Page 68 of Caged

“They’re going to take me somewhere, Sylas. I don’t know where, but you have to fight. You have to fight this, and them, and you have to stop them,” she says hurriedly, anguish written large in her eyes. “I know you’ve fought before, I know it, but this is different, this is for your future and nothing else.”

“If I fight, my sweet mate, I fight for you and for our youngling. The future does not matter if you are not in it,” I reply, struggling onto my hands and knees, my wings draping around me like I can’t hold them up anymore.

“Take her,” Medius says. I raise my head, squinting at him out of one eye. “He’s told me what I need to know.”

“If you touch my mate, if you even look at her, you will die,” I say.

He crouches down next to me, and I see the brief shimmer of a personal forcefield around his body.

“Sylas.” He takes my chin as I growl. “You have no agency here. You have no ability to tell me what you want. You belong to me. Your mate belongs to me. Your unborn young belongs to me. And if you want to be treated well, if you want yourmateto be treated well, you will do exactly what I tell you to do.”

ALEX

“AGryn’s mate, should be interesting.”

Medius’s last words to me as he told me what he intended doing with my proud gladiator.

“He will fight and die for you one last time in the dome. And I’ll be rid of a problem forever.”

And then he gave me “one last time” with Sylas, and my heart is shattered. The last thing I want in this galaxy is for him to suffer. And now he is.

If I hadn’t gone and got myself stung by the stupid tentacle thing, we’d never have been in this position. We could have left our home, or we could have defended it. Sylas certainly wouldn’t be at the mercy of the one creature who seems to know all about him.

I’m dragged down a dingy passage within the ground transport and thrust through a door into a room where there’s a scent of antiseptic in the air. An Oykig medic is staring at charts on a screen.

“Put her in the clamp,” the Oykig says, not looking up from what he’s studying.

The Habosu push me towards a metal structure in the center. I struggle because I don’t want to make this easy for our captors,but the Habosu is bigger and stronger than me, so I end up stretched out on the metal plate, various arms shifting into position as my wrists and ankles are snapped into cuffs and I’m stood upright, immobile.

“I’m Vasil,” the Oykig says, “I’m going to be examining you,” he says.

“And what if I say no?”

He lifts his head from his screen. Oykig don’t have eyelids, so their stares are pretty intense.

“You don’t get a choice,” he eventually says.

“Then why even bother telling me what you’re going to do? Why bother telling me I’m going to be taken anywhere?” I growl.

“This doesn’t have to be difficult.” He returns to his screen.

“Like it doesn’t have to be difficult for Sylas? How do you think he’s doing?”

“The Gryn is extremely healthy. The modifications made to him ensure he can continue to function even with half the health he has currently.” He sets the screen to one side on a low table and presses a lighted button on a console next to it.

With a whirr, a set of unpleasant looking instruments fold out of the wall next to me.

“Oh, well, that’s okay then. I’m sure he’ll be fine, what with Medius teasing him and you prodding him. I’m sure he’ll just bounce back.”

Vasil approaches me, slithering across the floor.

“What do you mean? I’ve treated Gryn before, and he seems fine given the changes made to him.”

Vasil knows more about Sylas, and given I’m going to make sure I get back to my gorgeous gladiator the first opportunity I get, I’m also going to make sure I take all the information with me. But first I need all of these idiots to think I’m not a threat.

Okay, significantly less of a threat than they already think I am. I need them to drop their guard, so I can get out of here.

“I mean like all predators, he’s very good at hiding when he isn’t well.”

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