Page 12 of Fifth (Intergalactic Warriors #5)

“Smile for the buyers,” a voice crackled from a speaker. It was the headman. She recognized his voice instantly. It rasped through the speaker with a familiar cruelty. “We thought you would leave a pretty corpse in our pit, alien. You disappoint.”

Locus didn’t turn. “The show is over.”

The headman’s chuckle hissed through the static.

“You have forgotten our rules. There is only one. Survive. You have not done that yet.” The drone on the left spun lazily as if to show her the dark mouths of the other pits that lined the path they had not taken.

“You think the gate is your friend. Perhaps it is. Perhaps it opens into a meadow with clean water. Perhaps it opens into the second trial.”

“Which is it?” Hannah asked.

“That depends on what I sell tonight,” the headman said. “Buyers like romance. They like a show of devotion. Akiss might help decide the next trial. Ihave numbers to hit.”

Heat crawled up Hannah’s chest and into her face. The kiss earlier, forced by a different drone in a different part of the preserve, had been a humiliation that burrowed in straight to her bones. It had also been fire. She hated thatmore.

“We decline,” Locus said. “We have paid in blood.”

“I have a better currency,” the headman crooned. “Want.”

The drone drifted closer until it was an arm’s length from Hannah’s cheek. She wanted to slap it out of the air. Locus stepped between her and the machines without looking. His body erased them from her line of sight. The gesture was simple. It made her heartache.

“Move,” he told the drones. “Or be removed.”

“Kiss her first, alien.” Two of the drones seemed to shut down and Hannah wondered if they weren’t now speaking privately to the head slaver. “Do it or else you won’t like what you find on the other side of that gate. Agree and you’ll have time to defeat what’s coming.”

An instant later the other drones revived, red recording lights blinking, lenses trained mercilessly on them.

Their gazes met, the pressure of a hundred watching eyes sinking into Hannah’s skin.

Locus’s expression turned to iron, but his gaze dropped to her mouth.

Her pulse stumbled. She lifted her chin, fury and defiance tangling with something hotter.

He moved first, closing the space in a single breath.

His mouth caught hers hard, abrutal claiming that made her gasp against him.

Heat roared through her veins, shame and want colliding as his lips pressed deeper.

The crowd’s roar blurred into nothing. There was only the sear of his mouth and the way he angled her back against the cold stone to shield her body from the cameras.

She clutched at his shoulders, meaning to shove him away, but her fingers tightened instead.

His kiss changed, deepening, his tongue parting her lips until the humiliation of being forced became tangled with a fire she hated herself for answering.

The taste of him—salt and heat, relentless and male—filled her.

Her body betrayed her, arching into him as his hand cupped the back of her skull, holding her exactly where he wantedher.

When he finally pulled back, the air between them snapped hot and thin.

Hannah’s breath shuddered in her chest, lips swollen, every nerve aware of him.

The drones hovered, lenses gleaming, feeding on the spectacle, but she no longer cared who watched.

Her reluctant acceptance had become something else entirely—terrifying, consuming, undeniable.

“Take off her top,” the headman ordered.

Locus straightened, his voice cold and final.

“No. You will not command me to perform vile acts. The next drone that speaks of her body or orders me to strip her will be torn apart.” He lifted his hand, heat shimmering in the air like a warning.

“Test me and I will destroy every machine you send, and then I will come for you.”

Dead silence followed for a beat, then: “You can’t destroy your only audience,” he protested.

“I can and I will.” Heat rolled off him in a wave. “And then I would follow your voice to its source. What do you suppose the bets will be on who will win that confrontation? Now do as you promised or you will see me far sooner than expected.”

Silence. The drones held for one long breath. The nearest shivered in the air like a gnat in a hot updraft. “You will pay for this, alien.” Then all three lifted at once and zipped backward through the preserve with the speed of cowards.

Behind them, the gate brightened. The surface of the arch shivered, light sliding across it in waves like heat off asphalt.

“Is this the part where we find out if your mathematics of cruelty includes mercy?” Hannah asked.

“There is no mercy in this design,” he said. “Only thresholds.”

“What is on the other side?”

He didn’t lie. “Predators, according to the slavers.”

Her heart kicked once in her chest, ahard punch.

The aftershocks of the pit still lived in her ligaments and in the deep layers of her muscles.

She wanted to sit and drink water and let her hands stop shaking.

She wanted to stop wanting him. She wanted to step through that circle and find sunlight.

She wanted a door to her kitchen athome.

“Tell me the truth about one thing,” shesaid.

He turned and faced her. “Speak.”

“You think the only way here is through. Do you think the only way there is through too.”

“Affirmative.” His answer was immediate. “Through.”

She nodded once. “Then we go.”

He turned his head finally and looked at her as if he were taking a new measure. Whatever he saw seemed to settle something behind his eyes.

“Stay close,” he said.

She almost smiled. “You would notice if I didn’t.”

“Affirmative.” The word held more influence than it should. “I would.”

He took her hand and led her toward the circle. The surface looked like a waterfall, yet there was no ripple when the heat from his skin reached it. The hairs on her forearm lifted. Afaint hum threaded the air, no louder than a swallowednote.

They stopped with their toes at theedge.

A shadow moved on the other side of the circle.

Hannah stiffened. The shape wasn’t clear, only the impression of mass. Another shape slid behind it, larger, the angles wrong for a human body. The humming changed pitch. It had language in it now, not words, but intent. Something there had been sleeping and was now awake.

“Back,” Locus said.

The surface of the gate flared white.

Something hit the circle from the far side hard enough to bow the skin outward. Claws raked across the divide and threw sparks where they struck the plate. The smell of scorched metal filled her mouth. The frame screamed like a train wheel.

Hannah stumbled and would have gone down if Locus had not yanked her clear and swung her behind him. The thing on the other side pressed harder. The gate flexed. Cracks spidered through the hammered letters of the frame.

“Locus,” she said. The word was small, inadequate. “He hasn’t give us the time he promised.”

“He has not.” His voice was calm and terrible. “I will hold it.”

“How?”

He didn’t answer. He stepped forward and set both hands on the frame, pressing hard. Heat poured off him in sheets. His skin brightened with a faint inner glow, the amethyst in his eyes deepening until it looked like night lit from within.

The thing on the other side hit again.

The gate buckled, shrieking like tortured steel. The sound drowned her breath, ahigh, splitting scream that rattled her bones and made her teeth ache. Sparks spit across the arch as cracks webbed deeper into the frame, glowing hot at the edges.

Something on the far side slammed again, harder, until the arch bowed outward as if it would vomit the beast straight into her lap. Hannah’s heart seized in terror. The threshold wasn’t just preparing to break.

The second trial clawed to get through and it was about to unleash hell itself.