Page 24 of Bought by the Broken Beast

VOTOI

T he world, which had narrowed to the space between my axe and Malacc’s throat, fractures.

The frantic roar of the crowd, a single, bloodthirsty beast, splinters into a thousand confused, questioning voices.

The parchments, our flimsy, desperate weapons of ink and truth, continue their silent, damning descent.

Malacc sees it. His triumphant sneer falters, his eyes widening in disbelief as he watches the truth rain down upon the Zu Kus. He is a serpent caught in a net he did not see, and his confusion is my opportunity. His distraction is my victory.

He is no longer a Vakkak lord. He is no longer a master duelist. He is just a man whose perfect plan is unraveling before his eyes. And I am not a disgraced gladiator. I am the Son of Saru. I am the instrument of his reckoning.

I surge forward, my wounded leg a screaming agony I no longer feel.

I am fueled by a fire that is hotter than pain, a fire ignited by the courage of a human woman.

He turns back to me, his face a frenzied mask of panic, and raises his axe to defend himself, but he is too slow.

His mind is in the stands, with the senators, with his crumbling empire.

My mind, my body, my entire soul, is here, on this sand, in this moment.

I do not meet his axe with my own. I pivot, my own axe a blur, and slam the flat of the blade against the side of his helmet with all the force of my grief and my rage.

The clang is a deafening, discordant note that echoes through the stunned silence of the arena.

He stumbles, his ears ringing, his balance shattered.

I do not give him time to recover. I hook his leg with my own, a dirty fighter’s trick learned in the bloody pit, and send him crashing to the sand.

I am on him in an instant, the tip of my heavy butcher’s axe pressed against the tender flesh of his throat. He is beaten. He is mine.

The crowd is silent. The senators are on their feet, their faces a mixture of horror, confusion, and dawning, terrible understanding.

The Zusvak, his face a stoic mask of stone, rises from his throne in the royal box.

He holds one of the parchments in his hand, his knuckles white.

A hunter is beside him, handing the original.

“Treason,” his voice booms, magically amplified, a sound of thunder and judgment that shakes the very foundations of the arena. “Seize him!”

The King’s Guard, their golden armor a blinding glare in the midday sun, storms the arena floor.

They surround us, their spears a forest of sharpened steel.

They haul Malacc to his feet, stripping him of his axe, of his helmet, of his honor.

He does not fight. He is a broken thing, his arrogant sneer replaced by the slack-jawed disbelief of a man who has lost everything.

They are cheering for me. The same crowd that bayed for my blood, that reveled in my disgrace, is now chanting my name. “Saru! Saru! Saru!” The sound is a hollow, meaningless echo. The victory is ash in my mouth.

My eyes scan the stands, a frantic, desperate search. I do not see the cheering crowd. I do not see the grateful senators. I see only a sea of faces, and none of them are hers. Where is she? The plan worked. She should be safe. She should be watching.

Then I see it. A commotion in the upper tiers, near the corridor where the beasts are brought in.

A knot of Fiepakak, their faces grim, are surrounding two figures.

One of them is Kor, his massive, one-eyed form a bulwark of grim loyalty.

The other… is Lyra, her arm held at an unnatural angle, her face a twisted mask of fury and pain.

And the full, horrifying truth crashes down on me with the force of Malacc’s axe.

The cloaked figure Kor saw paying the traitor, Hakar.

The scent of flowers he had mentioned. Lyra’s cloak.

The one she always wore, the one that always carried the scent of the night-blooming jasmine she grew in the small garden behind her tavern.

I had known. A part of me, a deep, primal instinct, had known the moment Kor described it.

But I had refused to believe it. I had buried the suspicion under the weight of a shared history, of a loyalty I thought was mutual.

I could not conceive of a betrayal so absolute, so personal.

Lyra. The one who gave us sanctuary. The one who tended my wounds. The one who warmed my bed in the darkest days of my disgrace. She was the serpent in our midst. She had sent my men, our friends, to their deaths. And she had tried to do the same to Bella.

The victory for the kingdom is nothing. It is a hollow, meaningless thing. I have won back my name, but in the process, I almost lost the only thing that truly matters. I almost lost my soul.

A roar, a sound of pure, desperate, soul-shattering anguish, is torn from my throat. It is not a sound of triumph. It is a sound of terror.

“BELLA!”

The name echoes through the silent arena, a raw, desperate prayer.

And then I see her.

She emerges from the crowd, from behind Kor’s massive form. Her face is pale, tear-streaked, her clothes are torn, but she is alive. She is whole. Her dark eyes, wide and luminous, find mine across the blood-soaked sand.

The world narrows to her. There is no crowd. There is no king. There is only the woman who walked into the depths of hell and pulled me back with her.

She runs.

She scrambles down from the stands, her small feet flying across the sand, a beacon of life in this city of death. She runs to me.

I meet her in the center of the arena, my wounded leg forgotten. I drop the axe, the symbol of my victory, and it lands with a dull thud in the sand. I’m not merely a warrior. No longer a Vakkak. I am just a man, reaching for the only thing that can make him whole.

I take her in my arms, my hands tangling in her hair, and I crush my mouth to hers.

The kiss is not a gentle thing. It is a desperate, frantic claiming, a collision of relief and terror and a love so profound it threatens to shatter me.

I taste the salt of her tears, the iron of my own blood, the undeniable, irrefutable truth of her.

She is mine. And I am hers.

In front of the King, in front of the Senate, in front of the entire world, I claim my true honor. I claim my mate.