Caged Warrior

THIRTEEN

Leto needed to be away from the woman. Instead, he led her through the corridors, as if dragging a dog that needed to be put down. He gripped the chains of her manacles as he led her toward the guards standing watch at her training cell. Both men raised eyebrows. Nynn looked like she’d just endured two rounds in a Cage. May as well have. The laceration on her forehead was raised on a bruise.

She stopped at the gate and turned. Blue fire sparked in her eyes—a quiet imitation of the gift she couldn’t use. “I hate so much of my life and so many people, but you’re the only one here to hate in person. Thank you for making it easier to do.”

“I’m tired of you.”

“You should’ve made the most of your chance,” she ground out. “Turning a blind eye is easy. Let me show you.”

She presented him with her back and the guards with her wrists. One fumbled to find the right key.

There, so close to where he would sleep that night, where the other warriors took their meals and, in their own uneasy ways, socialized—Leto could almost imagine her becoming part of his world. But she never would. Her escape attempts would continue. Her barbs and insults. Hatred, no matter how justified, was blinding her to the value of playing along.

The Old Man wanted them paired in matches, and Leto had never fought with a partner. What a farce. It was hard enough to win without keeping a muzzle and chains on Nynn, knowing she would knife him in the back at first chance.

“Well, now,” came a voice Leto couldn’t place.

Not at first.

Nynn whirled. Her eyes bulged. She tried to dart. Only Leto’s quick reflexes kept her from bolting back down the corridor. He held on with all his strength, because she’d gained the ferocity of a lioness. Vicious. Manic. A perfectly placed kick to the back of his thigh gave her the opening she needed to break free.

Only, her features were contorted by abject fear.

“No,” she gasped. “No!”

She moved too fast for her own limbs. Spun away from Leto. Slipped. Fell backward onto her ass, scrambling away. The manacle chains draped in a noisy clank around her abdomen.

“Lovely to see you again, Mrs. MacLaren.”

Dr. Heath Aster.

Leto’s gaze was quick. He couldn’t keep both Nynn and the doctor in sight at the same time, but he came very close. One placid smile. One expression of surprised fear morphing into the most powerful anger he’d never seen.

Nynn surged to her feet. She grabbed the practice knife from Leto’s waist belt, spun, and snatched the guards’ set of keys. He’d never seen her move so swiftly, with precision and grace despite the fury warping her pixie features. Stance wide, she edged away from the wall in a tight, controlled circled. Her attention on the doctor. Knife in one fist. One key thrust between the knuckles of the other.

“Where the fuck is my son?”

“Where you should be, my dear,” the doctor said. “No matter what my father insists. Leto, restrain her.”

Leto might have hesitated. He might have. A pause waited in the space between one breath coming in and another going out. Nynn forced his hand by lunging at the doctor.

Leto lashed out and wrapped an arm around her stomach. Her makeshift weapons hit the floor in quick succession. He caught her manacles and wrapped his inner elbow around her neck. She shrieked as if he’d captured a Pendray animal rather than a woman raised among Tigony royalty and lowly humans.

Sweat formed along Leto’s brow as he held her thrashing body for the second time that night. Both times fighting. But this was a moment outside of his control. His neophyte was his to command only as long as he was alone to make the decisions. Those decisions were no longer his.

That knowledge grated up his spine.

“And silence her.”

Leto dropped from champion to slave in the span of three words.

He adjusted his grip to keep her immobilized and silent. Sharp teeth grazed the inside of his palm—her tongue, her lips, her vicious snarls. When Nynn tried to kick, he looped one thigh around both of hers. She still tried. He’d known that about her from the first moment she’d stabbed his cheek with a piece of concrete. She would still try. That didn’t mean she would win. Not against him and not against the Asters.

Why did that make his stomach lurch?

The doctor stepped closer, his chin lifted, inspecting.

Likely mid-fifties, Dr. Aster was glossy as a photograph. His suit was immaculate. Light brown hair was carefully combed back from a face that greatly resembled that of his father. Hawkish. Predatory. With the same jester’s smile. Only, the doctor seemed able to keep his smile just shy of unsettling. More contained. Nothing about him said sadist. Madness. Brilliance. Just a well-ordered sense of competence.

