Ever been unwell?
Same.
No one gave me a chance to relax in the fae sunshine and enjoy the nice weather the realm had to offer.
No one gave me a chance to have a depressive episode over the fact that the fae queen was trafficking alphas from the beast realm into the shifter realm and, allegedly, we had all been kidnapped.
I needed a month to cry and process the situation.
Instead, we were immediately escorted by Xerxes into the massive colosseum that, apparently, was the arena of the Fae Games.
He led us into a room with showers and clothes and told us to change for the “opening ceremony.” Whatever that was.
My gut told me it wouldn’t be a peaceful celebration of love and life.
In the small room, Xerxes unlocked our chains.
My handcuffs fell away with a clack, and I moved my fingers with relief.
Instead of apologizing for the queen humiliating us with nudity, throwing us in a dungeon, and just generally being an ass, Xerxes just smirked.
His smile was full of gloating.
Omegas were rumored to be physically perfect, and Xerxes was living up to the hype. From what I could tell, alphas had sharper features, with more severe cheekbones and jawlines. Myself included.
In contrast, Xerxes’s features were classically handsome in a way that made him look soft and approachable.
Like a fairy-tale painting of a prince coming to life.
His unique purple eyes were large and breathtaking and complemented his silky blond hair.
Everything about his large shoulders, lean muscles, and breathtaking features screamed “handsome.” I’m sure he had loads of female fans. Too bad his personality screamed “unwell.”
Xerxes twirled his daggers in his hands, and he stared at me. “Try to escape, and I’ll stab the alpha bitch.”
Ascher growled and lunged forward, but I threw myself in front of him before his actions literally got me stabbed.
Men were so dense.
It was obvious Xerxes was goading them so they would attack. I could practically feel the violence radiating off him.
He wanted to stab me.
“You hurt her…,” Ascher said, his words trailing off in warning as he clenched his hands and his horns lengthened atop his head.
I kept my legs braced so he couldn’t push by me. The only problem was his large muscles pressed against my back, and his heady conifer scent overwhelmed me.
Xerxes grinned and leaned forward to taunt Ascher. As spicy cinnamon mixed with pine, my mouth watered.
I glowered at the omega and tried to act like I wasn’t sniffing the air and inhaling the delicious combination of their scents.
Either I died in the games in the next couple of hours, or I enrolled in extensive therapy. Those were my only two options because I was losing my mind.
Who sniffed their enemies? Unwell people.
Suddenly, Ascher’s warmth disappeared. I turned around just as Jax threw the tattooed alpha across the room.
The big man’s muscles expanded as he glared at Xerxes, but unlike Ascher, he didn’t lunge forward.
Next to him, Cobra’s snake eyes glowed bright with otherworldly colors. “You play with fire, little omega.”
Xerxes smirked back. “Remember your place, little alpha. You’re at the queen’s mercy.”
I squinted. If six and a half feet tall was little, then I was puny.
Cobra’s cut jaw tightened, and his body went impossibly still.
My heart clenched as I thought about Cobra chained naked to the bed, how all the servants had screamed his name. How the queen had basically said he was their sex slave. A famous one.
I whirled toward Xerxes. “Oh yes, let’s not forget you serve an evil bitch who chained him naked to a bed. And now you want to taunt him with that? Are you disgusting or just scum?”
Something close to shame flashed in Xerxes’s purple eyes, and his cinnamon scent spiked spicy.
He glared down at me, jaw clenched, eyes glowing, then turned with a huff. “You have ten minutes to change,” he growled as he stomped out the door.
For a moment, I heaved with anger. It was disgusting how the queen treated people, and I wanted to rip the bitch’s face off with my tiger fangs.
“Thank you, Kitten,” Cobra said quietly as he walked up to me. His eyes flickered back to emerald, and for a second, they burned with unspoken emotion.
His gorgeous features softened as he gave me a small smile. The jewels in his skin twinkled. His frosty scent wrapped around me, but it didn’t burn like usual. No, it was a sweet, icy kiss.
A snowflake on the cheek.
Cobra’s sharp cheekbones hardened, and his jaw clenched, all softness leaving his expression. “But, Kitten, I can fight my own battles. Focus on keeping yourself safe. Sun god knows you need to.”
And there he was.
I rolled my eyes and stuck out my tongue. If Cobra could just act normal for one conversation, it would make my life way less stressful.
Jax sighed heavily. From the way he looked back and forth between the two of us, he was torn between reprimanding Cobra for snapping at me and comforting him.
“Whatever,” I grumbled under my breath and moved around to inspect the room. Cobra being unwell and Jax wanting to help, were two universal truths in life.
“You can shower first,” Ascher said as he handed me a towel.
