Page 20 of Warrior Enchanted

Tossing him aside, I had only a few seconds to get my bearings. I saw the shape of a ship nearby, a crowd of green uniforms, and at least half a dozen of them with shock sticks or laser rifles in their hands. Those odds were bad, but I had to try. If they got us onto that ship, all would be lost. Beyond them stretched out a much more sinister-looking city, dark and gray with tall spires. That had to be Exka.

With a yell meant to intimidate, I launched from the trailer and tackled the nearest males. Fighting my way through them wasn’t hard, they weren’t nearly as trained as I was, and my four arms were a tremendous advantage against species with fewer limbs. A laser blast pierced my left upper shoulder, burning pain shooting through me.

Meena screamed, and I caught sight of her leaping down from the trailer, straight onto the back of the nearest male. A knife flashed in her hand and I grinned. Yeah, that was my fierce little warrior. I was willing to bet she’d gotten that off the first male I killed; she wasn’t one to sit on the sidelines and wait for rescue, which was terrifying yet awesome. In this case, at least I knew she was the prize. They wouldn’t kill her.

A second blast hit me in the hip and I hissed in pain. I was pretty sure we were about to lose this fight; the odds were just too much. I couldn’t give up. A felled guard now was one less obstacle later, wasn’t it? If they didn’t split us up. That’s what I feared. What if they smuggled Meena off the planet but kept me here? No, I had to believe that they recognized me and knew I was a valuable gladiator. This rich asshole wouldn’t be able to resist snatching me up too.

Then I spotted the big Kertinal male that waded through his compatriots in my direction. I recognized him, that was the one with the shock weapon that had felled me last time. He was bigger than the two from before. This had to be the one they were meeting up with. His horns were curved sharply back over his head, his dual-toned mane shaved short across his skull. I couldn’t even begin to count the notches carved into his horns; this guy was an enforcer of some kind. I was willing to bet Kertinal law wanted him for more than just a few minor crimes.

When others backed up around me, I prepared for a fight, expecting him to want to test himself against me this time around. He’d taken the coward’s way out last time. He wouldn’t want to do that in front of an audience this big. I scanned his body, checked if he had any weapons, and eased my shoulder back and forth to test the injury, still good to move, I wasn’t worried. He was big, but I’d taken down much bigger opponents.

He wasn’t holding the dreaded shock weapon this time, so I just had to worry about his tail and horns. A Kertinal through and through, he wore a blade attached to the narrow tip of his tail, and he swung that back and forth like an angry predator. A little space seemed to open up around the two of us organically, and excited voices were shouting their bets as they watched us. It wasn’t anything I wasn’t used to. I’d been in fights, big or small, just like this for the majority of my life. My body settled into a familiar rhythm naturally and despite my two injuries, I moved easily as the Kertinal male and I circled each other.

I tried to look for Meena as we did that, wincing when I noticed how two males were holding her by the arms on the edge of the circle. One of them was a Rummicaron which had to be frightening to her, the bastard that had bought had been one according to Sunder. They had control of my mate. This asshole had to know that there was no reason to fight now, but he wanted this. He wanted to test his superiority against me. Well, I’d give him what he’d bargained for, the fight of his life.

Giving him my signature smirk, I pretended I wasn’t terrified out of my mind for my mate. Right now I had to focus on what was going on here, I’d wipe the floor with this bastard, and then… Then I’d try to free my girl, and if that failed, I hoped we wouldn’t be split up so I could try again. I just knew that I wouldn’t give up, not ever.

Chapter 14

Meena

Jakar was beautiful in motion like that; fighting shouldn’t look so much like he was dancing, but it did. He looked like he was having casual fun while he did it too, with a grin on his face, his spots gleaming yellow on his cheeks. Only, they flashed white with dread each time they landed on my face, so I tried to make sure none of my fear showed.

I didn’t like the cool, harsh grip of the shark-like male on my left. He looked far too much like the bastard I’d stabbed back on that space station. But I hid my feelings, shoved them away so that Jakar wouldn’t worry. He had to concentrate on what he was doing, no matter how effortlessly he was making it look.

The male he was fighting was no slouch either, and that knife on his tail was absolutely wicked. Despite Jakar’s effortless grace as he moved, I could still see a few minor cuts welling with blood along his chest and arms. I didn’t understand how he was moving so easily when I’d seen him get hit with two of those lasers, a burn an ugly black scorch mark on his shoulder, and a hole burned into his pants on his hip.

