Page 16 of Aria's Ascension

He cupped her cheeks and rested his forehead against hers before she could do more than frown. Sighing deeply, he gave her somber eyes and swept his thumb over her cheekbone, whispering, “My sorrow to burden you with this knowledge, but we must have truth between us. I would lose my will to breathe without you.”

“Tirox… ” Aria gasped, shocked.

“No, my heart. You must live. Youmust. I would have your vow you will not foolishly endanger yourself. Not for anything.”

“Tirox. I… ” she sighed. “I won’t do anything stupid. I promise. But, I can’t promise not to put myself in danger. Not here, not with what we’re facing.”

That was as good a promise as she could give. She could tell he wasn’t anywhere near satisfied with it, but voices in the hallway outside prevented him from pressing further. Still, she could see in his eyes he wasn’t finished with the conversation.

Turning away to the sound of his low growl, Aria ran silently to the door and pressed her back to the wall beside it, cocking her head to listen to the conversation on the other side.

“Take this one to the modification suite. She was acting suspiciously in the tournament. I do not need another of my jeleking slaves waking up and causing disorder.”

“Yes, Overlord,”came a deep, hissing voice before footsteps departed down the hallway, opposite the direction from which Aria and her men had come.

“Zhrovni,” Aria hissed on a breath of sound. “He has to be talking about Skaa.”

“One of you go retrieve Vhraress and her males. They need yet more correction. If I have to turn her mind to jeleking soup to get her back under control, that is what I will do!”

Two sets of footsteps headed off in the direction of the labs.

“And prepare for a new shipment,”Zhrovni yelled.“The Gaulik should be arriving any rotation now. Cock-tonguing rzklii are always late!”

“They will sound alarms when they do not find us in our stasis tubes,” Kix warned quietly.

“I know.Fuck.Okay, where is the dragon kept? We grab Skaa from wherever they’re taking her then find him. We’ll be a hell of a lot harder to stop if he’s with us. We just have to hope he’s in his man body, so I can choke him awake, and that he’s willing to fight with us.”

She felt Kix’s wariness at the mention of the dragon, but so, too, could she feel his acknowledgment that what she’d said was true. An ally like that would be a game-changer. She barely heard his footsteps as he ran back to the data console to find out where he was kept. Her shoulders relaxed when she realized he wasn’t going to argue.

He returned just as the footsteps departed outside, heading to the left in the direction they hadn’t been yet.

“The modification suite is three doors down. Skaa should be there. She will not be unattended. We will have to fight to free her.”

“So be it. And the dragon?”

Kix hesitated long enough that she turned to look at him, taking her gaze off the door for the first time since hearing the footsteps.

“What’s wrong?”

His shoulders raised and lowered in a resigned sigh. “His location was not on the main system.” Before she could voice a demand that he search again, he halted her with a placating hand. “I managed to bypass the security. I found him. It will not be easy to reach him, if it is possible at all.”

“Spit it out, Firefly.” He looked taken aback at that, so she rephrased impatiently, “Tell me.”

“He is kept one level down. In the underground prison.”

“Prison? Are you kidding? Like a fucking dungeon? Are there other people kept down there?”

“Yes. Four others, I believe. That level is under constant armed guard. Fortunately, it is only two guards at a time, six total, on a rotating schedule. From what I was able to discover, the prisoners are all considered too dangerous to allow into the arena unrestrained.”

Aria frowned. Something about that didn’t add up. “If they’re so dangerous, why so few guards?” A possibility occurred to her. “Maybe Zhrovni is doing something illegal down there and wants to keep knowledge of the dungeon’s location or even existence to a select few. That could be good for us. If we make it out of here, we could use that against him. I’d rather kill the bastard, slowly, but I could be content with knowing he’s a prisoner, just like all the people he’s stolen.”

The hallway had been silent for thirty seconds by her count. It was time to go. Glancing up at them, she met their gazes for a moment before asking, “We ready?”

They nodded and unsheathed their weapons.

“Time to go hunting,” she whispered, anticipation speeding her pulse.

Just before she input the code to open the door, she peered down at her body then back at the guys’. They were only clothed, if you could call it that, in weapons and harnesses. Aria smiled wryly.

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