Alaina scrambled away from the guard, grabbing the medical bag, and hurried to meet Vega as they helped him beneath the gate. She didn’t hesitate, just touched his side to inspect the wound, and his blistering litany of curses told her it was bad. Her hand came away covered in the shiny silver of his blood. She looked at the guard carrying him.
“I can’t help him here. I need somewhere clean.”
“You’ll help him where I say you’ll help him,” the guard replied gruffly. Then he let go of Vega, and the cursu went crashing to the sands at their feet even as Alaina tried to catch one of his arms. He was covered in smaller cuts, and she thought now that one of his ribs was surely broken. He’d been wounded worse than just what she’d seen through the gate.
“This is Domina Lennai’s favorite!” she shouted angrily at the guard. “And she told me to save him before all others! Do you want me to tell her he died because of you?”
The guard started, shoulders straightening, and then grumbled some more before he bent down to haul Vega up by the arms and hoist him over his shoulder.
“This way,” he said, and turned towards one of the other gates leading out of the pit. Alaina hurried after him, clutching her bag, and watched the color drain from Vega’s face as the minutes passed.
Chapter Thirteen
Vega’s world was a haze of pain. Fucking Lohar. Bastard couldn’t just let it go, had to make it personal. Vega could probably have had him put to death last night for that business in the barracks with the donara, but he didn't. And for his trouble, Lohar turned his brothers against him. He would have to remember to thank Bathari for the warning. Except…
Except it was the donara’s voice echoing in his ears.
The way she’d cried out to warn him. The way she’d cried out his name.
Even through the pain, he heard her. At a distance, but he heard her. Over and over again, calling out to him across the sands, saving his life even beyond the reach of her healing hands.
He was vaguely aware of being carried out of the Arena. He knew the crowd had been screaming. He knew the Master of Games had been screaming, and likely so had Domina Lennai. But all he could hear was the donara screaming his name. And as the pain in his side, and all over his body, throbbed loud enough to drown out the screams entirely, he’d passed out. Somewhere, he guessed, between the gate and the pit, he’d lost all sense of himself, tumbling into darkness.
When he came around he was still in pain, but it had drastically receded. The fog in his mind lingered, and there was a swirl through his vision as he took in the soft glow of the overhead lights, how they illuminated the small surgery connected to the pit. It wasn’t used often, because few cursii who came off the sands in a condition for it survived more than a few minutes. And there had rarely been a physician droid to tend the room. Yet there he was, and as his field of vision widened with his growing consciousness, he took in the sight of the donara standing above him. No, kneeling, because he was lying in the cot and she was at his side, sewing shut a wound in his abdomen. It should’ve hurt more than it did, he realized. He was drugged to his teeth, no doubt.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” he asked, voice hoarse.
“No, I’m making it up as I go,” she muttered, pulling a stitch tight.
“Why are you sewing at me like I’m a child’s toy? The droids use staples.”
“Well, I’m not a droid, and I found this synthetic thread in my bag. And it won’t leave a scar.”
Vega grimaced. “I don’t care about scars.”
“It’s also less likely to rip.”
He didn’t reply, too caught up suddenly in thinking about how her hair was falling out of its braid strand by strand, and how it was gilt in this light, lit like gold or brass. And it was beautiful. So was her skin, smooth and pale, and then he got caught up considering the misty gray of her eyes. How did eyes come in that color? At once a stormy sky and the smoke from a wildfire.
“Did I win?” he asked.
“In a manner of speaking,” she muttered. He wanted to lift his head and watch her hands, but he suspected she would only yell at him for it.
In short order, she was finished. He watched her lean back from his bedside and dig into her bag, pulling out an adhesive bandage which she settled over the wound on his side, hands gently smoothing it into place. The touch of her hands, he realized, was pleasant. Soft, warm, swift but kind. There was a throbbing in his side but it was dull, likely because she’d numbed the spot before getting to work. He found it astounding that a human could be so efficient, could be skilled enough to mimic the careful work of a medical droid. And she was admittedly much more pleasant to look at while she worked.
“And my brothers?” he asked.
“The guard told me they were put in the cells as punishment. Whatever those are.”
“They’re cells. They’re what they sound like.”
He did not envy them. The cells were dark, cold, and small. But he was having a hard time sympathizing since they’d stabbed him a whole bunch to get themselves there.
“Well, I saved you,” the donara said, a bit curt. She looked down at him and he found himself lost for a moment in her eyes. “You’d had bled out on the sand, but I stopped it. You won’t be fighting any time soon, though, not if you want to keep being saved.”
“You saved me twice,” he said, though he hadn’t meant to say it. Only to think it. But there it was, between them suddenly, so he went on. “You called my name and I heard you. I saw the axe. And then you saved me again.”
Her expression changed. He saw something surprisingly soft in her eyes. “You saved me first,” she replied quietly.
Vega dug his elbows into the cot’s mattress and started to sit up. He wanted to sit up. He found he wanted to look more deeply into her eyes. And some part of him knew that it was whatever medicine she’d given him to dull the pain, but he found that he didn’t care. She leaned forward, grasping at the pillow behind him, stuffing it up against the wall behind his back to help him sit.
