“You came because you’d rather sacrifice yourself than let someone else pay the price.” I release her blade and step back, giving her room to reset. “That kind of courage deserves acknowledgment.”
Something flickers in her gray eyes—confusion, suspicion. She expected a monster, and I’m giving her something more complicated.
Good. Confusion will make her easier to condition later.
“What do you want from me?” she asks, circling again. “If you’re not going to fight properly, what’s the point of this?”
“The point is to see what you’re made of, Hannah Mitchell.” I let her name roll off my tongue, watching the way it makes her shiver. “To understand why you fascinate me more than any challenger has in seven centuries.”
“I’m not here to fascinate you. I’m here to draw blood.”
“I know.” I smile, and I see her breath catch. “That’s what makes you interesting.”
She attacks again—faster this time, more desperate. Her blade weaves patterns that would be deadly against any human opponent, each strike flowing into the next with the fluid grace of someone who’s spent years perfecting her art. Steel sings against the air, against my blocking arms, against the stone floor when I sidestep a thrust aimed at my gut.
She’s beautiful like this. Fierce and focused and utterly committed, every line of her body expressing the warrior she’s made herself into.
I want to own that fire. Want to feel it burn for me instead of against me.
I catch her wrist on the next strike, stopping her momentum with ease. Before she can react, I pull her against my chest, her small body pressed against mine while I hold her sword arm immobile.
This close, I can feel the heat radiating off her skin. Can smell the intoxicating mix of arousal and fear and defiance that makes my cock throb against my breeches. She fits against me like she was made for exactly this position—her head barely reaching my chest, her warrior’s frame delicate as a bird’s compared to my bulk.
“You feel it,” I murmur, low enough that only she can hear. “This pull between us. Your body recognizes what your mind refuses to accept.”
“Let me go.” Her voice trembles, but she doesn’t look away. Doesn’t stop fighting, even when fighting is pointless.
“Not yet.” I lean closer, breathing in her scent—sweat and steel and the sweet undertone of arousal she can’t hide. “You came here to draw blood, little warrior. I’m going to give you what you came for.”
Her eyes widen. “What—”
I release her, stepping back with deliberate slowness. “Attack me. One more time. Put everything you have into it.”
“Why?”
“Because I want to see what you’re capable of when you’re not holding back.” I spread my arms, leaving my torso deliberately open. The wound in my side will heal within the hour—a small price to pay for what I’m about to gain. “Because I’ve been waiting a very long time for someone worth claiming.”
“Worth—”
“Attack me, Hannah. Before I change my mind.”
She hesitates. I watch the calculation in her eyes—the suspicion, the confusion, the desperate hope that maybe this is her chance. That maybe, somehow, she can actually wound an opponent who’s been undefeated for seven centuries.
She doesn’t know I’m going to let her.
She doesn’t know this is exactly what I’ve been planning for months.
She takes a breath. Settles into her stance. And then she moves.
Her blade comes at me with everything she has—all her fear and her fury and her desperate hope channeled into a single strike. It’s beautiful, in its way. A perfect expression of who she is: a warrior who refuses to surrender, even when surrender is the only logical choice.
I let it through.
The blade bites into my side, slicing a thin line across my ribs. Pain flares bright and sharp—real pain, the first I’ve felt from achallenger’s weapon in four hundred years. My blood wells from the wound, bronze against bronze, and drips onto the arena floor.
First blood.
The crowd goes absolutely silent. Thousands of Fae, frozen in shock, staring at the impossible sight of their Guardian bleeding from a human woman’s blade.
