My top lip hooked in amusement. His taking 152 from me was the best punishment I would receive.

The guard backed away, shaking his head.

My legs moved from side to side as I warmed up my feet. I envisioned the kill in my head. I would duck right, then left, strike left, then plunge my Kindjal into him. The blade would pierce his heart and he would fall to the floor. I opened my eyes. Just as I did, 140 came walking through, covered in blood spatter and with the wide, staring eyes of bloodlust.

He rushed past, panting and high from the kill. My adrenaline spiked; I’d be up next. When the guard walked down the hallway, I cracked my neck from side to side. When the cell door opened, I sprinted down the tunnel to the pit. With every step I envisioned my opponent’s blood hitting my chest and the thrill I’d feel at disobeying Master. The crowd roared as I ran forward, Kindjals at the ready. Then something from the crowd caught my attention. As I fended off my opponent’s strike, his bladed pickax narrowly missing my head, I looked up at the crowd. A flash of light caught my eye again. At the very back, directly behind Master’s seat, was a guard … and in his arms was 152.

It took me a moment to realize what I was seeing. Then it made perfect sense. A guard had a knife to 152’s throat. The light was the blade glinting off the pit’s lights.

Immediately, rage ignited inside me. My eyes next dropped to Master, as I ducked under my opponent’s swing. When I saw him, he was smiling, victory in his dark gaze. His hands gripping the arms of his seat was the only indication that he harbored doubt that I would let her die.

Feeling my opponent approach, I crouched down. The wind from his ax passed, blowing through my hair. Turning, I drove the blunt end of my handle into his kidney, the huge dark-skinned man bending over at the hit. I backed away, steeling my emotions. I narrowed my eyes on my opponent, forcing myself to turn off my concerns about the mona.

Ignore her. She means nothing. Let her die, I told myself, turning my Kindjals in my hands, readying to strike. My opponent turned, his close-shaved black hair and sheer height coming into view, almost matching mine. His teeth were bared as he faced me, gripping his ax as he prepared to strike. Replaying my plan in my head, I ducked left as he charged, then made a quick right. But as I approached and the bladed tip of his ax rose high, I did not use the anticipated gap to my advantage. Instead, I let the blade’s sharp edge slash my upper arm.

The crowd roared as 419, my opponent, drew first blood. Unable to stop myself, I glanced up at 152, who was still as night in the guard’s arms. Even from this distance I could see her eyes shining in pure terror.

Just let me die, I heard in my head, 152’s soft voice from two weeks ago. I shook my head, trying to forget about her up there, with a knife at her throat. I tried not to care. But just as I couldn’t let her die on the floor of my cell before, I wouldn’t let her die now. Something inside me, feeling like a dull ache in my chest, wouldn’t let me.

Sighing deeply, I ran at my opponent, smashing the Kindjal’s blunt handle to his face. He responded with a punch to my cheek. And I put on a fucking show. I gave Master what he wanted. Hit after hit, blow after blow. 419 and I were both cut, bleeding and bruised. I had gashes on my arms, gashes on my torso, and swelling on my cheeks. But I knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that I could have beaten him in seconds if Master hadn’t forced me to submit. 419 was nothing. As a contender, he was a joke. Yet I made this fight look like I’d barely hung on.

Enraged at what I’d been forced to do—at what I’d allowed myself to do—I stood and gripped my Kindjals. Enough was enough. I’d toyed with this fighter too long. It was beneath me to play with this male any longer.

It was time for him to die.

419 swayed on his feet, on the brink of passing out. His ax hung by his side, his slackening fingers barely able to hold the heavy steel. Needing to see him fall, see this male breathe his last, I charged forward, and in a double movement of my blades, I sliced across his stomach and stabbed a Kindjal down and through his skull. My blade cut through him like butter, and the feel of his large body submitting to death sent the best drugs to my veins.

The crowd jumped to their feet as 419 hit the bloodied sand beneath our feet. It was the loudest response I had ever received in the pit. And when I looked to 152 in the stands, the guard slowly removed the knife from her throat. I snarled, abruptly wrapped in a cocoon of pure hate, when I saw a faint bloodied line on her skin.

And I knew. In that moment, I knew Master hadn’t been faking this threat. If I had failed to obey, he would have slit the High Mona’s throat. He was crazed and unstable, but he was obsessed with the female. Yet to break me, to see me bow down to his feet, he would have slit her throat without a second thought.

A mixture of anger and some cavernous feeling I couldn’t describe swirled in my stomach. Because I knew, by this match, that I had given Master a hold over my mind. The realization hit home. He hadn’t sent 152 to me weeks ago to make me want her, then hurt me by taking her away. He had given me her to threaten her life. His High Mona, the female he stared at like he wanted to completely possess her soul. He had given her to me to force me to yield to his control.

And it had worked. As furious as that made me, I couldn’t deny the truth: I had played right into his hands. Even as I stood here now, seething, almost splintering apart with the most intense rage, my eyes kept drifting to 152, dressed in a sheer deep purple dress. She was frozen to the spot, but she watched me, too. Her eyes were a mixture of confusion and pain, but they were fixed on me. Solely on me.

Her attention only made me break more.

I hated myself for submitting like a mewling bitch.

And despite myself, I hated her for being the cause of this truth.

Snapping my eyes away, I ranged my gaze over the crowd. I wanted nothing more than to jump into the fray and tear them all apart. I wanted to shred their limbs and snap their bloodthirsty necks. Then my eyes found Master, still sitting in his seat, staring down at me, looking every inch the Blood Pit King.

Focusing on me, his champion.

The one he now controlled … in every way possible.

As if knowing what I was thinking, a slow victorious grin pulled on his lips. My legs physically shook as I tried to keep from sacrificing my life just to take his life first. But as his wide, glittering eyes looked up to 152, standing like a broken child behind him, I planted my feet into the sand.

A wave of protectiveness washed over me when I saw who 152 was looking at: me. And I saw Master’s livid reaction to who held her gaze. This time when he looked at me, there was a new fire in his stare. He had given his mona to me—but he didn’t want her to want me. He wanted her affection all to himself.

My cheek twitched as I fought the smirk threatening on my lips. Master caught it, though. His knuckles became white as he gripped the arms of his seat. He leaned forward, his hard face showing how much he wanted to order my death. For a moment, when he rose to his feet and the crowd quieted down, I thought he would see through his biggest wish.

Then a darker man, dressed in strange clothing, stood beside him and shook his hand. The male was smiling wide, nodding his head at something Master said. As I glanced to the dead male beside me in the pit, I saw the similarities to him and the strangely dressed male. It was his Master. The one my Master had needed me to win over.

I had done as Master planned.

The crowd grew restless as the males talked. When Master finally looked back my way, he dismissed me from the pit with a quick flick of his wrist. Turning on my heel, I jogged out of the ring and down the warriors’ tunnel. I forced myself to look unaffected. But when the tunnel darkened and I knew I was out of the spectators’ view, I drew to a stop and clenched my teeth at the pain stabbing at my body. I glanced behind me and saw my bloodied footprints on the sand. I raked my gaze over my body and growled low when I saw I was littered with gashes, deep slices showing more than a few hints of open flesh.

I hadn’t been touched in five years. Hadn’t sustained a scratch since I became champion and simply decided that no opponent would ever touch me again. I knew this match had just made the excitement for Master’s sick spectators that much stronger. The champion, the Arziani Pit Bull, had just been wounded in the show rounds.