Tears welled behind my eyes and spilled onto my cheeks.
I jostled, knees biting into the sharp cage floor.
So near, I was sure I would feel them inside me if not for the hated drugs.
They parted, and although Ryker remained staring my way, Ethan turned and walked away.
Panic gripped me in my befuddled state. Where was he going? Was he leaving me?
He emerged again at the steps that led down to the pit.
Realization hit me, he was going to fight in the pit, be locked in with other men and crude weapons until only one of them still stood.
“No!” My fingers clutched the bars, and I twisted to watch his approach beneath me. “No! No! No!”
He could not fight, not here. It was too dangerous, there were too many opponents, and he could die.
I could not watch him die.
Tears poured down my cheeks. I screamed and rattled the bars of my prison until it rocked furiously, and I thought I might crash with it down upon the sandy pit floor.
I didn’t crash, and as Ethan emerged with a rag-tag crowd of Betas and Alphas, I ceased my manic thrashing.
Absolutely still, the words, “Please don’t die,” spilled over and over from my lips.
The crowd roared their chant once again. Blood! Blood! Blood!
I felt at war with them, like my hopes were being crushed with their desire for death and killing.
Only I did want the killing too; their desires were indiscriminate—mine was specific.
Ethan’s head did not turn my way, but enrapt, I drank all of him in, his dark, brooding good looks, and the tense line of full lips that I would have gladly died for a chance to feel against my skin again. His hair was a dark tangle that reached his shoulders, and a thick layer of scruff lined his jaw. His armor was a mismatch of gray, tan and black that lent him a savage, raider guise.
His presence had hit me from the other side of the vast pit, this close, it was his scent that brought the second mental blow—wild and earthy.
My eyes rolled into the back of my head, and my stomach cramped so violently, I curled into a ball.
The ominous rattle of the gate closing brought a stutter to my breath. I was sick to my core, and woozy from the drugs, but inside my mind screamed.
My stomach cramped again, and this time, I did scream, and a flood emerged between my legs.
Slick.
It was heat, here and now, I was going into heat. Ethan’s scent had triggered it.
“No! No! No!” My new chat had a different focus as the slick poured from me, and I frantically tried to catch it in my hands and what little clothing I had.
Rhythmic cramping tore me up; there was too much, and I could no more stop it than I could get out of this abominable cage.
Below they were fighting, the blur of shapes, the screams and the coppery scent of blood as bodies began to fall, while my fingers, ever more frantic, tried to contain the slick.
But I could not, and as another wave of pain set me writhing, the copious slick trickled between my fingers, through the cage bars, and down onto the pit floor.
On all fours and heedless of the biting bars, I watched it fall, panting hard between broken sobs.
A great roar echoed around the Pit, and the snarls below took on a feral edge.
My slick—my heat—would drive every Alpha below into rut.
It would drive Ethan into rut.
It was then another scent hit me, less familiar, and yet it brought an awareness that my mind recoiled against.
It was not the Alpha who had bitten me, but he was another Uncorrupted Alpha who had been conditioned with my blood, and his foul, noxious scent, drove more slick to gather in my already weeping pussy.
In the pit below, terror reigned, as vicious snarls, and tormented screams competed against the raucous spectators. Death and pain came quickly, and through tear-blurred eyes, I stared down into the pit where only two men remained—Ethan and the Uncorrupted Alpha.
I had seen Ethan fight before, but this was different. It soon dawned upon me that Ethan was playing with the other man. Nipping at him with a blade, drawing blood, and sending him reeling with blow after blow, and stamping his dominance over the other Alpha.
And God help my soul, I wanted Ethan to hurt him, to mete such harm upon the other man that none would dare challenge his claim.
Ethan knew that this Alpha had consumed my blood, he knew, and he was determined to obliterate the threat—absolutely.
Only when the other Alpha was a broken pitiful mess, did Ethan take a blade to his throat. He did not stop at slitting his throat, the blade hacked and sawed and blood gushed until the head popped free.
His roar as he held the severed head aloft sent the crazed crowd into a frenzy.
Then he tossed both head and blade away and stalked toward the gates.
Scrambling to the other side of the cage, I was frantic to keep him in my sight. Then he was gone, and I rattled the cage furiously, my temper so white-hot it consumed me.
It was not long before he came back, and more fighting followed.
Death after death.
Fight after fight.
With each round, he became ever more animal, and the waves of heat picked me up and spat me out until I thought I might go mad.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
ETHAN’S THREAT HUNG over me as I watched him fight in the pit. He’d left several rounds ago, and had yet to return.
I’d fucked-up earlier. I fucked-up often so this wasn’t anything new. I’d lost track of how many times Command, and my father, had read me the proverbial riot act.
Usually, I could put reprimands out of my mind seconds after leaving the room, but Ethan’s censure bothered me. I didn’t like needing anyone, but I needed Lilly back, and I needed Ethan to make that happen.
Ethan told me to watch his back—I was going to watch his back.
The stony pit wall outcrop that constituted our area of control was crowded with the various teams, and I was stood between Logan and Hudson when I noticed Dax return. He had men patrolling the lower levels. There were rumors the Uncorrupted weren’t liking the way the fight was playing out, and they were sending in a team.
Dax shook his head.
Nothing yet, and I returned my attention to the proceedings.
I had lost it earlier, but once Ethan entered the pit—his first strike—had calmed me.
Ethan fighting was b
eauty to behold. Not beauty in the classical sense, but beauty, nevertheless.
I’d been trained and prepared for war since I turned thirteen and revealed as an Alpha. I liked fighting. The opportunity to test myself against an opponent.
I didn’t mind the military practice pit—it was necessary to keep your skills sharp. You couldn’t kill someone during a sparring session, so that had been a bit of a downside for me.
I preferred killing. Killing was good. Better than therapy for calming me the fuck down. I wasn’t too fussy about how. Weapons were efficient. I was all about efficient when I was in a combat situation. I fucking loved weapons.
But if I was going to be honest, and I was rarely anything else, I did enjoy smashing someone apart with my bare hands when circumstances presented themselves. It was much more personal, staring someone in the eye as you took their life.
And torture of any kind was my thing.
But Ethan in a pit was a whole other level of killing. It was art. Glorious, messy, fucked-up art.
They had many people to get through so these rounds consisted of throwing four of five of them in, locking the gate, and whoever survived was the winner. I noticed that there was a growing reluctance among the contestants who realized they were going in there with Ethan.
Killing was also frowned upon in the Pit during the earlier rounds, but this detail wasn’t stopping Ethan. Dax had mentioned fighters were pulling out—Ethan had a reputation on Lyus, and I was coming to understand why.
“Fuck me,” Hudson muttered from my right. “I’m glad I’m not in the fucking pit with him.”
Ethan had just snapped a man’s neck. It was little more than a flick of his wrist—very efficient.
“That was a nice move,” I said to Hudson. His little Healer, Anna, was standing beside him. Half watching. She winced every time Ethan caught a blow…probably thinking about how she was going to have to heal his ugly ass after. “That bastard had a thick neck, no way could I have snapped it. Takes a lot of strength, not to mention technique.”