Page 17 of Bought by the Broken Beast

BELLA

F rom my perch on the warehouse roof, the world dissolves into a nightmare of fog, blood, and the screams of dying men. One moment, our plan is a perfect, whispered thing, a fragile hope held in the pre-dawn gloom. The next, it is a slaughterhouse.

Crossbow bolts thrum through the air, dark, vicious hornets that find their mark in the shadows below.

I see the hunters, the proud, quiet men who guided us through the woods, fall without a sound.

I see the gladiators, the broken, forgotten souls who answered Votoi’s call, charge into a wall of black-armored steel, their battle cries turning into gurgles of death.

My mind, the analytical, orderly thing I have always relied on, shatters. There are no numbers to balance here, no patterns to discern. There is only chaos, only the brutal, horrifying calculus of death.

“Stay down!” Kor’s voice is a low growl beside me. His massive, one-eyed form is a shield, his body absorbing the splintering impact of a crossbow bolt that shatters the roof tile where my head was a moment before.

But I can’t stay down. My eyes are fixed on the whirlwind of destruction at the center of the battle.

Votoi. He is no longer a strategist, no longer a leader.

He is a force of nature, a beast of pure, undiluted rage.

The red mist of the arena is upon him. He moves with a terrifying, mindless grace, his sword a blur of silver, his roars of fury a sound that tears at the very fabric of the morning.

He is not fighting to win. He is fighting to kill. He is fighting to die.

And I see it then, the horrifying truth.

He is lost. The man who spoke of his home by the sea, the one who held me in the forge as if I were something precious, is gone.

In his place is the monster from the gladiator’s pit, a creature who will fight until he is overwhelmed, until a dozen swords find their way into his heart.

He will die here, on these bloody cobblestones, and my last, desperate hope will die with him.

“No,” I whisper, the word a raw, broken thing.

I scramble to the edge of the roof, ignoring Kor’s warning growl. The battle rages below, a maelstrom of violence. Votoi is a demigod of death, but he is bleeding, a dozen small cuts weeping crimson onto his dark fur. He is slowing. He is tiring.

“Votoi!” I scream, my voice thin and useless against the clang of steel and the cries of the dying. He doesn’t hear me. He can’t hear me. He is lost in the storm of his own grief and rage.

I need to reach him. I need to pull him back from the brink. What did he promise me? What did I make him promise me? Not vengeance. Not victory. A future.

“VOTOI!” I scream again, my voice raw, tearing from my throat with all the force of my desperate, terrified soul. “YOU PROMISED ME! YOU PROMISED!”

The words, a raw, desperate prayer, cut through the din of battle.

For a single, impossible moment, he falters.

His head snaps up, his wild, blood-flecked gaze finding mine across the chaos.

The red mist in his eyes recedes, replaced by a flicker of shocked recognition.

He sees me. Not as a liability to be protected, but as a promise to be kept.

That single moment of hesitation is almost his last. A soldier langes, his spear aimed at Votoi’s exposed back.

“Behind you!” I shriek.

Votoi spins, his sword coming up to parry the blow with a deafening clang.

The spell is broken. The beast is gone, and the warrior is back, his eyes cold, clear, and focused.

He dispatches the soldier with a brutal efficiency, then his gaze finds mine again.

His expression is a mask of grim resolve. His only goal now is me.

He begins to carve a path in my direction, a relentless, unstoppable force. “Get her down from there, Kor!” he roars, his voice a commander’s edict that cuts through the chaos. “Then scatter! Survive!”

Kor doesn’t hesitate. He grabs a thick rope from a nearby crane pulley.

“Hold on, little scribe,” he grunts, looping it around my waist. He lowers me over the side of the warehouse, my feet scrambling for purchase against the rough stone.

The last I see of him, he is cutting the rope and disappearing back into the chaos on the roof, drawing fire away from our escape.

I land in a shadowed alley just as Votoi fights his way to its entrance, his sword a blur of controlled, deadly motion.

He grabs my arm, his grip a band of iron, and pulls me with him. “The sewers,” he grunts. “It is the only way.”

We plunge back into the city’s underbelly, the sounds of the battle and the approaching clang of the city watch bells fading behind us. We are no longer heroes trying to stop a conspiracy. By today, we are fugitives. Rebels. Terrorists. The narrative is already written, and we are the villains.

We run through the labyrinthine tunnels, the stench of filth and decay a familiar perfume. Votoi is bleeding more freely now, leaving a faint, dark trail on the slimy stones. He is favoring his left leg. He is wounded, more seriously than he will admit.

We finally emerge into a different part of the city, a place of crumbling stone and leaning monuments. The old burial grounds. A city of the dead. It is a fitting sanctuary for our dead hopes.

Votoi finds what he is looking for: a small, forgotten crypt, its stone door half-off its rusted hinges, the name on the lintel worn away by centuries of rain and neglect. He shoves the heavy door aside and ushers me into the cold, absolute darkness within.

He collapses against the wall, his breath coming in ragged, painful gasps.

The only sound in the tomb is the drip of water and the harsh, shuddering sound of our breathing.

We are alive. We are safe. And we have failed.

Utterly. Grak is dead. Zorn is dead. The hunters, the gladiators… I saw so many fall. And for nothing.

The weight of it, the sheer, crushing weight of our defeat, is a physical presence in the small, cold space. The intimacy we shared in the forge, the fragile promise of a future, it all feels like a cruel, impossible dream. There is no future. There is only this. This tomb. This failure.

I slide down the wall, my body trembling with a grief so profound it has no voice. I wrap my arms around my knees, a small, broken thing in a vast, uncaring darkness.

Hours pass. Or maybe it is minutes. Time has no meaning in the dark. No one speaks, not Votoi, not me.

Suddenly, a sound. The slow, grinding scrape of the stone door.

I scramble to my feet, my hand flying to the hilt of my dagger. Votoi is instantly alert, his massive form a wall of defiance in the gloom, his sword held at the ready.

A figure appears in the doorway, silhouetted against the grey light of the dying day.

“By the Lady’s Light, I thought I’d never find you,” a familiar voice says, rough with concern.

Lyra.

She steps into the crypt, a waterskin and a small bundle of cloth in her hands. Her scarred face is a mask of relief and worry. She looks from my pale, tear-streaked face to Votoi’s bloody, exhausted form, and her expression hardens with a grim sympathy.

“I heard,” she says in a low, horrified whisper.

“The whole city is in an uproar. They are calling you rebels. Traitors. Malacc has the city in his grip.” She steps forward, her gaze fixed on Votoi.

“You are not the only ones who made it out. Kor is alive. A few of the others, too. They are ghosts, hiding in the deepest shadows of the city, but they are alive.”

A tiny, fragile flicker of relief sparks in my chest. Not everyone. We didn't lose everyone.

Lyra’s gaze softens. “I came as soon as I could. You are safe here. No one will think to look for you among the dead.”

She is our savior. Our only remaining friend in a city that now hunts us like animals. The relief is so potent, so overwhelming, it almost brings me to my knees. We are not entirely alone.