It was enough to make her entire body light up like a switchboard.

And no, she thought, as much as she respected Novo’s females-can-do-everything-males-can, it was very clear to her that she could not have handled the likes of what Craeg was putting out now. He would have knocked her cold with just one of those knuckle punches. Or snapped her head clean off her spine. Or broken one of her legs with an easy twist.

Not that she couldn’t learn appropriate defenses and counter-measures, she just didn’t know them now—and he had, in fact, been prepared to attack her: When he’d crouched down and bared his tremendous fangs, she had stumbled back—and yet, for some insane reason, she hadn’t been afraid of him. Which was just plain nuts. He had more than a hundred pounds on her, and he’d been out for blood.

So yeah, what was totally insane? She had suddenly wanted to run from him—but not too fast. She’d wanted him to come after her, and catch her on the fly … and …

Well, it was back to that moment they’d shared when they’d been alone in the break room.

But Jesus, I can’t handle him, she thought as she watched him move. And not just in a fight: Any female who set chase to a male like that wasn’t getting a sweet kiss at the end of the running—she wasn’t getting a hand held and a sacred promise of a bonded mating and a conversation with her father where said suitor bashfully asked for permission.

This was not the kind of refined male one was expected to give one’s virginity to on the night of her mating before the Scribe Virgin and her family.

No, he was an animal with only a modicum of higher reasoning.

And the way he’d looked at her in that moment had suggested that his brain had checked out entirely.

She should have been afraid, she told herself again.

Instead, she wanted him to catch her—

All around, the crowd let out a hiss as Craeg took another cut, this time right across the chest. He was bleeding in several places now, his sparring uniform stained red, blood dripping from his chin from the slice on his cheek, dripping from his thigh, dripping from his pecs.

Another flash of the Brother’s blade caught him on the opposite shoulder. Then it was the side of the throat. The other thigh, the abdomen, across the back.

“Stop,” Paradise said under her breath. “Stop coming at him.”

But every time that vicious blade of the Brother’s struck, Craeg went back for more, reengaging over and over again, until he was slipping in the puddles he was making on the blue mats, and his uniform was stained red and plastered to his body.

He wouldn’t relent.

And Butch gave him no quarter except to spare him death.

“Craeg! Stop!” she called out because she couldn’t help herself.

Putting her hand to her mouth, she felt her heart go back into panic mode as she wondered whether he really would keep going until he’d lost so much from his veins there was no coming back.

“Craeg! This is crazy!”

But still he continued, until he started to sag into his knees, and lurch instead of lunge, and wobble when he retreated. Now, the sloppiness came to him.

God, he was too pale.

“Stop!”

From over on his gurney, Peyton sat up and yelled, “Craeg! Come on, man—he’s gonna kill you.”

Ripples of unease passed through the other trainees, but not through all the Brothers who had come to watch the show. The medical people, in contrast, also didn’t look thrilled—however, when the female doctor with the blond hair went to step forward, the Brother Vishous shook his head and made her stay beside him.

Craeg went down for the last time forty-two minutes and many, many liters of lost plasma later.

He just dropped to his knees, swayed for a moment … and then fell facedown in his own blood. Exactly as he had done out on the track.

Paradise rushed to go forward, but Rhage caught her and yanked her back. “No. You allow him his honor.”

“What are you talking about?” she hissed.

Rhage just nodded toward the two combatants. “Watch.”

Butch stood over the fallen male for a moment, giving Craeg a chance to get back to his feet. When he did not, the Brother waited for Craeg to look up at him.

Unfocused eyes struggled in an ashen face to lock onto the Brother. But when they finally did, Butch switched the weapon to his other hand … and scored his dagger palm deeply with the blade.

As Paradise gasped, the Brother extended his palm to Craeg—who, from out of nowhere, suddenly found the strength to reach up and accept what was offered.

The Brother pulled Craeg to his feet … and embraced him. “Good job, son. I’m proud of you.”

Craeg blinked his eyes fast, as if he were tearing up. Then he seemed to give up the fight against his emotions by closing his lids, tucking his head and sagging into the Brother’s arms.

“And that,” Rhage said in a loud, approving voice, “is how you do it.”

Chapter Seventeen

Sitting at her desk at Safe Place, Marissa had all kinds of work to do: patient files to read, intake papers to approve, bills to process. Instead of tackling any of that, she just sat in her chair and stared at that black strip of metal with its red tassel.

After she and Butch had gotten home, she’d shown the odd, key-like object to a number of the Brothers, and none of them had recognized it or been able to put a solid name to the thing. Then Vishous had done an Internet search on an image of it—and come up with nothing.