Claiming His Chance (2 page)

I shrugged. “I don’t need to be taller than my opponent to win a fight.”

He huffed a laugh. “You won’t survive three fights in our ring, boy. Though hopefully you can hold on long enough to make the bosses happy before your opponent tosses your ass out of the cage.”

I used my thumb to wipe the corner of my mouth, letting my lips turn up in a cocky grin, confidence making me arrogant. “I’ll fight and I’ll win because I’m good, not because I’m the biggest. But go ahead and bet against me. Your lost money can line your boss’ pockets.”

He glowered, a small rumble coming from his throat. “Say goodbye to your pack, Appalachia. We leave in the morning.”

“
Y
our mate’s a good fighter
. Always such a nice, slow build to an explosive finish. He’s earned his nickname of Tidal.”

Fighting back an irritated frown, I hurried after the handler toward the medical rooms. Did he have to talk? Couldn’t he be silent as he took me to see if Piers was still…
shit
. I couldn’t bear to think it. The cheers of the crowd from the arena bounced along the concrete walls. The noise made my wolf anxious, made her pace inside my head. Made me long to shift. But that was the last thing I should do in this…hell. This training center and arena for studying the art of violence.

Piers, just get to Piers and worry about the rest later
. I let my thoughts keep me focused on the task, but it was getting harder and harder to pretend with every day. I hated this place. Hated everything around me. But I had to stay in character, had to keep living a lie. It was what needed to be done. For Piers…for the future we’d planned. We were so close to achieving what we’d been working for.

“Yes, yes, he has. I’m quite proud of him.” My heels clicked on the concrete floor and my heavy dress restricted the length of my stride as I struggled to keep up with the man’s giant steps. I wished I could hike up the skirt, kick off my shoes, and run, but I had to stay in character. The heels, the sexy dress, the heavy makeup—all of it helped me play the part. All were expected and not to be overlooked. I needed to be seen as the beautiful, sexy mate of a prizefighter. Arm candy. Untouchable. The alternative… Well, it wouldn’t be good for me.

This building, this disgusting concrete box in the middle of the mountains that reeked of blood and sweat, was also chock-full of testosterone. A toxic cocktail to my kind for sure. Shifters loved to fight, loved to let their animal side loose and work off their aggression, but what happened here wasn’t natural. It was filthy, muddied with hormone shots and scented air pumped through the vents to keep the shifters on edge and ready to battle at all times. Hell, the smell worked
my
animal side hard, and it was filled with
female
pheromones. I couldn’t imagine being one of the men in the rings—the scent of mating and rut in the air, another male shifter in your face, threatening and probably dangerous. I’d lose control of my wolf in a heartbeat, and she was a gentle beast.

After what seemed like a mile-long jog down the endless hallways, the handler reached a dented and scarred door and pushed it open. He didn’t move through, though. Instead, he stood taking up most of the entryway. Blocking my path. With a much more interested expression on his face than I’d noticed before, he looked me over, his gaze almost a physical sensation. Eye-fucking me…the bastard. I bet he thought he could get a reaction out of me with this stunt. Perhaps a gasp or a little shiver of my exposed shoulders. A tiny little taste of my fear.

As if.

Let him look, let him play his games and think he was somehow dominating me. I’d been raised in a rough pack of men who tried to push that traditional subservient-women values crap some packs seemed to thrive on, but not the females in our group. My packsisters had been involved in physical fights, refused matings, and psychological warfare the likes of which this guy had probably never even heard about. The women of my former pack had taught me well, and when we left, I was thrust into worlds of seedy characters and men who saw no issue taking what they wanted from those they saw as weaker. But Piers and I had survived…together. This handler wanted to play games with me? Great. I was a goddamned professional athlete in the battle of the sexes. And I wasn’t afraid.

“In you go, little lady.”

I tucked my head toward my shoulder, keeping my eyes down. Playing the sweet, innocent, helpless woman desperate to get to her injured mate. If he only knew.

“Thank you,” I nearly whispered.

His growl was low and barely discernable, more something I felt than heard. “It’s not a problem.”

I fought back a snarl as my arm brushed his chest, my wolf ready to show herself. Particularly her teeth. Gentle or not, she’d defend us to the death, a fact that might end up working in my favor in this place.
Last one
, Piers had said when we moved here.
Last time we have to run this con, then we’ll be set.
He’d better have been right.

