The Legionnaire Games: Day 13, hour 5
We were running as a legion around the perimeter of the island in our usual formation.
It should have been a routine exercise, but it wasn’t because of one person—Arabella. She wasn’t okay.
I could tell she was mentally struggling.
Not that I cared.
I just could tell.
I’d been listening to her long before she’d revealed herself to be a woman. Before she’d been branded as our slave. There was something about the way she breathed, spoke, ate, slept that made it impossible to ignore her.
Over the last few days, my fixation had gotten worse.
I couldn’t stop myself from listening to every stupid, uneven breath she took.
Arabella was a mouth breather and just all around a pathetic, annoying person with too many issues to count.
She was also loud as fuck.
The loudest person I’d ever met.
So many noises. A small catch in the back of her throat when she was panicking and forgot to breathe. Shaky inhales as she sucked on her pipe and it clattered against her teeth.
Her stress was loud.
And she was always stressed. Twenty-four seven.
It was driving me mad.
The worst of all her mannerisms was the numbers: she constantly counted under her breath. Sometimes it was prime numbers or square roots, and other times it was odd numbers.
With how many times within a minute that she sucked on her pipe, choked on air, and muttered to herself, it was obvious Arabella had no control over herself.
She was the antithesis of Corvus’s quiet control.
Arabella was chaos.
She was annoying.
A nuisance.
Who couldn’t breathe correctly? It was the first thing children learned and mastered.
Now, as we jogged as a legion around the island, everyone else was fine, but Arabella was panicking.
Yet again.
For the sixty-eighth time in the last hour, Arabella choked as she inhaled.
I fisted my hands until my knuckles cracked.
Dug my nails deep under my skin until pinpricks of pain calmed me.
Water splashed beneath my feet, and I displaced pebbles with each step I took. The small rocks clanged against one another. The salty ocean soaked the bottom of my sweatpants.
The sensations were familiar. Calming.
The howling eastern winds that blew off the sea weren’t the only noises. High above, I’d estimate a few hundred feet in the air on the north side of the island, there were loud flapping noises. Shouts.
Feathers clattered together.
Ice swords cracked as they clashed.
Orion had whispered that the angels were training in the air above us.
However, even the sounds the angels made weren’t enough to distract me from the small, pitiful noise Arabella made in the back of her throat.
Abruptly she stopped panting.
She fell silent.
I waited, but there was no loud, rattling whoosh, the one she always made when she exhaled.
It never came.
Arabella’s footsteps didn’t falter, and she continued to sprint beside John a few feet behind us. It was easy to distinguish her gait from the rest of our legion. She was much lighter on her feet and favored running on her toes.
I cocked my head to the side and focused.
Nope, she still hadn’t breathed.
Corvus was pushing us at a sub-five-minute mile pace, and we were over twenty miles deep into the run.
My Ignis trained hard. Always.
As his Protector, it was technically my duty to protect the rest of my mates. Foremost, I was conditioned to lay my life on the line to ensure my Ignis and Revered stayed safe.
The slave tattoo had warped my natural instincts to protect and made me want to focus on Arabella.
It was also probably because I’d never met a person who needed so much safeguarding in my life.
Arabella needed safety from herself.
Case in point, a minute had passed, and she should have inhaled by now.
She hadn’t.
My nails dug harder into my palms.
What type of idiot kept forgetting to breathe during a thirty-mile run? Who did that?
She was going to be the death of me.
Instead of the usual peace I felt during these exercises, I bristled with rage.
I loved running at the academy, because our route was always the same circle. I could feel the minute changes in elevation beneath my feet and knew without a doubt where we were on the island. I barely needed Corvus to guide me.
It was one of the few times I could be completely relaxed in my environment.
There were no noisy students talking loudly and bumping into one another.
But this run was pissing me off worse than when students filled the halls in between classes.
Yet another thing Arabella had ruined.
I bit down on my tongue, and copper flooded my mouth, as I physically stopped myself from turning around and screaming at her to breathe. I wanted to call her horrible names, say cruel things to her until she pulled her head out of her ass and focused.
Teeth sliced through my tongue, and I welcomed the sharp sensation.
I would never scream at her, because I’d never let her know how much her existence got under my skin.
I’d never give her that power.
Instead, I leaned closer to Orion and tried to act casual as I whispered, “What is she doing?”
My Revered didn’t ask what I was referring to.
He was the same way.
Whenever Arabella whispered to John, Orion asked me what she said because I had far superior hearing.
We had a little arrangement.
I told him everything I heard, and he told me everything he saw. It was part of the reason we were fated mates.
We understood each other perfectly.
And for some reason, what we both needed was to know every single thing Arabella did.
Maybe it was because she was our slave? Maybe it was because we’d both been diagnosed as having psychotic, obsessive tendencies as children?
Malum was the angry one; we were the neurotic ones.
It was part of the reason all three of us worked so well together and why we’d been named kings. Compared to “normal” people, we were dangerous. Very dangerous.
I couldn’t wait to meet our missing mate, our other Protector. Orion was already so on the same wavelength as me that I couldn’t imagine how close I’d be with another devil who was built for safeguarding our mates. It was almost unimaginable to me.
Orion and I had bets going on whether our mate would be angry like Malum or obsessive like us.
Sun god help us if he was like Malum.
A grin curled the corner of my lips, and I couldn’t stop the smile that split my face wide. I hoped our mate was fucking crazy.
It would make it so much fun.
Orion shuffled closer and whispered under his breath too quietly for anyone else to hear, “She’s staring out at the ocean, and John keeps looking down at her with concern.”
I heard the frown in his voice.
Could he tell she hadn’t taken a single breath for the last 123 seconds?
