MIRA'S POV
A guard grabs her arm. Vex. The scarred one.
"Tend him," Vex says, shoving her toward the pit.
Mira stumbles forward. Tending the dying means trying to keep them alive long enough to suffer more. It means being part of the cruelty. It means accepting that everyone here dies alone and broken.
She moves toward Kross anyway.
The other fighter leaves the pit victorious. The crowd continues screaming for more entertainment but Mira kneels in the blood and filth and looks at what is left of the large male.
His wolf form is barely holding together. Deep claw marks run across his ribs. His breathing is shallow and wet sounding. Blood pools underneath him. There is nothing to tend here. There is only dying.
But something inside Mira refuses to accept it.
Maybe it is because she sees herself in him. Broken. Bleeding. About to disappear forever like none of it mattered. Like his life was just entertainment for people who do not care if he lives or dies.
She presses her hands against his largest wound. The blood is still warm. Still pumping out of him with each failing heartbeat.
He lashes out.
His claws rake across her forearm and the pain is sharp and real and she gasps. Blood spills from her arm, mixing with his on the dirty floor. Their blood mingles together.
And the world explodes.
Power rips through Mira like lightning through a tree. Ancient power. Furious power. Power that has been locked inside her since birth, screaming to get out.
She can feel everything suddenly.
She can feel Kross's life force hanging by a thread. She can feel every beat of his failing heart. She can feel the exact moment when his wolf is about to let go and disappear forever.
And she can feel that she could take it.
All of it.
She could drain the life straight from him and pull it into herself. She could heal every injury on her broken body with his essence. She could take his strength and make it hers.
The hunger for it is overwhelming. It whispers through her veins and makes her whole body shake with need.
Her hand reaches out. Power crackles at her fingertips like electricity. Blue and silver and ancient and wrong.
She can see it happening. Can feel how good it would feel to finally be strong. To finally take something instead of having things taken from her. To finally matter.
Her fingers tremble inches from his skin.
She could do this.
One touch and she could save herself. One moment of taking instead of giving. One act of survival instead of suffering.
Then she stops.
Something inside her, some small part that is still human and still capable of choosing mercy, screams at her to stop.
She thinks about six months in a basement. She thinks about guards and beatings and being used. She thinks about becoming something so monstrous that taking a life means nothing.
She thinks about losing herself completely.
Instead of draining Kross, Mira does something else entirely.
She pushes her power into him.
It is the opposite of what the hunger wants. It goes against every instinct screaming inside her. But she does it anyway. She channels the lightning coursing through her veins and forces it into him like she is trying to transfer her own life into his body.
Ease his pain. Slow his bleeding. Bind his wounds from the inside. Give him a chance at survival.
It takes everything she has. It burns through her like fire. When the power finally fades, Mira is shaking and weak and sweating.
Kross's breathing steadies. His eyes open slightly. He is still dying but not immediately. Not tonight. Not because of her choice to let him live.
The room goes completely silent.
Every guard. Every spectator. Every single person in the fighting pit is staring at her.
One of the guards whispers something. The word travels through the silence like a curse.
"Blood witch."
The word hits Mira like a physical blow. Blood witch. It means something. Something that makes the guards back away from her like she might burn them if they get too close.
Vex moves toward her with his stick raised but he stops before he gets too close. Like he is afraid to touch her now.
"Do not move," he says, his voice shaking. "Stay exactly where you are."
He pulls out a radio and speaks into it in low urgent tones. Mira catches fragments of the conversation. Power. Ancient. Council. Threat. Danger.
She stands slowly, her arm bleeding where Kross clawed her, her entire body shaking with the aftereffects of using power she did not know she possessed.
What just happened.
What is she.
Mira looks down at her hands and can still see the faint glow of power underneath her skin. Blue and silver and completely wrong. Everything about it feels like it should not exist in this world.
The guards form a wider circle around her. No one comes close but no one leaves either. They are waiting. Waiting for orders. Waiting to see if she is still a slave or if she has become something else entirely.
Heavy footsteps echo down the basement stairs.
A figure emerges from the shadows and Mira's breath catches in her throat.
He is tall and dark and moves like he owns everything he sees. His eyes are silver. Bright silver. Predator silver.
He stops when he sees her.
For a long moment he just stares at her. Like he is seeing something impossible. Like she just proved something he only suspected.
He walks closer and the guards scatter out of his way without being told.
"What is your name," he asks. His voice is low and dangerous and carries absolute authority.
Mira tries to speak but no sound comes out.
"Your name," he says again, closer now. His silver eyes burn into hers with an intensity that makes her step backward.
"Mira," she whispers.
He smiles and it is not a kind smile. It is the smile of a predator that just found something worth hunting.
"Hello, Mira," he says. "I am Rhen Voss. Alpha of Shadow Pack. And I think we need to have a very important conversation about what you really are."