Once I spotted Piers, though, all acts fell away. I didn’t even give the handler a second glance as I rushed across the room to the gurney. Lying there, covered in blood and sweat and dirt, was Piers, the man who’d been at my side practically since birth. The one I needed to be okay to feel safe. And he was a mess.

“Hey, Trin.” Piers tried to reach for me but dropped his arm, groaning with the effort. Heavy slash marks cut through the flesh of his shoulder, knitting together slowly. He looked pale, probably from the pain. And there was very little I could do to help him.

“Good fight, Tidal,” the handler called from the still-open doorway. “I’m pretty sure the other guy’s going to need to have his jaw reset after you got that hit in at the start. How many times do you think you broke it? I swear I heard five crunches of those bones.”

I glared over my shoulder at the handler. “Can we please have some privacy?”

His lip turned up in a show of aggression, but he still nodded and stepped out into the hall. I didn’t move until he closed the door behind him, and then I let myself relax into who I really was.

“Damn it, Piers. What were you thinking?” I grabbed the gauze and saline, cleaning his shoulder wounds, keeping my hands busy to stop my mind from exploding. I thought the blows he’d taken had looked bad from the spectator seats during the fight. Here, so close that I could see every mark, I knew the fight had to have been ten times worse than I imagined. I had no idea how he’d walked out of the ring at all.

“It’s not as bad as it looks.” Piers hissed as I wiped the blood away from a split on his cheek. “Only the shoulder will take more than a few hours to heal. Besides, I stomped that fucker. Won that fight as if it were nothing.”

“Nothing,” I huffed. My eyes burned with unshed tears as I looked over his body. His skin was positively littered with
nothing
. Cuts, splits, tears, bruises… Even with the rapid healing of his shifter blood, it would take days to recover from this. “Doesn’t look like it was nothing to me.”

Piers grabbed my arm, halting my cleaning of his wounds. “Stop it. You’re worrying too much.” He dropped his voice, pulling me closer to whisper in my ear. “Five fights, remember? I win five fights and we’re set to start that life I promised you. You can buy some land, set up a pack of your own, and bring together all the orphans and shifters who’ve been kicked out of traditional packs or are alone for whatever reason. Others in our situation. Everything I promised you when you followed me after I was kicked out of the pack. Every dream you’ve ever told me, I’ll make sure comes true. Five fights, Trin, and I’ve already won three. Just two more.”

I nodded, tears finally falling. “I know. But it’s not just for me. It’s for both of us.”

“I can be happy anywhere.” He pulled back, eyes staying locked on mine. “I know you hate this place, but it’ll be over before you know it.”

I shook my head. “It’s just so loud, and I hate not being able to shift.”

He fell back against the gurney, his eyes going unfocused as a grimace of pain passed over his face. “Shit, Trin, you know the rules. Plus, I can beat just about any guy in this place in human form. If you shift, you risk getting us kicked out. And hell, if they shift, I can’t even follow them and fight in my animal form.” He stared into my eyes, his telling me all the things his words couldn’t. All the secrets we had to keep. “If I shift, they’ll kill me. And you’d be on your own.”

I took a deep breath, trying to rein in my anxiety. “I know.”

“Two more, and we’re out of here. You can get everything you’ve wanted all these years.”

I sighed, hearing the sadness in his voice. He liked it here, liked the fighting and the decidedly male atmosphere. He’d leave, though, for me. For the promises he made me so many years before. For all I gave up to stay with him.

I ran the gauze over his eyebrow with shaky hands, guilt heavy on my heart. “This one might scar.”

His lips lifted up into a close approximation of a grin, a shadow of that same goofy smile that’d been my downfall since we were toddlers. “Bonus, then. Chicks dig scars.”

I rolled my eyes. “Not this chick.”

Before he could answer, there was a knock and the door swung open. One of the owners of the underground fighting ring strolled into the room, his dark, pinstriped suit at total odds with the filthy surroundings. Not that my sequined evening gown fit in, either.

“Piers, my boy. Good fight, good fight.” He approached the gurney with a smile, completely focused on Piers. I moved to the head of the bed, knowing my job was to be invisible. I was nothing to him. If it weren’t for the fact that Piers had put his foot down, I wouldn’t have been allowed in the training areas of the arenas. No women were unless they had a specific job. Mine was being Piers’ mate.

