Page 27 of Stealing Mercury (Arena Dogs #1)

Mercury made a noncommittal noise in answer.

He didn’t want to think of Carn’s injury, or the competent way Samantha had diagnosed and treated the swelling.

She was so damn competent at everything.

They had relied on her for so much. Even here in this place she called wilderness.

“Samantha didn’t take water or food when we ate. ”

Lo shifted his weight. “You think she can’t hold it down?”

“I think she fears she can’t. She gets worse every hour.”

“She didn’t want you to know.” Lo tilted his head, ears alert. “Why?”

“She doesn’t want me to feel guilty for pushing forward when turning back could end her suffering.” Her attempt to ease his guilt was wasted effort. He hated the choice he’d had to make.

“Perhaps,” said Lo. “Or perhaps she does all to gain your trust for her own reasons.”

“Reasons? What reason could she have for any of this?” He held out his hands to indicate the obvious lack of comforts. “What profit could there be for her that would be worth this risk?”

“I don’t know, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t true.”

Anger became a choker tightening around Mercury’s throat. “Do you really think she’s capable of such a plot when she is more apt to jump head first into every dangerous situation?”

No. Mercury didn’t believe the woman who recklessly tackled a guard to spare him pain or fought her fear to climb into a hole to save his brother could be calculating enough to plan their downfall.

But in moments of too much thought, he also questioned why she would do so much for them.

Could a woman with so much skill and knowledge and passion truly care for them or was it simply in her nature to aid those in need?

He hated the insecurity that made him need to be special to her.

To know that she saw them as more than animals to be set free. Worthy only of her pity.

He hated that tiny seed of doubt, but the doubt in Lo’s eyes lurked as large as the mountains of wilderness. “What did she do to hurt you so deeply?”

The shutter that closed off Lo’s emotions fell so fast Mercury knew Lo understood they were no longer talking about Samantha.

“You know what happened.” The pain hidden in the slow cadence of his words extinguished Mercury’s anger.

“No,” he said. “I only know she betrayed you. I don’t know how?”

Lo’s face tightened, drawing attention to his powerful jaw. “Now? You ask me this now?”

“I think it’s time, brother.”

“Grah.” Lo shook.

He’d been bottling up his hurt so long he must need to howl, to run, to fight, but none of those options were available to him. When he spoke, it was through a clenched jaw.

“It had been months since she’d asked for me at the Ladies’ Wall.

She’d been bribing one of the guards to give us time in one of the training rooms. She no longer needed the drugs to have me panting after her like a prize.

” Lo’s eyes glazed over as if he were back there again, lost in the memory.

“I was chained to the wall when I saw her. Owens was there and another human female. A patron I didn’t recognize.

Rachel brought them there to watch, to prove to them I’d fuck her without the drugs, without the chains to keep me from hurting her.

They’d still chained me, but as she explained her plan she freed one of my hands. ”

Mercury was tempted to stop the flow of words. In truth, he didn’t need to hear the details, but he knew Lo needed to give them. To get them out of his heart where they’d been lodged for months. “Her plan?”

“If I performed,” he spat the words, “as she’d promised. Owens would send me to the pleasure suites for three months. Rachel would get a share of the premium they’d earn from it.”

Fully trained gladiators were never sent to the pleasure suites, where their more submissive counterparts were given to patrons for sex. The submissives had no will to fight, but once trained, the gladiators were too dangerous to leave unattended with a patron—even chained down.

Mercury waited. The worst still hid behind Lo’s shuttered expression.

“She said it would be easy work for me. That all I had to do was lay back and get fucked by the grandest patrons on the planet. She said...” He swallowed as if the next words had formed a jagged rock to cut at his throat as he forced them out.

“She said she promised they’d all have skin as soft as a whisper.

They all laughed when she said it. Owens, the guard, even the female.

It was a thing I’d said to her when we were alone together, and she threw it back at me for all to hear. I wanted to kill her.”

“Instead, you marked her.”

His eyes shifted away “Mercury—”

“I’m glad you fought your instinct. Not because she didn’t deserve a slow and painful death.”

“Merc—”

“Because if you’d given in, they would have taken your life. If I had a chance, I’d kill the bitch myself.”

“Mercury.”

Finally, Mercury understood Lo’s warning. He turned to see Samantha standing at the bend in the cavern. She stepped forward to stand between him and Lo, but a full pace back from them both. She smiled... and it broke his heart. The smile was brittle. Her pale lips trembled.

“Samantha?” How long had she been there? Long enough at least to hear his blood lust.

She didn’t meet his eyes when she spoke. “They’re the same people who terraformed the planet.”

His mind couldn’t follow whatever leap she’d made to move the conversation beyond betrayal, humiliation, and killing. Was it mercy or disgust that led her to change the subject? “Who?”

“The skeletons. They must have been the same people who terraformed the planet.” She lifted her hand to reveal a thin disk of metal cupped in her palm.

“I found this with one of the more intact skeletons.” She traced the disk with the tips of her fingers.

“I saw this symbol on one of the terraforming platforms.”

He wanted to snatch her fingers away and draw them to his lips. He wanted her in his arms. He wanted to make her forget the ugliness of his past, his and his brothers, a past she couldn’t—shouldn’t know.

She might not belong in his world, nor him in hers, but he wanted to remind her of how well their bodies fit. If nothing else, at least they had that.

He held out his hand to accept the disk she offered and set his mind to her words. “How do you think they died?” Had these people been trapped by a landslide or did their customs call for a single burial site for all?

Lo stood quiet and grim as Mercury watched her flip the disk over in his palm. A scorch mark marred the metal.

“This mark was made by a plasma weapon,” said Samantha. “Someone killed them.”