His eyes, however, gave Leto pause. Dull gray. Slow to move. He took his time to linger over every surface, especially Nynn’s face. Collecting details? Leto didn’t know how to do that without racing at high speed, when he could suck up information as quickly as slurping water from a glass. To move so slowly worked against every instinct he had ever honed. It actually bothered him to watch the doctor’s careful, slothful movements.

He’d met the man only once or twice. With nothing between them other than a connection to the Old Man, they’d had little to say. In fact, in his twenty years as a Cage warrior, he couldn’t remember having spoken with the doctor. Now Leto’s skin was itching as if bugs were crawling beneath.

“Cutting your hair hadn’t occurred to me,” he said. “Do you miss it, Mrs. MacLaren? I suppose your husband must have enjoyed its beauty a great deal.”

Aster was tempting fate by taunting her. Leto caught her renewed blitz of venom as if holding back lightning. At first he couldn’t identify the wetness along the outside of his hand, but it was her tears. Two blinks of salt water trailed down her cheeks and settled in the crevice between his skin and hers.

That lazy gray gaze returned to Nynn. “Greatly changed.” Aster wiped one of her tears, then touched his finger to his tongue. “But still broken. I like to see even our champion hasn’t been able to change that. Although you have tried, haven’t you, Leto?”

“Yes, sir. She’s a good fighter.”

Dr. Aster stared directly into Nynn’s eyes. Leto could almost feel the earthquake her hatred was going to rip open beneath their feet. Had she been free of the collar, she would have done just that. “True. But alas, her son . . .”

She shrieked. Leto’s arms were beginning to burn. They’d both have bruises from how roughly he needed to keep her contained. And all the while, his anger lifted to new heights. Nynn was his neophyte. This mental and emotional torture would set their training back by weeks. Possibly longer. He’d only just determined that her anger stood in the way of greatness. Now the personification of that anger was playing marionette with nightmare thoughts of her son.

“Maybe that isn’t such a welcome topic,” the doctor said. “I’ll leave talk of young Jack for another time.”

More salt water against Leto’s hand. This was a torture he’d never experienced.

What was right? Dragon be, he couldn’t tell.

Dr. Aster smiled. “And you remember my companion, I assume?”

He turned to beckon a young woman forward. She walked with slinking grace, moving with a cat’s animal ease. Only when she reached Aster’s side and he snapped his fingers did she squat by his side. Her twisting elegance was unnatural, if only because she retained an air of dignity even when kneeling. She curled against the doctor’s upper leg, as if a part of his anatomy, not a separate being.

Leto shivered.

The Pet.

Leto’s interactions with Dr. Aster had been limited, but his contact with the Pet was entirely new. He only ever saw her from a distance. She was the doctor’s constant companion. No one knew who she was or how she’d come to be more animal than woman.

A beautiful woman.

“Up, Pet.”

Dr. Aster’s voice was as deliberate as his slothful gaze.

She stood. An agile unfurling. Leto thought of petals opening—something his mother had described. A blossom went from tight and closed to radiant and ready to receive. In this case, to receive instruction from her master. She eyed Leto, then Nynn, but everything about her posture said that her true attention was riveted to the doctor.

Beautiful, yes. But eerie.

Leto had never seen a Dragon King so pale. He’d never known it possible. She was white. White like marble struck by floodlights. Her hair was just the opposite. Stark, incomprehensibly black. Her eyes blazed green and gold. She wore clothes made of what looked like latex, as black as her hair and as shining as her unsettling skin. Elfin features. Narrow shoulders. Tiny, tiny mouth.

Beyond strange.

Rumors abounded about her.

Lobotomized. A failed experiment in the doctor’s lab. No one knew if she had a clan, if she had a gift, or if she was even a true Dragon King.

Of all the rumors, Leto couldn’t believe in the possibility of a lobotomy. In contrast to her master, her eyes were shimmering, keen, cagey. An unsettling aura pulsed from her in chilling waves. She stared at Nynn. Stared outright. She even frowned—the touch of a crease between her dramatic black brows.