Speaking of which, the man in question boosted himself up with his elbow, shaking the owner’s hand when offered. “Thank you, sir. I hope it was a success for you.”

“Of course it was.” The owner’s gaze locked on Piers’ shoulder, a sharklike expression in his eyes. “Next time, I want you to slow it down a little more. Make the show last. The longer the battle, the more bets the humans make.”

“Take more?” The words tumbled from my lips unbidden. I stared, my wolf wanting to slash this creep across the face and force him away from Piers. “He’s lying here with broken bones, covered in his own blood, and you want him to take more?”

The man’s face hardened, though he still refused to look at me. “Piers, we allowed you to bring your mate because we respect the mating bonds. That respect needs to be reciprocated for our efforts.”

Shit
. Piers turned his head, eyes locking on mine. I knew I’d screwed up, he knew I’d screwed up, and he was imploring me to behave without words.
Two more fights, just two more and I’ll be free.

“I apologize, sir.” I kept my voice soft and hung my head, unable to wipe the anger off my face, the words I knew I needed to say vile on my tongue. “I’m just upset. I’ve never seen him bleed so much.”

“Men bleed for many things, little girl. Money, power, sex…that’s our world. That’s our life. Deal with it, or move the fuck on and get out of your mate’s way. He’s going to bring in a lot of cash with that fighting style of his. A lot. The five fights for a million dollars deal we struck may be just the start of his career.”

Piers pinched me as the owner turned to leave, a signal to do what needed to be done. I jumped and followed the man to the door, once again playing the role of Piers’ quiet, meek mate. Knowing this one, this particular lie, was going to sting.

“Of course, sir. Thank you for the opportunity. My mate and I are very” —I forced my lip not to curl in disgust— “
appreciative
of your generosity.”

He grunted and strode into the hall, disappearing quickly through the maze of the back offices. When I could no longer hear his footsteps, I leaned out to check for anyone else nearby. I needed a few minutes of privacy with Piers, and shifter hearing was too good to risk this particular conversation if anyone was in the vicinity.

I was about to step back inside the room when the doors to the training room at the far end of the hall banged open and four men walked into the hallway. They stood with wide eyes, arrogant posture, bags over their shoulders, and no bruises…new fighters. My eyes darted to one as if on instinct. He was taller than the rest, tanned a deep golden brown with a jawline that seemed chiseled from stone. Even from far away, I could see the hard set to his eyes, the ferocity in his stance. He wasn’t really bigger than the rest of the men in his group, but he definitely appeared meaner. Tougher. With what looked like burn scars along one arm and an intense expression that brooked no room for error, he looked like a storm brewing in human form. I’d seen men like him before. He’d be a tornado in the ring.

“Trin? Help me dress this wound, would ya? I want to go back to our room.” Piers crept up behind me, leaning out into the hall to grab my elbow.

I ripped my eyes from the new recruits and followed Piers back into the room. “You shouldn’t even be out of bed yet.”

“Quit worrying and just help me, okay?” His tired, irritated voice was my undoing. He was injured, and I was too busy ogling the new recruits to have noticed him struggle off the gurney. I felt the urge to keep an eye on the new guy, but that would have to wait. Piers needed me, and I had a duty to uphold.

“Yes, dear.”

T
he place
where the fighters lived, trained, and eventually beat the shit out of each other was an unassuming concrete block structure. Other than the rock mountain wall it basically rested against, there was nothing remarkable about the squat building tucked deep in a thick forest of trees. It could have been mistaken for a garage or simple storage facility unless you saw it from the back. That’s when you got an idea of the size of the place, the huge edifice stretching long past where any normal building should have ended.

One of the guys we’d picked up along the way, a young shifter named Beadan, whistled. “Damn, that’s one big-ass building.”

“Sure is.” I glanced at the other two men we’d driven in with, all four of us new to the fight scene here but looking for some kind of payment. For me, it was duty and to pay off my pack’s debt for the security detail we’d used while traveling. For the rest, it seemed like they were looking for money. Something all young, strong-willed wolves needed. We tended to be kicked out of our packs once we reached maturity, too many Alphas afraid of having potential usurpers nearby. I was lucky. Killian knew his strengths and had enough confidence to keep the adult males in his pack, to keep families together as had his father before him. These boys…well, they’d had it a little rougher.