The fight seemed to last forever in my panic-filled mind, my heart pounding so hard in my chest that I feared it would burst; I was well aware that I couldn’t be more than a few minutes. Fighting was an exhausting business, but once upon a time, it had been all Jakar had trained for. The longer the fight lasted, the more it became obvious that he outclassed his opponent in stamina by far.

The Kertinal he was fighting was an absolute giant, the biggest one I’d ever seen. Granted, that was only a limited amount but still. This guy had almost a head in height on Jakar, horns included. Curling back like a set of ram’s horns, he used them to batter at Jakar whenever he wasn’t slashing with his tail, or using his massive fists as hammers. His skin was a gleaming black, patterned with many lighting-like lines in burnt orange, eyes the same freaky orange, glinting with furious rage when he was starting to realize that he was losing.

My stomach dropped in fear; I knew that couldn’t mean anything good. Jakar was about to get stabbed in the back; that male wasn’t going to let himself lose in front of all these people. They might mostly not be of his own species, but he was clearly their boss. I knew the type. On Earth, at the law practice I’d worked at, one of the partners had been much like this male, a big bully who could never admit fault.

There it was! Jakar had just punched him with an uppercut that made the Kertinal male stumble back into his men. He roared, enraged, and Jakar gave him this wicked grin while making a taunting come hither motion with his hand. When the Kertinal male charged, that would have been the end of him. Even I could see that he’d let down his guard, exposing himself to a last strike.

Silver flashed in his hand; Jakar’s eyes went wide when he spotted it. He leaped into some kind of insanely agile roll instead of taking the opening and finishing the Kertinal off. I screamed. I couldn’t help myself, fear filling me until I felt dizzy from it. A hiss filled the air, the red flash of a laser, and Jakar’s dodge was possibly the only thing that saved him from a fatal shot.

It hit him along his back; the laser burning a long jagged wound into his skin, melting the fabric of his shirt. It looked awful and painful, but I was fairly certain the shot had just brushed past him, not fully penetrating. From how much bigger and louder the laser had been, I was pretty sure they’d turned the settings up on that pistol or something.

“Fucking cheating coward!” I yelled at the Kertinal male when he stood over Jakar, arms raised and crowing as if he’d won fairly. Jakar was on the ground, prone, and he seemed to struggle to raise himself back on his hands and knees. Was he hurt much worse than it looked? Had he somehow hit his head on the way down? I hadn’t seen it happen, but maybe he’d knocked himself against the ground.

The giant Kertinal swung his orange eyes to my face, grinning maliciously while he leveled his weapon at Jakar again. My muscles ached as I fought the two assholes holding me back; if he shot Jakar a second time... I didn’t know what I would do if he died. I thought that maybe that would finally break me. “Aargh! You bastard, let him go!” My foot kicked out, and I managed to kick one asshole in the back of the knee. He buckled, his grip loosening, and I slipped free, twisting painfully out of the grip of the other second one, as he didn’t expect my sudden leverage.

Throwing myself on top of Jakar protectively, I glared up at the big Kertinal male, almost daring him to shoot me instead. “No, Meena…” Jakar groaned from beneath me, “I’m sorry…” I didn’t flinch as I stared up at the barrel of the gun, my hands clenching into Jakar’s shirt beneath me. Do it then, shoot us.

The last I saw was a flash of light, bright white and blue, and then everything went dark to the sound of roaring in my ears.

*

Jakar

My body ached in far too many places when I woke up, but I didn’t spare a single thought for any of it. “Meena?” I called out in a hushed tone, my eyes opening to scan where I was and to look for my mate. Had they taken her from me?

She didn’t respond, but the surroundings were familiar; a cell block meant to house slaves. My alertness lowered to what was inside the cell with me as soon as I realized there was no guard waiting outside. It was an effort to roll over from my side until I could push up to a sitting position, sweat breaking out across my forehead.

She was there, right next to me, a small little bundle curled up on the hard metal floor. Her normally tan face was pale along her cheeks with shadows beneath her eyes. She was out cold, her long black hair fanned out around her, small hands clenched into her shirt at her chest as if she was in pain.

“Sweetheart, my beautiful mate, please wake up,” I said, reaching out to touch her shoulder with a wince. The burn on my arm was aching down to the bone. I wasn’t hurt bad enough to require immediate medical attention, but now that the battle rage had worn off, I was definitely feeling it.