In contrast, Ascher was all over the place. I had no idea how he was going to act at any moment.
He’d literally betrayed me, then wanted to protect me?
He’d gotten mad at Xerxes on my behalf, but acted like an emotionless statue in the chariot.
I was confused.
One thing was for sure: if he thought giving me a towel and letting me shower first was going to make me forget about his betrayal, then he was clinically insane.
I grabbed the towel from his tattooed hands and tried to ignore the veins that stuck out in his hand and traveled across his strong forearms. For some reason, they made my stomach pinch with need.
I avoided the pleading in his amber eyes.
“You are not forgiven,” I said with force.
“Of course, Princess.” Ascher bowed his golden head to me.
With a heavy sigh—that only a badass alpha female forced to deal with nicknames like Princess and Kitten could make—I stomped off to enjoy my shower.
Under the deliciously scalding water, I scrubbed with a brush until my skin shone bright pink.
Then I kept scrubbing.
No matter how hard I pressed, I still smelled the offal from the dungeon. I saw Legolas’s emaciated form pleading with us for help.
I cleaned my skin until it was raw.
Afterward, I walked out in a towel to grab my clothes.
Instead of hiding like usual, I mentally said, Whatever, and walked around with my scars exposed. They’d all seen them; there was no hiding my ugliness anymore.
The three alphas whipped their heads to watch me when I returned to the changing room. All three sets of eyes glowed with rage as they stared at my scars that were exposed above the towel.
“Don’t scrub so hard, little alpha,” Jax whispered quietly.
My skin was bright pink all over. Still, I turned and narrowed my eyes at the big man. It was bad enough dealing with Ascher and Cobra.
Jax chuckled at my hell-raising expression and raised both his palms in front of his body like he surrendered.
Next to him, Ascher muttered under his breath some expletives about me hurting myself, then he stomped away to shower.
Cobra said with all seriousness, “This Dick you spoke of. I will eat his liver and bathe in his blood.”
Jax nodded beside him and cracked his knuckles. “We will bathe in his blood.”
I pursed my lips at them. “Love the support. Truly. But I think if anyone is going to eat his liver, it will be me.”
The alphas really loved to forget I was also an alpha with a terrifying shifted form.
When I got my hands on Dick, the man was going to wish he’d never been born. Someday, I was going to make every fantasy I’d ever had of maiming him come true.
It would be a treat to myself.
Self-care, if you will.
Cobra handed me a stack of clothes and stared down at me. His emerald eyes slowly trailed over my towel-clad body, and he bit down on his lush lips. The jewels in his skin winked at me as he tensed his jaw.
Frost and lust emanated from him in a tantalizing cloud.
“Let the girl change in peace,” Jax growled and grabbed Cobra by the back of his neck.
The snake shifter shuddered at the manhandling and licked his lips. Jax rolled his eyes and dragged Cobra away from me, then pressed him against a locker and whispered in his ears. His chest shook with a deep growl.
Goose bumps trailed down my spine, and I reminded myself this was not the time to get turned on.
There was something about watching Jax handle Cobra that made my core clench.
Jax’s massive muscles strained, his gray eyes filled with lust, and I wished he were pinning both of us beneath him. He was so large he could easily do it.
With that concerning thought, I focused on the clothes left out on the bench.
Of course, because my life was a series of depressing events, they didn’t have a “uniform” in my size; said uniform was a pair of tight white pants and a tight white top.
At least, it was tight on the men. On me, the shirt hung like a dress, and the pants didn’t stay up.
Jax shook his head, ripped a strip off the scratchy dress they’d given me, and fashioned a belt. Without it, I would have 100 percent flashed the fae my vagina lips.
A rebellion I was not yet ready to commit to.
At this point, the whole realm had already seen my naked body. But it was the principle of it.
No way was I flashing people for free. They better at least pay me first. It was called knowing your worth and having class.
Jax offered to braid my hair, and Cobra asked if I needed ice for the bruise on my cheek.
I waved them off, too stressed about the upcoming games to let them dote on me. However, I did shake my head when I saw myself in the mirror.
With my wet hair plastered to my head, a black bruise on my cheek, and clothes hanging three sizes too big off my body, I looked like a drowned rat.
Let’s just say, there had been prisoners in the queen’s dungeon who looked more put together.
Just how I wanted to present myself to the fae realm.
Jax dragged Cobra down the hall, to the shower, and left me alone with a half-naked, wet Ascher.
Once again, my stomach pinched, but this time it had nothing to do with betrayal.
A towel hung low across Ascher’s hips and showed off his prominent V line. Flame-and-rose tattoos covered every inch of his eight-pack of abs, and his muscles rippled as he changed.
Unlike when we’d roomed together, Ascher didn’t drop his towel and show off his tattooed dick.