“This is the largest fight facility in the Southeast,” the handler who’d driven us down said as he stepped in front of our small group. “For the length of your contract or longer, you will live, eat, sleep, practice, and fight within these walls. You will not leave the building unless a trainer or handler has approved your trip. You will remain aware of your surroundings at all times. We put on fights for human spectators, and they must never learn of our secret. Is that understood?”

He glared at each of us in turn, waiting to move on to the next until we nodded our understanding.

“And one more rule,” he said, face hard, looking like a man ready to fight a battle of his own. “You will not shift on our property. Not inside, not outside, and for the sake of wolf shifters everywhere, especially not in the ring. You shift, you’re out. No money, no release of debt, no second chances. Am I understood?”

We each mumbled our agreement, every one of us looking a little wary. Not shift? My wolf would not be thrilled, but I had enough control to make it through a few weeks if necessary. Some of the guys with me were young; it would definitely be harder for them.

“As you’ve accepted the rules, I only have one more thing to say.” The handler stepped back, bowing dramatically even as his lips turned up in a wicked sneer. “Welcome to The Pack House. Now get inside and get ready to have your heads busted.”

The new shifters walked toward the building with hurried steps, all of them talking excitedly. Anxious to get started. I didn’t feel the same excitement as the rest of the guys around me. I was just here temporarily. Three fights. The quickest way to get back home was to fight three fights, which meant I needed to win three fights. I wasn’t exactly known for being a graceful loser. In fact, I was better known for a hot temper and an almost obsessively competitive nature. But I was ready for a change. After everything I’d seen over the past year… Yeah, change was good. Nice, quiet, easy change. Life could slow down any time now.

Just three fights.

We walked inside the gym together, all four of us pausing inside the doors.
Oh hell.
The air had a moist, almost physical feel to it. Sweat and testosterone buffeted my senses, the smell of female teasing my wolf, along with an overriding sense of blood in the water. This place was a veritable gold mine for any shifter who liked to let his animal side get aggressive. Hell, even I was having trouble controlling my snarl in the hormone cocktail. No wonder these fights made so much money—my kind would kill each other in the ring instead of shifting if they lost control in this environment. Something I really needed to remember.

Before I could move farther into the darkened space, something out of the corner of my eye made me turn. The rumble echoing through my mind was one I’d never made before, a noise my inner wolf had never sounded. It was deep but not threatening, more wanting than anything. A craving of sorts. And it was directed at a woman.

Short and round, curvy in a way that had long fallen out of favor in human culture, she stood just outside a doorway down a long hallway. Shadows darkened her face, keeping her eyes hidden from me, but I felt a pull to her. Something drawing me toward the female. Before I could act, a man, naked from the waist up, leaned out the door and took her elbow in hand, gently tugging her inside. My wolf side raged, a cacophony of snarls and growls that made no sense at the moment. I clenched my fists, hiding the claws that had erupted and breathing hard so as not to shift further. So as not to stalk down that hallway and barge through that door.

“Yo, Appalachia.”

I jerked, dropping into a slight crouch. My wolf edged forward, snarling viciously in my mind. My eyesight sharpened as I focused on the man who’d called the ridiculous nickname they’d given me. Sweats, clipboard, thick arms and neck. A trainer, I assumed. No threat. Not to me. To her, perhaps…

Fighting off the urge to bare my teeth at the intruder, I nodded. “I’m here.”

“Yeah, I can see that. In the ring, kid. Time to see what you’re made of.”

I took a deep breath, nearly shivering as the scented air deluged my senses. So not helping me stay in control. “Where do I change?”

The guy snorted a laugh. “Drop trou wherever. You’re in ring three.”

My feet felt leaden at first, unable to move. Unwilling, more like it. But I did, I moved. And it got easier with each step. I wove my way through sweaty shifters and blood-splattered boxing rings until I found the one with a large three painted on the side, forcing my mind to focus the whole way. This was it. Time to settle down and rein in my instincts. Fighting was an art, a craft I’d learned over decades of skirmishes and practice bouts. While my wolf’s strength and speed were welcome, his instinctual responses to threats were not. In a fight was where the true balance between man and beast came into play.

