Caged Warrior

Nynn calmly walked to the chest of metal drawers. She retrieved another syringe. Her expression was fierce. Only her silvery blue eyes gave her away. Leto was surprised he could read her vulnerability so plainly.

“Time to go to sleep, Kilgore,” she said sweetly. The needle slipped so easily into the vein on the back of his hand. “And when you wake up, you can wonder what I wondered for a whole year. Just what was done to me while I was drugged? I bet your cock is the first thing you check.”

Kilgore thrashed and cursed . . . then slid into unconsciousness.

Leto raised an eyebrow. Not the choice he’d expected.

She met his gaze. “You gave me enough room to kick my leg free.”

“Yes.”

“And you let me get the drop on you—when I hit your temple.”

“Yes.”

“You’re still a sick fucking bastard.”

She wiped the blood from her lip. If anything, her posture was straighter, prouder than Leto had ever seen.

Had she learned a damn thing?

She was impetuous and thought too far ahead of him. Her imagination was more developed than his would ever be—except in matters of combat, when he thought three steps ahead of every opponent. She had no sense. She showed no due deference to the tasks laid out before her like a path. Why would she? Glaring, her wide-set eyes dared him to try again, to make her a victim resigned to her fate.

Resigned.

He would never associate that word with her—his lethal neophyte.

Then why did the word weigh so easily, so heavily, in his own mind?

THIRTEEN

Leto needed to be away from the woman. Instead, he led her through the corridors, as if dragging a dog that needed to be put down. He gripped the chains of her manacles as he led her toward the guards standing watch at her training cell. Both men raised eyebrows. Nynn looked like she’d just endured two rounds in a Cage. May as well have. The laceration on her forehead was raised on a bruise.

She stopped at the gate and turned. Blue fire sparked in her eyes—a quiet imitation of the gift she couldn’t use. “I hate so much of my life and so many people, but you’re the only one here to hate in person. Thank you for making it easier to do.”

“I’m tired of you.”

“You should’ve made the most of your chance,” she ground out. “Turning a blind eye is easy. Let me show you.”

She presented him with her back and the guards with her wrists. One fumbled to find the right key.

There, so close to where he would sleep that night, where the other warriors took their meals and, in their own uneasy ways, socialized—Leto could almost imagine her becoming part of his world. But she never would. Her escape attempts would continue. Her barbs and insults. Hatred, no matter how justified, was blinding her to the value of playing along.

The Old Man wanted them paired in matches, and Leto had never fought with a partner. What a farce. It was hard enough to win without keeping a muzzle and chains on Nynn, knowing she would knife him in the back at first chance.

“Well, now,” came a voice Leto couldn’t place.

Not at first.

Nynn whirled. Her eyes bulged. She tried to dart. Only Leto’s quick reflexes kept her from bolting back down the corridor. He held on with all his strength, because she’d gained the ferocity of a lioness. Vicious. Manic. A perfectly placed kick to the back of his thigh gave her the opening she needed to break free.

Only, her features were contorted by abject fear.

“No,” she gasped. “No!”

She moved too fast for her own limbs. Spun away from Leto. Slipped. Fell backward onto her ass, scrambling away. The manacle chains draped in a noisy clank around her abdomen.

“Lovely to see you again, Mrs. MacLaren.”

Dr. Heath Aster.

Leto’s gaze was quick. He couldn’t keep both Nynn and the doctor in sight at the same time, but he came very close. One placid smile. One expression of surprised fear morphing into the most powerful anger he’d never seen.

Nynn surged to her feet. She grabbed the practice knife from Leto’s waist belt, spun, and snatched the guards’ set of keys. He’d never seen her move so swiftly, with precision and grace despite the fury warping her pixie features. Stance wide, she edged away from the wall in a tight, controlled circled. Her attention on the doctor. Knife in one fist. One key thrust between the knuckles of the other.

“Where the fuck is my son?”

“Where you should be, my dear,” the doctor said. “No matter what my father insists. Leto, restrain her.”

Leto might have hesitated. He might have. A pause waited in the space between one breath coming in and another going out. Nynn forced his hand by lunging at the doctor.

Leto lashed out and wrapped an arm around her stomach. Her makeshift weapons hit the floor in quick succession. He caught her manacles and wrapped his inner elbow around her neck. She shrieked as if he’d captured a Pendray animal rather than a woman raised among Tigony royalty and lowly humans.

Sweat formed along Leto’s brow as he held her thrashing body for the second time that night. Both times fighting. But this was a moment outside of his control. His neophyte was his to command only as long as he was alone to make the decisions. Those decisions were no longer his.

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.