He'd taken all of that damage tonight. For me. A stranger he had no reason to protect.
Why?
The question circled in my mind, unanswered. Men didn't do things without wanting something in return. Declan had taught me that lesson thoroughly.
Except Ahrick.
And then he'd gone to sleep without touching me.
That should've been reassuring.
Instead, it made me more nervous.
His scent wrapped around me again, and despite everything, I felt my body begin to relax.
The heat of his body, the rhythm of his breathing, the solid presence of him beside me—it all combined into something that felt dangerously close to safety.
And that terrified me more than anything else that had happened tonight.
Chapter 8
Merrilee
The fights came every other day.
I learned the rhythm of it quickly enough. The pattern became as predictable as breathing, though no less degrading for its familiarity.
After a night spent the in prize room, the guards would come for me, their boots heavy in the corridor outside the prize room. They'd unlock the door with exaggerated slowness, letting the sound of metal scraping metal announce their arrival. Then they'd stand there in the doorway, smirking, their eyes crawling over me in a way that made my skin want to peel itself off my bones.
They thought we were fucking.
I saw it in their faces—the knowing grins, the way they'd glance at the bed and then back at me, the crude jokes they'd make in languages not uploaded into my translator but whose meaning was crystal clear. They assumed that every night Ahrick came back bloody and exhausted, he was using me the way winners were supposed to use their prizes.
And I let them believe it.
Not because I wanted to. Not because it didn't make me feel complicit in my own objectification. But because their assumption was a shield. As long as they thought I belongedto Ahrick—really belonged to him, in the way that mattered to men who saw women as property—they kept their hands to themselves.
Mostly.
They were still rough when they grabbed my arms to haul me out of the room. Still shoved me harder than necessary when I didn't move fast enough or let their fingers linger on my skin in ways that made my stomach turn. But they didn't cross the line into outright violation.
Because they thought I was his.
The thought made me want to vomit and cling to it at the same time.
They'd drag me back to my original room—the one I'd been kept in before that first fight. Small, filthy, reeking of rust and old fear. The contrast with the prize room was deliberate, I realized. A reminder that the comfort, the safety, the clean sheets and hot water—all of it was conditional.
I'd spend the next day there, alone, while Ahrick went back to whatever life he led between fights. I didn't know where he went. Didn't know if he had friends, allies, a place to rest that wasn't the prize room we shared. He never talked about it, and I never asked.
The isolation gave me too much time to think. Too much time to catalog every way this could go wrong.
Then fight day would come, and they'd fetch me again.
The dresses got worse.
The first one had been humiliating—sheer panels, chains, barely enough fabric to cover the essentials. I'd thought that was as bad as it could get.
I was wrong.