I tossed my bag on the bench and took out a cup and a pair of sweat shorts. I yanked my shirt over my head and dropped it in the bag, doing the same for my jeans once I’d slid them down my legs. As soon as I’d re-dressed in my fighting gear, I climbed into the ring. The floor bounced a bit under my weight, so I took to the balls of my feet and hopped around. Seemed very much like a regular boxing ring, though I had little experience with them. I’d always fought on dirt and rock, outside in nature with my packmates. This was very, very different.

Beadan climbed in after me, looking cocky. “You ready to go down, Appalachia?”

I huffed a laugh, mimicking his moves as he began to circle, but pushing him to my pace. Almost herding him. “You think you can handle me, kid?”

“I’ve beaten bigger.”

“Bigger doesn’t mean better.”

“Said no woman ever.” He came at me with a snarl, swinging hard. I edged back, avoiding the hit, keeping myself in check. Patience in a fight was the difference between winning and losing. Let the kid wear himself out. I had all damn day.

We circled and jabbed for a few minutes, him attacking, me feinting away. I stayed on the balls of my feet, ready to move at any second. Never pushing the fight to a more aggressive level. Beadan was breathing hard, his eyes nearly glowing as his wolf took more and more control of his mind. I was close to winning. Just a few more minutes. A little bit—

I nearly froze in place when I noticed the smell. Daisies and fresh water. Natural and clean. I spun, looking for the source, feeling a need inside my heart that hadn’t been there before.

The woman from the hallway stood at the edge of the ring, almost dwarfed by the half-naked man practically wrapped around her. Her deep blue gown sparkled under the low lights, making her shimmer in a way that seemed almost angelic. But the low-cut neckline and the way the fabric hugged her was pure sin. She was a rose in the middle of this pile of garbage, a flower growing through a crack in cement. And when she looked up at me, her brown eyes meeting mine for the first time, my entire world tilted.

Motherfucker.

My wolf snarled loud and harsh, wanting to move closer, to knock that fucker’s arm off our mate. And she was our mate. I knew it the second our eyes met, felt the connection to her. And by the way her painted lips fell open and her eyes went wide, she knew it, too.

I had taken one step in her direction when I sensed Beadan come closer. Images flashed in my mind—my mate with that man’s arm around her, the younger of my twin sisters laughing as she ran away from me that last night, a fierce witch standing up to the worst of our kind with a bravery I admired. And falling dead at her enemy’s feet anyway.

My response was natural, automatic…completely inhuman. My wolf saw Beadan as a threat to our mate, and that just wouldn’t do. I turned with a snarl, swinging my arm in an upward arc, the full weight of my body behind it. My fist connected with Beadan’s chin, knocking him backward in a cloud of blood spray. He fell to the mat like a rag doll, unconscious. I loomed over him, pumped up, ready to defend my mate against the threat he had posed, my human side trying to edge through the curtain of animal rage in front of me.

Shit.

“Hey, Tidal,” a trainer yelled from the other side of the ring. “How about you keep that mate of yours tied up in your bed, yeah? She’s upsetting the hormones of the new guys.”

My head swam, nothing making sense as I stared after the woman who’d just sent my whole world off the edge. Tidal was mated to my mate… But how could that be? I knew of triads, of course—hell, I’d seen Moira and her two mates interacting at Merriweather Fields—but I’d felt nothing but rage toward the muscle-bound shifter who held my mate. And she was mine, I knew it. Could feel it all the way down to my toes. But who the hell was he, and why did people think they were mated?

“Good job, Appalachia.” Clipboard up and scribbling furiously, my trainer didn’t seem to notice how close to shifting I really was. “Next time, try not to kill your opponent. It’s going to take him a couple of days to get over that hit.”

I glanced back at Beadan, his still body shoving off the protective haze that’d taken me over. The poor kid was laid out, two guys in white hovering over him. Medical folk, I guessed.

“What the fuck…” I whispered. I glanced down at my hands, the one bruised from hitting so much bone. One of the white coats glanced my way.

“It’s the pheromones in the air. They make it easier to attack your own kind without provocation.” He stood, holding one end of a stretcher they’d put Beadan on. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to them.”

But I knew he was wrong. I’d lost control, very possibly scaring the mate I had yet to meet and nearly killing a kid who’d really done nothing wrong. I wouldn’t just get used to this place. I couldn’t. Not if I was going to figure out what the hell was happening around here and why my mate seemed to be claimed by another.