During fight ninety-nine, an alpha female slammed her heel into my ovaries, and the pain made me black out for a split second.
The numb clicked off.
I shook my head as consciousness rushed back as fast as it had left, but the world was no longer dull and emotionless.
Everything was saturated with color.
It was too bright.
As I stumbled to my feet, the bell sounded.
I gasped as the pain of too many fights flooded through me in a rush of agony.
I would have screamed—at least ten of my bones were broken—but I choked on the blood gushing from my broken nose, down my throat.
Molly immediately sensed something was wrong and hauled me to my feet.
Her gorgeous face wavered in and out of my vision, and she spoke from somewhere far away. “Just one more fight. You have to survive this without passing out. You can do one of anything.”
I vomited blood.
It splattered across my chest.
Molly slammed her hand against my back. “Sadie, if you lose, you die. Snap out of it.”
She smacked me harder, and more blood sprayed across both of us.
Survive.
Sun god, I hated surviving. It fucking hurt.
“Do you hear me?!” She shook me back and forth, and my teeth rattled behind my mouth guard. I gagged as some of my teeth went down my throat.
So much for the mouthguard.
“Sadie!” She dumped cold water on my head and stabbed another needle into my arm.
If one more person stabbed me in this realm, I swore to the sun god…
“Do you hear me?”
Whatever she’d injected into me made my throbbing eyes open wide.
Adrenaline coursed through me.
“Is that even legal?” I asked.
“No. Now you’re going to defend for ten minutes, do you hear me?”
I nodded with conviction and turned around. However, gravity wasn’t working, and my broken legs collapsed beneath me.
Z’s voice sounded. “Initiates, you cannot leave your ring to help another initiate.”
Someone screamed, and it sounded like a tussle.
Z barked, and the sounds of dozens of gun safety’s clicking off echoed. “Cobra, Jax, Ascher, Xerxes, you’ll be shot through your forehead if you leave your ring before the end of this trial.”
There was the sound of more fighting.
I waved my hand tiredly in their direction, trying to get them to calm down, but I hurt too badly to do anything else.
Z yelled, “The bullets are enchanted to kill an alpha! You have one second to get back into your ring or you will be shot.”
Cobra hissed loudly.
I did the only thing I could—I flipped him off.
Never mind. My middle finger was bent at a weird angle and wouldn’t move. It was my pinky finger.
But I hoped he got the point.
After long, tense moments, I relaxed with relief when no gunshots rang. Not that I could even turn my head to look; my neck hurt too badly.
Agony throbbed, and the hazy, smoke-filled room contorted and churned around me like a living beast.
Vision wavering, I clenched the rope on the side of the ring to keep myself upright.
My labored breath was too loud.
Warm blood gushed from cuts on my forehead and dripped into my eyes, and my broken fingers shook as I struggled to wipe it away.
I was missing almost all my fingernails and distantly remembered an opponent ripping them off with his teeth.
Creative.
The gong sounded.
A massive hairy leg straddled the ropes and entered the ring.
The largest alpha I’d faced yet casually cracked his bald head back and forth. A cigarette hung from his lips.
It was the alpha that had blown smoke in my face when I first walked into the training center.
His dark eyes were flat, but his smile was pure joy.
This was going to hurt.
Before I could flinch, he leaped across the mat and slammed his mammoth fist into my nose.
Red, black, and white sparks burst across my vision, and blood gushed down my throat.
I would have bellowed if my voice still worked.
My cheekbones were shattered, and when I opened my eyes, all I saw was red.
I curled in on myself as fists and kicks shook my frame. Bones snapped like popcorn, and the overwhelming agony quickly faded as my consciousness slipped farther away.
Ten minutes was a lifetime.
Too long.
No shot I survived.
The pain grew further and further away, and I eagerly welcomed the darkness.
All I’d known was pain and violence, and I was too tired. There was no point in fighting against the inevitable.
I’d never known peace.
It was all I wanted.
Molly’s shouts were far away and swatted at my consciousness like an annoying gnat.
I easily ignored her.
A bone-deep cold chilled me as my lifeblood spilled around me in a warm blanket.
Somewhere far away, I was lying partially unconscious on a mat as an alpha stood above me, slamming his foot into my ribs.
The harsh cracks of a snapped sternum were a distant problem.
I floated in a haze of unconscious bliss as adrenaline protected me from an agonizing end.
Maybe, in another life, I would have fought harder against death.
In this life, it hurt too much.
The men had a pack, and in the end, it would be easier for them to find a female omega and bond if I was gone.
Aran and the girls would be sad, but they would have each other.
Everything would be all right.
Abruptly, I was pulled away from the fight club, and I was drowning in a frozen lake.
