by Jaide Fox
Never had Torin heard the Coliseum of Thunder rumble so loud with approval. Antarians rose to their feet, clapping and stomping until the ground beneath Torin trembled as if from a quake. The earthen floor covering thick concrete vibrated through his tired feet and aching calves—but he was alive, and he knew he had done more than enough to claim a prize.
In the high rising spire, through the glass, Torin could see gray clouds unleash a torrent of rain upon the building that defied logic and gravity. Guards opened access doors from the outside and paraded the slave women as promised.
On the surface, Torin appeared calm before his brethren. Inside, his guts continued to rumble with anticipation.
Unlike most of the others, Antarian women craved Torin’s pleasurable games. He’d had no shortage of women seek him for the delights he could offer. He’d been considered to be more civilized and less threatening, though it was only an act he pretended to lure them to his lair.
The others were too brutal to attract women to satisfy their sexual appetites, but Torin had learned restraint was its own reward. Now, however, his restraint wore thin. As much as he enjoyed female company, none of them were willing to give him complete surrender and submission—total control. None of them would ever be his mate.
Now he would find a woman worth conquering and seducing in any way he saw fit.
The promise had been enough to drive him through the competition to win a place amongst the chosen.
The first two winners were called forth by the master of the games, and it came as no surprise to him that Raker Anilan and Navarre Viseus received first and second choice. They were beasts, even among monsters.
“Torin Athun, come forth and choose your mate,” the master of the games said, turning to look down at him where he stood.
Torin’s chest swelled that he’d gained third choice. He straightened his back, feeling tension rise in every rigid muscle as he crossed the grounds and took the steps up the stage to the line of waiting women.
Immediate disappointment overtook him.
They looked broken.
He did not question where the women had come from—he knew they’d had no other option but this or they would not be here. Still, it peeved him to see them shivering and wet from the rain, their eyes downcast as they attempted to huddle together and avoid his scrutiny. It was not as if each and every one of them would be claimed by one of his brethren. The least they could do was accept their fate with a measure of dignity.
They’d earned their place here by some foul deed. He knew they had to have a spine somewhere inside them despite appearances.
Torin studied each woman as he passed, checking them off until he was nearly to the end, where one lone woman stood with her head held high. She kept her gaze trained ahead, her face impassive, but beneath that exterior he knew beat the heart of a woman worthy of claiming.
She did not cower and cringe as many of the others did around her. Hands clenched in front of her, it seemed all she could do to resist bolting from the stage and leading them on a merry chase.
Her ivory skin was accentuated by a black corset that pinched her waist and made her small breasts appear larger than they were.
He liked the picture she made in his eyes.
Torin stopped in front of her, blocking the path of her stare to force her to meet his eyes. She lifted her pointy chin and squared her shoulders, facing him on without fear.
White hair in fine, tiny twists hung to her waist, and there was an exotic tilt to her dark blue eyes that captivated him.
He took note of her height—only a few inches shorter than him—and imagined her passing along that bearing to his sons and daughters. Short black pants left her lithe, muscular legs bared to his perusal. Visions of those long limbs wrapping around him as she moaned in pleasure assailed his mind.
A slow grin split his face, baring his sharp teeth in a smile he knew to be wolfish and hungry.
Merely looking upon her sent a flash of heat rolling through his body that he could not ignore. Thought fled of the Antarian women he’d sampled.
Here was an Amazonian warrioress of which he’d read about in legends. She would fight hard and love harder. There was no doubt about that. He knew she would be a fierce woman to possess—in fact, that she would not be a possession, but an equal in every way.
Words were not needed to convey this message—it was one he recognized with a kindred soul.
How odd that he found that intriguing. He and his fellow ShadeShifters had a camaraderie between them in battle and in their world, but otherwise lived a solitary existence devoid of the complications of women and love. Had the easy submission of others ruined him? Perhaps it was the challenge this one posed that so compelled him.
Still, he found the need to at least learn her name before making his final decision. After all, the other men were still waiting their turn. “What are you called, warrior woman?” he said to her, capturing her small chin in his hand to meet his unflinching eyes.
Something defiant flashed in her eyes, and being closer, he could see they were a dark, almost blackish blue as of the deepest part of the ocean.
“I am called Orcha Elmris. If you choose me, I must request you do so with the intention of punishing me severely and often,” she said, her voice deep and husky.
Torin laughed. He could not contain his chuckle. Again, her eyes flashed and her brow furrowed with a frown. No wonder she stood so brave. The woman was out of her mind. Torin could not have been more intrigued. “I choose this woman,” he announced to the crowd and the master of the games.
