Page 11 of Gladiator's Captive
He’s going to kill me out here. No one will ever find me. No one will even look.
The thought chilled me to my very soul and in the next heartbeat, my vision became totally and utterly black. My foot caught in a crevice and I went down but this time there was no hand to quiet my scream. I fell, my weight carrying me forward. Pain shot right through my ankle, blinding hot. The next moment, I was sprawled on the dirt and rocks.
I cried out, yanking my wrist free of Rager’s hold and reached in the darkness, but yelped again with pain as soon as my fingers came in contact with the skin of my ankle. Panic mixed with the pain as I understood. I was done. There was no more running for me.
This is it. I can’t follow him anymore. He’s going to kill me.
The frazzled thoughts echoed in my skull like moths to a flame as fear rose up in my throat. Rager knelt down in front of me, his hands pulling the hem of my dress above my knees without asking permission. I was too dazed by pain and terror to react to his touch or to hold on to a single thought.
“You cannot run anymore.” His tone was harsh, no sympathy to be expected there. Just a mere stating of the facts. “This was already too much for you.”
I was useless. A broken toy. A liability. I could feel the seconds of my life slipping by, the end coming nearer and nearer as his void, emotionless gaze stayed on me like the blade of the executioner.
“No, I’m fine,” I replied in panic, but was unable to refrain from crying out when he touched me again. I tried pushing his hands away, but a single glance from those green, light-reflecting eyes and I fell silent. His feline features were illuminated by the silver moonlight filtering through the maze of rocks, making them appear even harsher than they were. More cruel. More like an animal than a man. But off course, Rager wasn’t human. He was Muharib, and those feline eyes, the vertical pupils dilated by the low light held all the promise of his alien heart. Promise of death and pain. Promise of vengeance for crimes my father committed.
“I just need a few minutes,” I lied through my teeth. “Then I’ll be okay.”
“Don’t move.” The same tone, flat and emotionless, but this time, not as harsh.
I nodded. I tried my best, but tears welled in my eyes anyway as pain spread like a wildfire up and down my body, running up my legs in veins of pure agony. I watched helplessly as Rager pulled my dress up to my mid-thighs, running rough, callused hands on my skin. His touch was light and gentle, nothing like the brute I expected him to be.
“Your ankle is not sprained, only bruised,” he said, this time with a surreal softness. Or maybe even regret. “But your body has reached its limit. Even if you wanted to, you couldn’t run another mile.”
It can’t end like this. I didn’t even get to truly live yet.
“I can still walk.” Tears weighed my words. I knew it was a lie. I could walk as much as I could fly. But I needed to lie, to make him believe I was not a burden for just a while longer. So I could live another minute before he disposed of me.
“Nonsense. I’ve seen enough men reach their limits to know when a person is done.”
There was a final judgment in his words, a tone that meant he was not to be convinced otherwise. This was how I died, then. At the hands of a gladiator in the dark of the desert. It was a death befitting of the daughter of the cruelest gladiator owner on this side of the Empire. I deserved what was coming to me, to atone for the crimes of my father. It was a strange feeling, this knowing. Knowing the breaths I took were counted, that I would never be free of my father after all. I wondered if this was how Rager had felt as he saw the opponents step onto the sand of the arena in the unfair fight earlier today. Somehow, it made it almost okay.
I might not be a gladiator like him, but if I was going to die, I wasn’t going to die begging.
Chapter Seven
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