Droplets of blood shimmered around me, suspended in the inky depth.
The numb voice was uncharacteristically panicked, and it screamed across my mind like rusty nails. You will stand up and fight!
I easily blocked out the noise.
Was the valley of the sun god an endless lake? It was cleansing and chilled, a crisp oasis of sparkling water. How interesting.
You stupid girl, you’re not allowed to walk in the valley.
Rude.
My vision was perfect, and the gold skin of my fingers glowed enchantedly in the black water.
“I can walk wherever I want,” I maturely argued with the voice inside my head as I twirled softly through the lake.
A warmth suffused through my chest. Inner peace was divine.
I pinwheeled my arms and giggled bubbles as I slowly sank through the abyss.
You ignorant fuck.
Wow. It was always so calm. Who would have thought the voice inside my head had a secret swearing problem?
“Ignorance is bliss,” I thought back with a relaxed smile.
How right I was.
In eons, I’ve never had to do this.
The numb really must not be big on swearing.
“It’s just ‘fuck,’” I replied in my head as I kept twirling. “Don’t take life too seriously. It just helps you get your point across.”
Had I always been so wise? Tranquility wrapped itself around my heart and caressed me with its sweetness.
Galaxies abound, why are the young so dumb?
I twirled faster, and twinkly bubbles enveloped me.
It seemed like a rhetorical question, so I didn’t bother to answer.
When we survive this, you are going to bow at my feet and offer me an immortality of fidelity. You will be my right hand and will complete every task I demand of you. I will carve your name into my legacy, and your blood will lead the war. You will give everything, sacrificing all you know, to kneel on the battlefield and proclaim our victory over the worlds.
I giggled and blew out bubbles. “I won’t survive this.” The surety of my demise settled around me like a soft blanket.
Death wasn’t bad.
Why had I ever been afraid?
It was living that hurt.
LISTEN! the numb screeched with all her might, and pain exploded as if she hammered rusty nails deep into my brain.
I gripped my head and writhed, the cool waters no longer calming, the inky abyss no longer a sanctuary.
YOU HAVE BEEN CHOSEN AS MY CHAMPION, AND YOU WILL LIVE! YOUR BIRTH, EVERYTHING YOU ARE, WAS PURPOSEFULLY CREATED TO SERVE ME! AND NOW YOU WILL RISE AND FULFILL YOUR DESTINY!
I pressed my palms as hard as I could into my ears to block out the noise that was unbearably grating.
The water was dirty, muddy, and smothering.
Still, I fought against the pressure and focused on sinking deeper into the sludge.
The numb couldn’t trick me. Existence was pain, and I didn’t want to do it anymore. A proverb about accepting death gracefully, or some shit like that.
I was accepting it, and no screeching voice could change my mind.
YOU THINK EVERYONE WILL BE BETTER OFF? YOU IGNORANT AMOEBA!
Suddenly, the lake disappeared.
I was standing in a field.
The red sun of the shifter realm hung above, but everything was wrong.
The forests were gone, there was no ice, and everything was brown and dead. The charred ruins of a forest dotted the landscape, and fires blazed.
Across the valley, shifters screamed.
Thousands of figures stomped across the land. They held spears and swords, and massive catapults threw burning rocks hundreds of feet.
Shifter cries stopped as the army ran them through.
There was fire everywhere as more catapults launched. The ground shook under my feet.
Thousands of soldiers marched over the horizon.
As the armor-clad creatures neared, long spears pointed at me, I opened my mouth to scream, but the landscape changed.
At once, the world shifted, and two warm suns replaced the single red sun.
One was bright yellow, the other bright green.
It was the fae realm.
But it wasn’t.
The lush landscape and endless green lawn of the palace was black, and the air smelled of burning sulfur, just like the shifter realm.
Fires dotted the landscape as massive catapults flung burning rocks in every direction.
Like in the shifter realm, fae screamed as the endless army slaughtered them.
Air fae flew, but archers shot them down.
Water fae flung shards, but their ice clanged off the hard armor and didn’t penetrate.
The earth fae sent rocks flying but were killed by spears.
Fire fae set the world ablaze, but they killed as many fae as they did the armor-clad soldiers, and the army kept marching.
I stumbled over a dead fae, and my body turned toward the palace.
It was smaller than I remembered, only half the size.
Armor-clad soldiers streamed over the horizon, an unfathomable army that never ended.
The sheer numbers were unfathomable.
Once again, my feet fell out from beneath me as the ground shook, and I was transported yet again into a different realm.
There was heavy gray cloud cover and no sun in sight. The endless rain and gloominess told me where I was.