No, this was much worse.
He turned around to change and showed me his butt. Who knew that flame tattoos would look so good on someone’s ass?
The flames traveled up to two prominent back dimples. From there, an intricate mural of fiery roses covered his entire back.
Ascher was a work of art.
After he pulled on his pants, he flashed me his eight-pack. His amber eyes burned with heat. He said nothing, just stared at me with intensity as he dragged the white shirt over his bulging shoulders and abs.
He knew exactly what he was doing.
I swallowed thickly as my brain short-circuited.
We stood alone in the locker room, and the silence between us was deafening. A live wire of tension.
It seemed to last forever. Neither of us said anything. The truth of his betrayal hanging silently in the air.
“Who used all the warm water?” Cobra grumbled as he and Jax walked out of the shower together.
I sighed heavily and cracked my neck back and forth, grateful for the distraction.
There was too much going on to worry about the fact that the alpha who had betrayed me was giving me serious sex eyes.
Talk about not having your priorities straight.
I focused on tightening my makeshift belt in the mirror and arranging the oversize shirt so it looked less like a dress on me.
Before I could ask for some dirt to rub on my face to complete my unfortunate appearance, Xerxes opened the door and yelled at us to follow him.
As we walked down a narrow staircase and low-ceilinged tunnel, my anxiety tripled. Xerxes ordered us to walk down a dark hallway, and that was the last thing he said to us.
Now we waited in the wings of the massive colosseum.
The entranceway was dark and shaded, and we were the only people in the small space. Fae guards stood behind us and blocked our escape.
The only way out was forward. And that was one direction I did not want to be going.
Our narrow hallway led into the sandy arena. White sand glistened under the dual suns, and the fae crowd roared in a packed stadium.
The screams were so loud the ground vibrated beneath my bare toes. It shook with the reverberance of their exaltation and their bloodlust. I’d never seen so many people in one place before, never known so many existed.
It was cool in the entranceway, but sweat dripped down my pits, and my stomach churned.
“It’s going to be okay, little alpha. Stand behind me,” Jax whispered and shifted in front of me.
“We will protect you.” Ascher nodded and moved closer.
Cobra arched his brow at the tattooed alpha’s statement. He bit his lip like he was holding himself back from attacking him. His eyes flickered to snake eyes, but he said nothing.
We had bigger things to deal with than Ascher’s betrayal.
Much bigger things.
Cobra shifted his attention from Ascher to me, and his voice was a frosty whip. “Stay behind us.”
It wasn’t a question.
It was an order.
“I’m an alpha. I can protect myself,” I grumbled without heat, but I didn’t move away from the men, and I let them box me in.
With a deep breath, I tried to focus on anything other than my impending doom and nausea.
I looked around and tried to process what was happening. Xerxes had disappeared somewhere, probably to watch and cheer as we suffered. In front of us, the two suns reflected blindingly bright light off the chrome fixtures of the stadium.
Suddenly, there was a commotion in the crowd, and the fae screams ratcheted up to a deafening level.
My eardrums burned. It was a miracle they didn’t burst from the sudden pressure.
I wiped stress sweat out of my eyes.
The stadium was a large bowl that started narrow near the bottom, then flared out impossibly wide in the middle, and narrowed again at the top. I’d never seen a structure look anything like it before, and I didn’t understand its purpose. The bulk of seats were in the middle, far away from the ground.
It didn’t make any sense.
It was also so large that I couldn’t see the upper portion of the seats. Even when I squinted, I saw nothing but shadows.
One of the many massive neon screens flashed, “One Million Fae, Full Capacity.”
There were a million fae in attendance. The shifter realm only had a few thousand people in total.
The sheer size of the fae realm was mind-blowing.
Also, of course it would be a sellout event.
Was it too much to ask that the fae decide against having a bloodthirsty fighting match at the exact time we get kidnapped into the realm?
Although, now that I thought about it, the fae queen had definitely planned that shit perfectly.
My evil foe couldn’t just be slightly dumb and easy to break; the universe had given me the fucking evil lady from hell who was overpowered, beautiful, and playing two realms against each other.
This was the big league. I’d never felt smaller.
Guards stepped up and pushed us forward.
“Welcome, contestants. Please walk into the center of the arena,” a melodic female voice echoed loudly through the stadium. The moderator’s tone was sweet and lyrical, completely at odds with the bloodthirsty atmosphere.
As she spoke, graphic images of people being slaughtered flashed on hundreds of giant screens.
Jax’s chest rumbled with a growl beside me. Cobra’s eyes flickered to snake eyes, and Ascher’s horns lengthened on his head.
I pushed my shoulders back and tried to project, “I’m a competent, short woman.”
Together, we walked forward onto the hot sand.