“You should stay lying down,” she said, frowning.
“I don’t want to,” he said.
“You’re weak.”
“I don’t feel weak.”
“That’s because whatever these Errai drugs are, they’re potent. But you are weak.”
As though quite of its own accord, Vega’s hand drifted up and touched the donara’s hair. Fingertips first, just a light brush against those golden curls by her ear. She went still and he watched, fascinated, as his fingers sank deeper. They twisted more strands about his knuckles until he’d plunged his hand into that sunwheat spill, tresses falling free of the braid, and his thumb brushed her jaw.
He looked into her eyes, then at her lips as she exhaled a breath, and then he kissed her. She tasted sweet and strange, foreign and familiar at once. He’d been afraid all he would taste was the sand and the blood of the fight, but her mouth was lush and inviting. Instead he tasted warmth, a coil of desire twisting itself through him as her lips answered his. He tightened his grip on her hair and pulled her closer, deepening the kiss, until he could slip his tongue into her mouth, exploring. Her tongue met his, twining in a dance, and Vega felt desire’s embers flare towards passion. He got an arm around her waist and lifted her off her knees on the floor, pulling her into his lap on the cot.
In the back of his mind, he knew this was folly. He didn’t know what the hell was wrong with him: the pain, the drugs, the betrayal of his brothers, or just the adrenaline of the games. He’d always been able to put the violence and need aside after the games, but he wanted the donara suddenly, more powerfully than he’d ever wanted anything. Except home. He couldn’t have home, but the donara was here and soft and warm, and had saved his life. Twice.
“Careful,” she whispered, breath hot against his lips, as she straddled him on the cot. “I don’t want to hurt you.”
He kissed her again, then tilted her head back so he cou
ld kiss her jaw, her throat. “You won’t hurt me.”
He felt her hands on his shoulders, and lifted a hand between them to unzip the front of her armor suit, from her collar down to her navel. He lifted his head to look into her eyes as he started pulling it off her shoulders, down her arms and exposing her breasts, and he watched a crisp pink blush spread all through her pale skin. Astonishing. Gorgeous. He lowered his head to kiss that color, from her breasts up to her throat again, and she leaned back against his hands and shuddered through a deep breath. It wasn’t until he felt her skin shiver against his that Vega came back to himself a little.
He lifted his head, bringing her close to him again, and looked into her face.
She was still flushed pink, breath a little deep, but she looked back at him and he saw confusion climb into her eyes.
“Are you doing this because you think you have to?” he asked her.
The color in her cheeks ripened.
“Don’t I?” she asked softly.
The passion in Vega’s veins began to cool. He shook his head a little. “I fell,” he said. “I doubt I finished at the top of the lists. And even if I did, the domina did not say the victor could have you, after last night. She withheld the decision. You’re not mine to claim.”
“I’m not anyone's to claim,” the girl said, eyes suddenly steely. “I just meant...I thought that...I thought you and I were supposed to…”
Supposed to. That was damning. Vega looked down, his hands on her sides loosening their grip. Then he caught the sleeves of her suit and started lifted them back towards her shoulders, encouraging her arms into them.
“I’ve no claim to you,” he said again. “I thought you wanted this.”
“I’m not saying I don’t,” the donara said, though she shoved her arms through the sleeves of her suit. When Vega looked at her face again, she was frowning at him. “I don’t know my way here. I’m trying to do what I have to, to survive.”
Vega felt a bitter laugh get stuck in his throat. “I’m what you have to do to survive?”
That hurt, and he wasn’t sure why. It shouldn’t have. She was doing what she thought she was supposed to, and here he’d thought perhaps there was something more. He didn’t know why he’d thought that, it had just been...something he felt. Something in the way she kissed him. In the echo of his name, her voice meeting the crowd’s.
“Aren’t you?” she asked.
And he realized. “I don’t know your name.”
She frowned, looking down into the scant space between them. “Alaina.”
The pain of his wounds started to overwhelm the hum of his desire, and he sat back against the pillow she’d propped at his back, his hands falling away from her completely. “Alaina, I won’t touch you again unless you want me to. Donara or not. I very much doubt the domina will give you to me after last night, or after my turn in the Arena today. I know what it is to be forced to do things to people that you don’t wish for.”
She looked at him strangely then, and for a few seconds he was afraid she was going to ask him to elaborate. He was in such a state at the moment that he wasn’t sure he’d be able to avoid telling her all, and he felt ashamed of himself because normally he was so much better able to keep his thoughts and feelings closed. Right now, though, he was struggling to focus on anything other than the glimpse of her breasts revealed by the still-low zipper of her suit, most specifically the way they rose and fell with every breath she took. And the weight of her still in his lap. Desire spiked through him again and he exhaled, looking up towards the ceiling as if that might help him. He knew there was no help for him.
Before more could be said or done, the surgery door opened.
The donara climbed quickly out of his lap, straightening to a stand beside the cot, and Vega watched with a drugged combination of relief and dread as Domina Lennai walked into the room. He all but wilted back against the pillow, the urgency of wanting to sit up and hold the donara in his arms fled. Lennai would not be so soft, he knew. Her hair did not remind him of the sunwheat from home, but the flames of the Chara conquest instead.