It was the beast realm.
However, there were no towering skyscrapers, just small pebbles covering the ground as far as the eye could see.
The armor-clad military marched across the horizon. Thousands of soldiers, catapults blazing, spears at the ready.
It was raining.
But instead of the chaos, this time, what appeared to be an air fae floated in front of a standing military of hundreds of half-naked men and women.
Drums sounded.
She pointed a sword toward the oncoming army and screamed.
At the sound, the people behind her shifted into beasts of all types—they were all alpha shifters.
Snarling monsters.
The armor-clad army marched in the thousands over the horizon, but this time, it wasn’t a massacre.
In a clash of steel and animal roars, the shifters ripped the armored heads off the soldiers as they ran through their ranks.
This wasn’t a massacre.
This was war.
I opened my mouth to ask a question, when suddenly I was back in the crisp lake.
“What was that?” I asked aloud, my voice echoing unnaturally in the dark waters.
That was an eon ago, in the last battle. Time has spun, and war has once again arrived. As it always does. You are my champion. You must survive.
A tear slipped from my eye and floated up through the dark waters.
I didn’t know how, but I knew in my bones that the numb wasn’t lying. Everything I’d seen was true.
There was something so cruel about having to fight when all you wanted to do was die.
I’d never had any choice.
The pain of my existence had always been decided for me.
There would be no peaceful walk in the valley of the sun god.
“Fucking fine. I’ll fight,” I grumbled like the moody twenty-one-year-old I was. “You couldn’t have found an older champion to lead you?” I snarled at the numb that was apparently some type of entity.
Low-key, I was way too young for this.
This was child abuse.
My champions are not chosen; they are made. We have run out of time. You were made for this purpose, and thus you will rise. We are out of time…
Before I could argue back, I hurtled back into my consciousness.
The alpha above me laughed, cigarette hanging from his mouth, as he casually slammed his foot into my cracked sternum.
He tsked with glee. “Another failed initiate.”
My neck was turned, and blood burned my eyes.
Across the gym, chaos reigned.
The men were desperately trying to escape their rings to get to me, fighting against the dozen alphas that had climbed in to stop them from escaping.
They screamed my name.
I sighed heavily as another kick cracked my ribs and sent agony rattling through me.
There were three options.
- I could lie here and do nothing and just hope I survived long enough to stand up at the last possible moment.
- I could infect my attacker with my blood and risk being found out as a half-breed.
- I could stand up and fight like a warrior.
The bald alpha laughed as he kicked me.
There was only one option.
I levitated a tiny droplet of the blood pouring from my nose and discreetly slammed it through his foot as it reared up to kick me.
“Stop,” I whispered.
Immediately, the bald alpha stopped midkick.
He was paralyzed.
There were loud screams and shouts as everyone in the club was preoccupied fighting against three enraged alphas and one unwell omega.
As quickly as I could—I was moving at the pace of a dead ant—I staggered onto broken legs and gripped the ropes along the side of the ring.
“Pretend to fight me,” I whispered, and the alpha threw a weak punch that I shakily dodged.
I distantly noted through the wind-tunnel sensation in both my ears and blood filling my vision that it was dead silent in the gym.
Everyone was watching us.
I channeled the girls and put on the performance of my life.
“Ow!” I yelled brokenly as I let the alpha back me into the corner of the ring and pretended to take punches.
Under my persuasion, each punch stopped millimeters from my skin.
I flailed back and forth and pretended I was rocked by hits that never landed.
There was a hiss across the ring, and the loud sound of smacking, as Cobra realized what was happening.
Suddenly, the gym was filled with Cobra’s shouts as he fought, creating a distraction away from me.
What a king.
Fake fighting drained me. With every pretend flinch, agony slammed through my broken bones as my body moved side to side.
Ten minutes was a lifetime.
When the gong finally sounded, I discreetly pulled out my droplet of blood.
The bald alpha staggered away from me in fear.
I gave him a small smile and tried to act nonchalant.
His eyes were wide as he realized I’d overtaken his free will, and he stalked at me like he was going to rip my head off.
I closed my eyes and flinched.
However, the blow never came.
“Hunter, the fight is over. Back away,” Molly said as she crouched in front of me and shoved him aside.
He looked like a Hunter.
Bald and unwell.
Z’s voice sounded, “A record, six of the seven initiates have passed the second trial.”
Alphas bellowed and chanted with excitement.
Terrified, I scanned the room.
I slumped with relief when I saw James’s broken body lying in the ring, unconscious.
Betas dragged him off, and I winced as I realized I was happy that someone was being murdered.
But all I could feel was relief that it wasn’t one of my men.
Finally, I passed out.