Thunderous applause met the announcement, which Torin ignored as he captured her bound wrists and led her away and out of the massive coliseum.
Dust stirred from the earthen floor as they tread across to the other entrance which would take them to his quarters. He pushed the doors wide with his shoulder, gratified to hear the sounds of the crowd die down as their distance grew and concrete swallowed their footsteps.
Torin glanced back at her over his shoulder and caught her staring daggers at his back.
Her demand of punishment was…strange to say the least.
He contemplated the matter as he moved beneath the coliseum and through the labyrinthine passages that led to the ShadeShifter’s quarters. The floor tilted, carrying them deep beneath the massive building to a maze of corridors. He’d walked the halls many times and knew the twists and turns by heart.
Another look back at Orcha told him she was attempting to memorize their path. For an attempted escape? Perhaps.
That perceived defiance made him smile.
“Do you try to remember our way so that you can run?”
“I like to know where I came from.” She looked at him, frowning. “Why would I run away?”
“You’ve been forced here. You all have. Willing brides do not come to ShadeShifters. I would not be surprised if you or any other does not attempt some escape.”
A dejected look crumpled her face for a split second. She quickly retained an impassive and cold stare back at him. “I deserve whatever comes to me. What is this prison or any other to me? My guilt follows me everywhere, for it is inside me.”
“I know you are all guilty of some crime or another or you wouldn’t be here. But come, with time, everything can be forgiven. This is your chance for a new life,” he said, stopping at a door inscribed with alien letters. A keypad chest height pulsed with a blue glow.
Orcha remained silent, appearing to take no comfort or belief in his words.
Punching a code into the pad, he opened the door to his suite and led Orcha inside.
His room was no different than any of the others. A simple suite with a kitchen, bedroom and living area, plus a bathroom and closet with laundry to house his meager collection of clothing.
The ShadeShifters lived a Spartan existence. They preferred it, in fact, to the trappings of wealth and success and greed so many others seemed to feed upon. They’d always been this way. Their h
ome planet had held a vast treasure beneath its desert surface. Perhaps it was the gratuitous nature of wealth that kept them impervious to the desire to have more than what they needed to survive.
Money, after all, could not buy happiness—and in fact, had almost driven them extinct.
Torin lived for the pleasure of slaying his enemies, and now he would know the satisfaction of having a woman to return home to after his battles.
She aroused questions in him that he could not ignore. As much as he wanted to ignore the enigma of this Orcha, her strangeness was like a sore tooth that he couldn’t leave alone.
Torin caught her attention by grabbing her wrists and releasing the binding cuffs on them. He dropped them on a simple wooden table by the door and moved to the sitting area of his suite. Collapsing in a leather bound chair, his legs sprawled across the floor as he relaxed and regarded her.
“Remove my boots,” he said, watching her across the room and waiting to see what she would do.
She looked for a moment as if she’d deny him, but finally walked with quiet steps to him and kneeled on the floor. She unlaced one and pulled it off, then removed the other.
“Stay there. I believe I prefer looking at you from this position,” Torin said, rubbing his thin black beard with amusement.
“A supplicant?” she said with her thin dark eyebrows looking cross.
“Of course. You are my submissive now, like it or not. Better that you don’t like it. I enjoy a challenge.”
“Do you enjoy raping the unwilling?”
It was Torin’s turn to look angry. He felt his tattoos spike with the flash of emotion. “I have never raped a woman in my life.”
“There is a first time for everything. I told you to punish me.”
Torin sucked in a deep breath through flared nostrils, willing the rise in anger to abate. She wanted to goad him into striking her, he supposed. Perhaps she was broken in some other way he had no way of conceiving.
“You are an odd creature,” he said finally after regaining his temper. “I sense there is something that lurks beneath the surface, yet I cannot put my finger upon what that may be. Tell me, with so many afraid of our appetites, why do you demand punishment from me? Why do you try to urge me to violence? Do you not fear the berserker I could become if you push me too hard? Do you not see the multitude of tattoos reigning the beast in?”
Orcha crossed her arms over her chest. “It is no less than I deserve.”
She was a woman of few words. Apparently, he would have to drag every admission out of her bit by bit. He sighed. Nothing was ever as easy as it appeared. “I understand the Antarians could bring us no other women but the condemned—criminals. What crime have you committed?”
Again, something unreadable flashed across her face, intriguing him. “Murder.”
The statement sent an unexpected chill through his blood. He straightened in his seat. “I grant you, this deserves the ultimate punishment. Why were you not sentenced to death?”
The blood left her face, making her pale lips appear almost blue. She swallowed, looking slightly ill. “The court deemed it involuntary manslaughter.”
