I blinked slowly, clearing the wetness from my eyes as the hot sting of tears tracked down my cheeks beneath the helmet. I couldn’t wipe them away, so I ignored them and clung to the beam, my fingers tight with tension where my dark, gloved hands wrapped around the edges securing my perch.
Below, the darker-skinned of the two smaller challengers was gone. A quick scan of the ground showed him tossed aside and unconscious several feet outside the center fighting area. Two men wearing green uniforms were bent over him, running some kind of blue light over his body like a scanner straight out of a sci-fi movie.
Everyone ignored them, so I did, too, my gaze drawn like a magnet to the force and power at the center of the arena floor.
Two remained, circling each other, arms up, fists clenched. The lone challenger had pale caramel skin and copper-colored hair. The giant faced me now and I got my first good look at his features. He was handsome, despite his size, with dark hair and green eyes. His stare was intense, focused, but he had to be well over eight feet tall. His hands were like dinner plates and his muscles seemed to have their own muscles. They both wore the armored uniform, but their shirts had been discarded and left on the ground behind them. They were bare from the waist up and to say they were both hot was an understatement. My ovaries perked right up at the sight of their broad chests, wide shoulders, rippled abs.
The bigger one had a smattering of hair on his chest that tapered into a line that slipped beneath the waistband of his pants. Below was a very serious bulge. The other fighter wasn’t lacking in that department either.
I was enthralled, hypnotized by the intensity, the power. This wasn’t a boxing match. It wasn’t WWF. It wasn’t even MMA. They dodged and weaved, moved with a pace that made me squint and lean forward, trying to keep track of them.
They came together in a clash of fists and fury. I expected the smaller opponent to be tossed aside as quickly as his friend had been, but Rezzer, which I assumed was the giant’s name, and the man were locked together, muscles bulging to the point of breaking. I winced at the force the two exerted on one another, waited for a shoulder joint to pop, or an elbow to break.
No one could withstand that kind of pressure. Locked together, they circled one another and suddenly the copper haired alien’s back was to me. That’s when I noticed the silver skin that covered half of his back and wrapped around his neck. The silver sparkled in the light like he’d been dusted with a thin coating of glitter. The arena lights were bright in the center of the ring, spotlights shone down on the fighters so there was nowhere to hide.
Hive. Cyborg. Contaminated flesh. The words floated through my mind from my conversations with the doctor back on Earth. The Colony was for warriors who had been implanted with Hive technology. That silver skin sealed his fate…all of their fates. This place was their end, their prison.
Men screamed and roared as the two below me moved faster than any living thing I’d seen before.
Suddenly, the spectacle below made me sick. The violence made bile rise in my throat and I turned to rest the face of my helmet against the beam. I couldn’t feel the cool metal on my face, but I pretended as I heard Rezzer bellow one final time. The crowd erupted in cheers three times louder than anything I’d heard before and I peeked back down to see that his final challenger was struggling to rise, blood running down his face, copper colored blood, too orange to be human.
His right arm hung at an odd angle and the green uniformed men rushed forward with their magic blue wand.
My palm chose that moment to pulse with heat, but I clenched my hand tighter on the beam and ignored it. Apparently, I’d been mesmerized by the testosterone coming off the fighters for my pussy clenched and a rush of desire heated my blood. Maybe it was a reaction to the fight. I had no idea, but I could do no more than lick my lips and ogle the abundance of man candy before me. I should blame my distraction on estrogen, but really, I had no idea what to do next. I scanned the crowd, looking for human men, but if any were here, they were hidden among the others, a sea of black armor and aggressive faces.
The mark pulsed again and I hissed in a breath as my nipples pebbled and my stomach clenched. It was like the dream all over again, except instead of staring into the eyes of the hottest damn man I’d ever seen, I clung to a beam, hiding from a sea of violent, alien fight mania. I’d seen this before, the mob mentality, the wave of aggression that everyone present would be riding for hours. I’d gone to exactly one MMA fight with the sperm donor, and that had been enough for me.
This was too much.
Trembling, I wasn’t sure staying up here another moment was safe. My hands were cramping and my entire body shook with stress and adrenaline. If I didn’t get my act together, I could easily fall and break my neck. Or worse.