Caged Warrior

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 humans—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