Page 6 of Gladiator's Bite
“The fact he wore a shirt was a show,”my dragon chimed into my thoughts.“They don’t wear them here. He wore it for it to be ripped or ripped off.”
He was right. Well, probably. Some dragons did wear shirts, but they were the exceptions and not the rule.
“So?” The giant guy asked.
“I won, of course. Almost didn’t, though. Fucker’s gotten quicker. He’s been training while I’ve been sitting around waiting to lay eggs,” he said, scratching his belly.
Another name was called and the giant smirked as he kicked off his shoes and headed through the big door.
“Guess he was the second round,” I said to no one in particular.
The others were too busy listening to Frey retell his fight to pay much attention to me. Before a rugby match, the coach would have us all envision whatever our positions were. We’d see the ball move and our opponents swept aside. There probably was a gladiator version of that. Did I imagine punching my opponent? Dodging him. The tests didn’t give me much togo on. There was some archery. Some hitting a computerized contraption with an insanely sized hammer. We jumped off a balcony into a pool and spun around until we got dizzy. Then we played dodge ball or a game sorta like it except the balls were on fire. I was the last dragon standing, but barely, and mostly because Selt tried to hide behind me. I twisted the sucker around to use as a shield. The dragons watching nodded approvingly. I was just glad my carrier wasn’t around to flash me a disappointed look. He tried it first. I was just better at it.
“Soon, Sunny Moonscale,” Frey nodded toward the door. “They’re almost finished. I think they’re wiping the ground with him this time. He loses as much as he wins but that’s the career for some dragons. You nervous?”
“Probably not as much as I should be,” I shrugged, pushing myself upright.
“Eh, Laken’s a good fighter. He’s an asshole, if you are, but he’s a decent enough dragon,” Frey said. “And he---”
“He what?” I asked, but Frey didn’t answer because the door swung open letting in the bright even sunlight as the giant, whose name I still didn’t know, stumbled in. His lip was busted, and he had a black eye, the lid almost swollen shut. His hands dripped with blood and scales hung loose from his knuckles.
“Stayed up. Won,” he grunted as Frey nodded to me to stand by the door and helped him sit down on one of the long metallic benches near the lockers. “Good luck, Sunny. Though, I think luck is on your side today.”
“SUNNY MOONSCALE!” The voice shouted over the intercom, and I stepped through the door into the arena. “Welcome to our arena the diplomat from the Moonscale Flight! Now, Laken, don’t off this one, okay? Seriously! Some of us are still waiting to meet our mates and we need the Moonys to connect us to the elves! That reminds me! I know, I know, you want to see Sunny and his opponent rip each other to shreds butfirst – if you know any lore about this nameless lady – reach out to someone because your mate might just be on the other side of one of those elven doorways!”
The crowd cheered again as the announcer moved on to free Laken from his side of the arena. My ears rang with the screams and shouts of his name. Across the arena, he didn’t even glance at me. He waved to the crowd before raising both arms above his head and grinning. He was gorgeous. Though, you’d be hard pressed to find an ugly dragon on any of the Starscale worlds. His dark hair hung free around his face and cast a shadow over his broad shoulders. From the looks of it he spent more time at the gym than I ever dreamt of. The star-shaped scale on his chest was a deep sky blue color and I wondered if his parents named him for it and if it matched the rest of his scales. That didn’t always happen but occasionally a few people were as lucky as me.
A bright blue circle lit up in the center of the arena. That’s where we’d fight. Getting a foot or an ass knocked out of it was a loss. Not getting back up before the twelve second buzzer if you fall within it was a loss and of course getting knocked out was an instant loss. The dragons in the testing center assured us all that didn’t happen nearly as often as it used to.
The bright blue circle blinked for us to make our way there. The crowd cheered as my bare toes dug into the dirt with each step as if grounding myself enough would make me impossible to push around.
“Breathe,”my dragon hissed into my thoughts.
I took a deep breath as Laken and I bowed to each other from just outside the circle on opposite ends.
Shit!
I glanced up from the bow and our eyes met. His glowed with mischief as my dragon rose to his haunches inside his inner sanctum. Laken flashed me a knowing grin!
Shit!
Yep!
If this fucker wasn’t a seer I’d eat my own bloody tail.
I took another deep breath. My dragon snorted and exhaled sending a puff of smoke into the circle. The crowd cheered as if I did it on purpose as both of us rose to our full height and stepped inside the circle.
“You’re a shit!”I tried to think hard at Laken but if he heard me over the flight link, he didn’t pay me any mind.
He licked his lips, and his eyes grazed over me. This wasn’t going to be a fair fight. He had more practice at blocking out the thoughts of others than I did. My dick was half hard and I was instantly grateful that the crowd was probably -hopefully- too far away to see that detail. Laken glanced down and a chuckle poured over his plump kissable lips. He had a five o’clock shadow that I wanted to trace with my fingertips.
“MINE!”My dragon roared but thankfully kept it inside our heads.
“You don’t have to worry,” Laken growled low. “We’re all on the same flight link. As soon as we scented each other, they knew what was going on. Thiswasshitty of me. You can say no, or I’ll dive if you want. No one would blame me. They’d blame it on my hormones.”
I took a step closer to the dragon I was about to fight and then spend the rest of my life with.
The rest of my fucking life.