Lately it seemed like all Orion told me was that Arabella was staring out at the stupid ocean or that John was touching her comfortingly.
I didn’t like it.
Not that I cared if she was emotional.
No, I cared about Orion. My Revered’s life was now bound to hers, so she needed to pull herself together and snap out of it. I didn’t care that the brand tied our lives together and was supposed to strengthen us.
I was a Protector and anyone close to us was a liability. She was our biggest security risk.
It was my biggest failure to date that I’d failed to realize Aran was really Arabella.
I should have known.
When I’d first dragged my nails across Aran’s face to piss him off and assert my dominance—Orion had already explained what he’d looked like—something had been off.
The lips had been a little too lush, the cheekbones too high, and the jaw too sharp. Something hadn’t been right, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.
Now it all made sense.
It had been an enchanted disguise.
My muscles pumped with adrenaline as my feet slapped against the stone beach. Cool wind dried the sweat off my cheeks, and the ocean roared as it crashed. Salt sprayed through the air.
She was still silent.
I’d had enough.
Turning around I said viciously, “Keep up, Arabella, don’t want our slave falling behind.”
John made a harsh noise, and I ignored him.
Arabella inhaled sharply, then her breathing returned to a steady rhythm.
I smirked triumphantly. Corvus chuckled beside me.
“I’d rather drown in the ocean than be enslaved to you, stinking pieces of ugly shit,” Arabella muttered under her breath, quiet enough that she thought no one could hear.
Corvus barked, “What was that? Don’t care. Shut the fuck up.”
Orion bumped my shoulder to get my attention. I leaned closer and whispered what she’d said in his ear.
He made a sound of amusement.
“Die already,” Arabella responded lazily to Corvus.
My Ignis’s bare feet slapped harder against the stones like he was pounding against them with all his might. Rock cracked and broke beneath him.
Losing our mating song was driving him crazy, and I could practically feel his hatred for her.
I’d never admit it to Corvus, but the mating song had been driving me crazy for years. The constant beat had interfered with my ability to hear the world.
Now with the girl as our slave, it was blissfully silent.
I could hear everything.
The silence was like taking a deep breath at sea level after years of living in the mountains.
It was satisfying.
Freeing.
If Arabella kept the world quiet, then I’d gladly keep her as our slave forever. That I’d get to torment her was just a bonus.
I relaxed my shoulders and pumped forward with my legs.
Enjoyed the freedom of working up a sweat.
Water splashed in our wake as we chewed through miles like they were nothing.
In war, strength was important, but speed was necessary because stamina made all the difference in battle.
As we ran around a bend, a woman’s familiar scratchy voice carried on the wind and said, “Go, best friend!”
Sadie was nearby. I hated that bitch.
From the way John swore, he agreed.
I’d been sick with rage when I’d listened to Aran and her have sex in the shower. It didn’t matter that Arabella was a girl; I knew what I’d heard. Every slap. Every moan.
At the time I’d convinced myself that it had sounded off. That they were faking it.
Afterwards, Orion described they were looking into each other’s eyes tenderly and I realized I’d been deluding myself.
They’d fucked. Hard.
I dug my nails deeper into my palms and let the pain calm me.
Arabella hadn’t cared that Sadie had mates. She also hadn’t missed the opportunity to make out with Orion a few days later, then had been all pressed against a nymph at the party.
Based on how Orion described Arabella’s looks, it made sense.
Orion said she looked stunningly innocent with wide blue eyes, plush lips, and messy blue hair, but also that she seemed sad. She was taller and stronger than most women, but her muscles were lean, and her bones were long and willowy. There was a delicateness about her, like she was so angry she was fragile.
He said the combination made him want to protect her. Shelter her from the world.
I’d scoffed at his artful description.
It sounded simple to me.
She was pretty, and she knew it, just another woman using her looks to get what she wanted.
As we finished rounding the bend, Sadie cheered, “Wow, you are really moving. Do you need water? Are you sure you shouldn’t take a break? This can’t be good for you.”
“I hate you,” Arabella laughed back with a yell, then lowered her voice and asked Corvus, “Why can’t we just go for a long walk like the shifter legion?”
I scoffed and answered, “Because we’re not weak, pathetic little bitches.”
She huffed. “It seems a lot smarter to focus on our mental health during a psychological competition. Just saying.”
Corvus’s voice cracked like a whip. “You’re training with real men. Stop whining, or is that all you women know how to do?”
There was a snarl and a loud splashing noise as Arabella stumbled. Her voice dripped with venom as she panted and said, “Thanks for the reminder. I forgot I’m just a hole to you, Malum.”
“Oof,” Zenith said under his breath.
Orion winced, and a strange sensation tied up my stomach.
Corvus didn’t share any misgivings. His voice was hard as he said, “Damn right. That’s what you are. And you’re not even a good one at that.”
“Sun god,” Vegar groaned.
My Revered preferred a more manipulative approach than my Ignis when dealing with people. This time, I had to agree with him.
Corvus’s anger was too uncontrolled around the girl.
He was uncomfortably abrasive.
Instead of falling apart like I expected, Arabella asked loudly, “How does it feel?”
“How does what feel?” Corvus’s voice was harsh.
“I’m not talking to you. I’m asking the others,” Arabella said haughtily. “How does it feel to have chosen a misogynistic, ugly fucktard without a single functioning brain cell to be your captain?”
Silence.
I almost grinned at her creativity. Almost. But she’d insulted my Ignis with her words.
No one breathed.
Corvus’s voice vibrated with violence as he said, “I was going to have us stop after this lap, but it looks like we’ve got another nine miles to go thanks to Arabella’s whining.”
He started to sprint.
