He lay back on the bed, his body going slack, and another groan escaped him. Blood was still seeping from the gash across his chest, staining the sheets beneath him.
"Don't they let you see a medic?" I asked.
He laughed. It was a bitter sound. "In the pit? No."
"That's insane."
"That's Fange City."
I looked around the room, my mind racing. There had to be something. They couldn't just expect fighters to bleed out after every match.
I found the first aid kit in one of the cabinets near the kitchen. It was basic—bandages, antiseptic, something that looked like it might be for stitching wounds. Not much, but better than nothing.
I brought it back to the bed and sat down beside him.
"I need to clean this," I said, gesturing to the gash across his chest.
He nodded, his eyes already half-closed.
I opened the antiseptic and poured it onto a clean cloth. The smell was sharp, chemical. When I pressed it to his wound, he hissed but didn't pull away.
Up close, I mapped the reality of this warrior.
Scars. Dozens of them, crisscrossing his torso and arms. Some old and faded, some newer. Evidence of a life spent fighting, surviving.
But beneath the scars was muscle. Dense and powerful. The kind of strength that came from years of training, of pushing a body past its limits.
I cleaned the wound as carefully as I could, my hands steadier than I'd expected. He watched me work, his breathing evening out, and I tried not to think about how close we were. How his body radiated heat. How the pelt on his chest felt softer than it looked.
Don't,I told myself.Don't go there.
But my hands noticed anyway. Noticed the way his muscles tensed when I touched a particularly sensitive spot. Noticed the scars that told stories I'd never hear. Noticed the vulnerability in how he lay there, trusting me to tend his wounds.
"Who are you really?" I asked, threading a needle to stitch the deepest part of the gash.
I had no real medical training—no formal education in anatomy or wound care. But growing up on Grandpa's ranch had taught me things that mattered more than textbooks. How to stay calm when an animal was bleeding. How to stitch torn flesh.
I'd sewn up horses, cattle, even the ranch dogs when they got into scraps with coyotes. Alien skin wasn't so different, I told myself. Flesh was flesh. Blood was blood.
The needle pierced his skin, and I pulled the thread through with remembered skill. My grandfather's voice echoed in my memory:Steady now, Merrilee. Don't rush it. Clean stitches heal better than fast ones.
"Just a prisoner."
"That's not an answer."
"It's the only one I have." He winced as I made the another stitch.
I worked in silence for a moment, focusing on keeping the stitches even.
"I appreciate your help. But I have a mission."
The word mission felt too grand for what I had. Too official. Like something soldiers said, or spies in the movies Grandpa used to watch on Saturday nights. What I had was rage. What I had was a burning need to make Declan pay that consumed me from the inside out.
I didn't know why I'd said it. The words had slipped out before I could stop them, and now they hung in the air between us—dangerous, damning.
He was a stranger. An alien. For all I knew, he could be worse than Declan. He could be playing some game I didn't understand, using me for purposes I couldn't fathom. Every logical part of my brain screamed that I'd just made a catastrophic mistake.
But my gut told me different.