Lennai made a hissing sound at Alaina, and Vega winced to hear it. And knew they were both in trouble now.
Chapter Fourteen
Alaina was burning up all over, aware of the state of her hair and the blush in her cheeks, the thudding of her heart and that she must have been going completely insane. When Lennai made that hissing noise, she snapped to attention and finally remembered to zip up the front of her suit. What the hell was wrong with her?
“I don’t recall bestowing the donara upon you, Vega,” Lennai said, her voice tight with anger. “Or have I entered some sort of fugue state in the past hour or so?”
“No, domina,” Vega said stiffly. “I...in my pain, and the drugs, I...forgot myself.”
“And you?” Lennai looked sharply at Alaina. “What is your excuse?”
“I thought you said I was to be given to the victor,” Alaina stammered.
“And I thought I said your misbehavior had put a halt to that,” Alaina snapped. “And I certainly didn’t tell you, between the games and now, that you were to give yourself to him.”
Alaina bowed her head, trying to look small. “I’m sorry, domina.”
Lennai stood practically vibrating with anger at them. She propped her fists on her hips. “Well. He’s alive, at any rate. I have to give you that.”
“She saved me, domina,” Vega murmured.
“Yes, so I’ll let her live.”
“He can’t fight,” Alaina said. She should have kept her mouth shut, but she felt responsible for Vega now. He’d said it. She saved him. She wanted him to live. “Domina, he isn’t strong enough. He’ll need some time to recover if he’s to go on living.”
She didn’t lift her eyes, but Alaina could feel the daggers Lennai threw at her in her gaze for speaking out of turn.
“I’ll fight, domina,” Vega insisted weakly. “I’ll fight whenever you tell me to. I swear it.”
“No,” Lennai said. “If our healer says you aren’t well enough, then you aren’t. I’ll have you confined in the slave quarters while you recover, instead of the barracks, so none of your brothers can take another shot at you.”
Alaina sneaked at glance at Vega, and he looked disappointed by that news, but he nodded and muttered, “Thank you, domina.”
“You fought well and bravely today,” Lennai said. “You’ve earned the respite. And the crowd will only scream all the more for you if they are denied the delight of watching you fight for awhile.”
Vega nodded again, and then his head tilted back towards the pillow. Alaina knew he was exhausted and still in pain. He needed to sleep. But she didn’t say so. She just waited, and kept her eyes on the floor until she felt Lennai grip on her arm, nails biting into her skin.
“Let’s leave him to the guards now,” the domina said. “You come with me.”
Alaina winced but nodded and let Lennai pull her out of the room.
She didn’t know what had come over her. Well, she did, but it was very unlike her. To just go climbing into a patient’s lap...into an alien’s lap, at the first kiss. But there was something about Vega. From the moment she’d seen him in the training yard, there was something about him. She had no name for it, but it drew her to him, over and over again. The way he looked at her made her heart beat like thunder. And for a first alien kiss, that had been a hell of a kiss. Suddenly the idea of being claimed by him did not seemed so terrible. But she was usually more in control of herself and her faculties.
She’d just been so afraid, as she’d worked through all the medicines in her bag, cleaned all his wounds and watched him lying there, unconscious on the cot, helpless but still somehow intimidating. And to treat him, she had to touch him. She’d expected those black scales to feel like metal. They looked like metal, shiny and hard, but they were soft and smooth under her fingertips. His heartbeat under her hand had been pow
erful and strong, determined and steady despite his wounds, like something greater drove him to go on living against all odds. She’d felt so lost here that it was inspiring, and comforting, to see that in anyone. Especially the incredibly gorgeous gladiator who’d saved her life, however curtly. He hadn’t been nearly so curt a few moments ago.
Lennai’s fingernails dug so deep into her arm Alaina knew there would be marks, and they would bleed. She couldn’t tell if Lennai was more angry that they’d apparently disobeyed her, or jealous at how they’d disobeyed her. And she thought perhaps the whole donara thing had been Lennai’s idea because she’d thought Vega simply wouldn’t use her when he won her. So the gift of it all wouldn’t have mattered. Now Lennai’s expectations were shattered and Alaina was in serious trouble if the domina thought she had serious designs on her favorite cursu. And she didn’t. She absolutely didn’t. Did she?
“I don’t blame you for wanting him,” Lennai said as she marched Alaina back through the pit and towards the far staircase. “But I’ll not have that kind of thing in my house without my knowing.”
“I was just confused, domina,” Alaina insisted. “I don’t even like him.”
“I find that hard to believe,” Lennai drawled.
“He’s an alien.” Alaina frowned. “We’re totally different species. I swear I was just doing what I thought I was supposed to.”
That seemed to temper some of Lennai’s jealousy. And it was at least partly true. He was a totally different species, and Alaina had no idea how to unpack that in her mind. She remembered the smear of his silvery blood on her hands. The black scales. His strange violet eyes looking into hers. She shivered, and when Lennai looked at her, just lifted her shoulders as if she were cold. Lennai finally released her arm as they went up the staircase towards the free sections of the Arena.
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