“Pav—”
“You remind me of the men when they first wake up in the chambers, yeah?”
Viktoria stilled, all that movement and jitteriness of hers coming to a stop at once. He wasn’t looking at her then, instead he watched the clock on the wall tick down seconds. He could still feel the way her gaze landed on him in that moment.
It felt like curiosity. And concern.
“Do I?” she asked.
Pav nodded. “Most of them don’t know where they are because they never knew the chambers even existed underneath the Compound. Those are probably the worst because they’re waiting for something, but they don’t know what. If I hadn’t been ordered to go in on them right after they woke up, I would have to watch them pace, climb the walls, and drive themselves crazy in the darkness.”
“And what about the ones who did know where they were when they woke up?”
Ah.
Smart woman.
Pav shrugged one shoulder. “Constantly on edge—also waiting, but they knew what they were waiting for. Some were violent and others tried to end their suffering before it could really get started. It was never a good experience.”
“How long—”
“Since I was twelve,” he murmured, looking back at her again. He didn’t actually need her to finish her sentence to know what she was asking him. How old were you? How long were you down there doing that? “Although, at first, I had people who helped, if that’s what you want to call it. Vadim called it training.”
“That’s … awful.”
“I suppose.”
Pav felt, in a way, that he didn’t know any other way to live. He was learning now, and he’d had a period in his life where he’d been free of the chambers, broken men, and darkness. Then, he’d been just young Pavel, and now he was Pav who some still whispered Zhatka for when he walked past them. He’d forgotten a lot about who Pavel was, and he hadn’t been given enough time as this person to know much about him, either.
But he wanted to learn.
Didn’t that count for something?
The silence between the two of them stretched on, and Pav’s own restlessness grew with each passing second. There’d been a part of him that had been itching to go back to a place he’d come from—a place his father had always cared for, and had looked after time and time again. He had been allowed to go back a couple of times as he’d grown older, but someone was always with him to make sure he never stepped out of line.
Where was home?
Was that what he was missing?
“It’s harder to hit a moving target.”
Viktoria glanced back at him. “What?”
“It feels like we’re sitting ducks here, even with the people watching the place. Sitting ducks, nonetheless.”
“A bit.”
“What would it hurt to move around for the night?”
Viktoria grinned, catching on. “Do you have a place you’d like to go?”
“A couple,” he admitted.
“What about the men watching the hotel?”
Pav shrugged. “One at the back, and the front. They’re not watching every exit because one can only leave the exits, but they can’t enter. They’ll see us when we come back in the morning, but what will it matter, then? What’s done is done.”
Viktoria’s laugh colored up the room, and he hadn’t even blinked before she was in front of him again. Leaning in, she caught his lips with her own in a bruising, hard kiss. It took his breath away and made his lungs ache.
He kind of loved that.
And her.
Wasn’t that what this feeling in his chest was? All tight, heavy, and yet warm and wonderful at the same time? Like he was going to hurt if she was gone, but he was okay while she was here? Like life really wouldn’t matter if he wasn’t looking at her every single day of it?
Love?
It felt like it.
He’d figure it out later.
• • •
Pav kept his arm locked tight around Viktoria’s waist as they maneuvered through the crowd of people getting closer to the cage in the middle of the warehouse with every passing second. He dragged her closer to his side, wanting to breathe in her vanilla and pear perfume, and feel her warmth soaking through his clothes.
At the same time, he murmured in her ear, “The first time they brought me to these fights, I was fourteen.”
He didn’t tell her the rest—that he’d found someone he’d recognized from his past who had lived in the large loft where he and his father stayed. That the person told him, no matter what, he could come back home, and they would always recognize him. He didn’t mention how he had gotten the shit beat out of him that night in the cage, but this was one of the places where he’d learned to fight.
Here, he’d learned how to survive.
“Did you fight, too?” she asked.
Pav laughed low. “I did.”
“And?”
“I lost—terribly.”
Understatement. He’d suffered a broken nose, a cracked rib, and the guy who was at least a half of a decade older than him had been going in for the kill—pretty usual in these fights—when someone stepped in to pull Pav out of the ring before his opponent could end him. He’d had a concussion so bad from the fight that he only had brief memories of different things that happened throughout the night.
But he remembered that person.
That familiar face who’d said his father’s name …
“And what about now?” Viktoria asked. “Do you think you would win now?”
“Guess we’re going to see, aren’t we?”
“What?”
Her question echoed, along with the call of the man who was judging the fights from the safety outside of the octagonal-shaped cage.
“Next fight—Gunner versus …” The man climbed a little higher on the cage, causing the people around him