He stood and eyed her a long moment without speaking. She did not lift her head to look him in the face. “You feel the charges inaccurate, however?”
“Yes. I deserved more. I deserve death,” she said, slowly raising her face to meet his.
The haunted look in her eyes disturbed him. He shrugged the alien feeling aside, attempted to replace it with anger or irritation, but still, it nagged him. “Why not kill yourself? Why go on living?”
“I do not bleed as others. I cannot die,” she whispered.
Torin barked a laugh but realized she was serious and halted his forced amusement. “How is this possible? Even we ShadeShifters bleed.”
Orcha remained silent.
He sighed in exasperation. “Fine, keep your mysteries to yourself for now. I need to wash the sweat of my battles from my skin. Feel free to move about the suite and make yourself at home.”
“I am free to move about? Don’t you worry I will escape?”
He looked her dead in the eye, stopping at the door to his bathroom. “There is nowhere to escape to. You are mine now, here, outside, any and everywhere. I have claimed you as my mate, Orcha, and I keep what is mine.”
Chapter Three
Metal rang loud and hollow as Elgir Kanto slammed his fist into the warden’s stainless steel desk.
“You dented it, Elgir,” Otto, the prison warden said, fingers in a steeple as he looked with irritation at the bloody impression of Elgir’s hand in the middle of his desk.
“I’d like to do more than that,” Elgir snarled, ignoring the blood dripping from the knuckles of his right hand.
“Calm down. You should be happy she’s not here anymore.”
“Free and in the arms of another man? I wanted her to suffer that cell for eternity,” Elgir said. He flung his thick white dreads around his shoulder, behind his back.
The split flesh of Elgir’s hand knitted whole right before Otto’s eyes. It gave him no surprise. Elgir Kanto was like him—brethren infected by the same lupine virus that gave them long life and extraordinary healing abilities faster than any nanobot could. Otto hadn’t been sick in decades.
“You had no chance to get to her in here beyond gloating over her misery. Now you have the opportunity to claim her for yourself—if you’re man enough to take her from a ShadeShifter. They are not invincible, despite what everyone believes.”
Elgir stopped his pacing. Otto smirked. Elgir was a man of anger and passion, not known for his intelligence. Had he been smarter, he would have thought out his master plan of claiming Orcha as his mate more thoroughly. For one, she despised him. Simply getting rid of the stumbling block of her lover and infecting her without her consent would never have been enough to gain her acceptance.
Otto supposed they couldn’t all be brilliant. For him, seeing the drama unfold was all the entertainment he could hope for in the world. Decades of sameness made him yearn to be entertained by Elgir’s stupidity. He had nothing else to look forward to.
“And where, exactly, was she transferred?” Elgir asked.
“Planet Antares. I’ve been issued an invitation to watch the games for my cooperation in supplying mates. You are welcome to join me. If that is your wish?”
“Fine. When are we leaving?”
“There are two games slated this month. I cannot make the first, but I should be able to travel for the second,” Otto said, striving for patience.
Elgir grinned. “I’ll be sure to get ready then. I cannot keep Orcha waiting.”
“Indeed.”
***
Torin circled Orcha as she stood in the middle of his suite. She tried to keep her eyes straight ahead and lifeless, but the presence of a thick wooden beam centered against the back wall with iron loops and chains dangling from the ceiling kept snagging her gaze.
He was clean now. Shower fresh and revived from his fighting—enough that he wanted to enjoy his new toy.
“Do not let my presence keep you from gazing on your new home,” Torin said, allowing one hand to trail around her waist as he stood behind her. He moved to the side, cupping her jaw and gently forcing her to look directly at the rough-hewn post that looked amiss in the sleek, modern apartment.
“You wonder what it is for, do you not?” he said, dropping his hand as he walked away to a stainless steel set of drawers nestled against the corner. Opening the drawer, he withdrew a large, black bag.
“I admit, my curiosity is piqued,” Orcha said.
“As is mine for the spiral inhibitor tattoo they’ve placed upon the small of your back just beneath your corset. In all my life, I’ve only seen ShadeShifters bear such a mark. What have you need of inhibiting? You are no ShadeShifter.”
“It is none of your concern.”
“Oh, but it is. Our lives are entwined now.” He walked to the bed standing in the center of the
room and slowly emptied the contents on the black silk comforter. Orcha watched as he laid out varied lengths of rope and white, black, and red cloth strips.
Satisfied with the display on the bed, he returned his gaze to her. “Should I be concerned for my safety?” he asked in a low, taunting voice.
In another place and time, she would have guffawed. No matter her infection, she was still no match for a male ShadeShifter. She chose not to answer him and remained silent.
