Page 35 of Bound (Gladiators of the Gryn #3)

CHRISSIE

The amount of food Rych can put away is impressive. He makes me feel hungry enough to devour the contents of one of the packages. It’s mostly sweet. Crackers, tubes of soft creamy paste in various flavors, and balls with a similar texture to boba which burst in the mouth. I can’t remember enjoying anything as much.

Rych looks deeply satisfied, sat with his wings relaxed and his arms stretched out over the bench next to me. He watches with a different type of hunger as I lick my fingers clean before looking out of the window.

“Tatatunga,” he says with not a little venom. “We’re on the outskirts.”

I risk a look and see the dusty shanty towns below.

Rych is at the controls, and he growls. “It’s on a locked course, presumably back to its masters, vrexing bot,” he rasps. “All I can do is slow us down, but we’re going to have to leave before we come to a full stop.”

“Leave? You mean bail out while this thing is moving?”

“I have to use my wings for something occasionally.” Rych grins at me, filled with masculine glee.

“I’d rather not.”

“Ah, my sweet creature, we don’t have any choice. But you know you’re safe with me.”

I refrain from saying tossing me out of the transport doesn’t seem safe in any way.

“We’re closing in on the dome.” He holds out his hand and pulls me into him. “It’s time to leave.”

The door snaps open and wind rushes in, sucking out all the debris from our meal.

“I’m really not sure about this, Rych,” I say.

“Trust me, little spark,” he responds. “I’ve battled a ziggurat in the dome. This is a lazy afternoon in the baths to me.”

His arm tightens around me, and he flings us out into the rushing wind and aerial traffic. We tumble for what seems like forever until his wings open and with an abruptness which jerks me against him, we’re no longer falling.

We’re flying.

Gliding over the rooftops of Tatatunga, it looks almost serene, even if the smells we fly through are less than fragrant.

And then I see it. The dome.

It rises up out of the low lying buildings like a boulder rolled from a vicious ice age. It has always been here, it will always be here. A temple to death.

And the one place Rych calls home.

We swing away from the dome and drop between the buildings into a dusty courtyard. Rych gently puts me on my feet, his face streaked with dirt, giving him the ultimate bad boy mechanic vibe.

The one my dad always warned me against. Only I like to think he would have approved of Rych. All seven foot plus of winged gladiator.

“I thought we were going to the dome?”

“Too crowded,” he says. “We’ll get the dome to come to us.” He grins wildly, hand closing around mine. I’m towed behind him as he makes his way from the courtyard down a number of columned passages until we dive through a dark doorway and out into a hidden garden filled with lush plants, some of which I saw in the forest we recently left.

“Rych.” A deep booming voice growls his name.

A large red-green leaf is pushed to one side, and a tank of a Gryn gladiator looms out at us.

“Thought I could scent you, you vrexer,” the new gladiator says, eyeing Rych like he wants to eat him.

Rych tucks me behind a wing, but I hear the noise of metal on stone, and as I turn, there is another Gryn gladiator behind us. This one is a similar size to Rych, only his torso and arms look like they’ve been wound with barb wire, muscles upon muscles. He flashes me his fangs. It isn’t a smile by any stretch of the imagination, as he tosses a lethal blade in the air and catches it without even looking.

“We’d never miss Rych’s scent, would we, Maxym?” the second gladiator says, his voice rasping like sand over metal.

“And I knew I’d always find you pair of vrexers here when the games are finished,” Rych growls.

Maxym’s brooding features rearrange themselves into something which is slightly less terrifying as he claps a huge clawed hand on Rych’s shoulder. “Come drink with us, brother.”

“He has someone with him.” The second gladiator is glaring right at me as he balances a dagger tip first on the end of his finger and inhales, nostrils flaring. “A female.”

Maxym looks around Rych who releases a growl which he has to have dragged up from the depths of whatever hells this planet has.

“Mate,” he says, the word only just formed. “MINE.”