“She hates you,” the Pet said to her master.

Toneless.

Leto half expected the doctor to smack her for such a blunt assessment. He only stroked her nape. “Of course she does. And we’re not even through with the evening. Leto, bring her with us.”

After taking a deep breath, he grabbed the chain that dangled between her arms and pulled. Nynn was shrieking like a Pendray priestess. Long-forged habit demanded that he exert his dominance, especially in front of Dr. Aster. Leto was their champion. He did as he was ordered—but not with the violence he would’ve used on anyone else. She stumbled as she fought his hold. He pulled her up and into his embrace, then tightened his arms.

Holding her.

Curses forged with fury and hurt were the most vicious Leto had ever heard—and he’d heard the worst dying men could spew before taking their last breaths.

“Save your strength,” he whispered against her temple. He couldn’t save her, but he could do as he’d always done: teach her how to survive. “Nynn, hear me. You’re going to need it.”

It galled him to realize that was all he could do: offer her words. He couldn’t do a Dragon damn thing but carry his neophyte toward the training arena. Two guards fell into step with the doctor. The taller of the two pulled a Taser from his belt.

“Let go of her,” he said to Leto.

Reluctantly, enraged by the frustration that he could do nothing more, Leto dropped the manacles and let Nynn slip to to her feet. The guard shoved her down and kicked her in the stomach. She jackknifed. He wedged the sole of his boot between her shoulder blades, then pushed the Taser against her left ribs. The Tigony could wield electrical impulses, and even generate their own electrical currents by hauling energy out of the air and amplifying it.

That didn’t mean they were immune to its effects.

Nynn screamed, vibrated, slumped. The guards hauled her off the floor, working together until all six of them were locked inside the training arena. Leto was the last to enter. Everything he’d known about life in the complex—his home—had changed in the span of a few hours.

There, on the far side of the arena, waited the whipping post. As did Hellix and Fam.

“Dr. Aster, what is this about? She’s my neophyte. She makes her debut in two days and needs her focus.”

The doctor looked over his shoulder, but he didn’t stop his deliberate walk toward the whipping post. “She also tried to escape tonight, did she not?”

“She did.” Leto decided on complete honesty. No telling how Dr. Aster had learned what he did. Lying would only hurt them both. “I dealt her punishment. That’s my right as her trainer.”

“Oh, I saw your punishment,” the doctor said with a smirk. “Very entertaining. You’re still reeling from that one. I know it. So close to taking what you wanted. Yet so good and loyal, trying to teach her what’s right.” He looked down at Nynn, where she slumped between the two guards. Nothing about the woman Leto had trained remained in her eyes. “She’s very, very stubborn when it comes to learning lessons. Now it’s my turn.”

Dr. Aster reached the whipping post. The Pet curled up at his feet, holding his calf with one hand and the base of the post with the other, so feline and watchful. Unlike the doctor, she didn’t smirk or smile, only assessed the scene. Leto found no hint of judgment in her expression, or pleasure. Whoever—whatever—she was, the Pet was not a sadist made in the doctor’s image.

She looked up the length of the whipping post and exhaled. Leto barely heard her say, “Inevitable.”

Crystal clear memories still twitched across his back. He bore scars from combat—honorable scars. He also bore shameful ones. Whip marks. Welts had lifted from strike after strike of chains hurled at full force. Sometimes Leto’s trainer had administered punishments for youthful disrespect. Sometimes it had been Leto’s own father, under orders from the Old Man. Another lifetime, yet he was as helpless now as he had been at fifteen, still learning what it would take to become a respected, respectful warrior.

The guards pulled Nynn forward. Hellix reached far overhead and inserted a hook through a link from her manacle chain. Her toes barely reached the floor, with her arms stretched taut overhead. Her collar pressed upward on her throat. Sweat dampened her brows. The doctor grabbed a hunk of hair at her crown. He lifted until her eyes were level. Leto had come to expect fight and fire.

She was blank.

Dr. Aster pushed the Pet from his leg and faced a selection of whips and chains hanging from a pegged board. Perhaps the concealment of shadows had prompted the Old Man to have the whipping post erected in that 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.