Katie lifted her hand to test the force field for herself before leaning in to me to whisper, “Have you noticed we are the only women here?”
Um, yeah. Where were the other matched women? If this kind of a brawl was going on back home, there would be women everywhere, right next to the men.
The male on our right was a large man in a brown uniform. He reached out and touched Dani on the shoulder, not roughly, just to get her attention. She jumped back and bumped into Katie, then me. We didn’t fall, but Katie stepped on my foot and she was wearing boots, with heels. Damn it.
“Ow!” I shoved her away from me.
“Sorry,” Kate mumbled, regaining her footing. We both scowled at the man who’d started the whole thing. Dani had her hands on her hips and glared up at him like a toy poodle staring down a Rottweiler.
“Watch it, buster,” Dani said.
“My name is not Buster, but you can call me anything you’d like,” the man said, clearly interested in Dani.
“I don’t think so,” she countered.
Before the conversation could get any worse, cheering broke out in the crowd. We looked up and even Buster forgot about Dani, at least for the moment, to watch as Von entered the courtyard from our left, Major Cosmo from the right, like gladiators walking toward each other from opposite ends of the arena. They wore nothing but their pants. No weapon holster on their thighs. Von’s pants were brown, Cosmo’s blue, and both men’s chests were bare.
“Oh my God, they’re huge.” Dani sounded stunned, but I’d had my hands on my mate, danced with him, felt his massive chest and arms, his thick thighs.
“Yes, they are,” Katie confirmed and looked at me, wiggling her eyebrows. I grinned back. I was pretty sure Katie wasn’t talking about their shoulders.
The look on Von’s face was of a hardened warrior. I remembered the dream, the dangerous mission, the terror. He’d focused his mind on the task, blocked out everything else and went to work with a similar expression. Was he doing this now? Blocking out everything and getting his mission done? To take down Major Cosmo.
He’d touched me, bruised my arm, expressed his interest in making me his mate. It went deeper than that though. This was a lifelong grudge that would come to a head now. Because of me.
Von wouldn’t kill the major, but I knew he wanted to make sure Cosmo never touched me again. He wanted every other man on the planet to know I belonged to him, was under his protection. Von was a very possessive mate.
He was here, fighting because of me. For me.
One second they were twenty feet apart, fists clenched, and in the blink of an eye they were on each other.
“Whoa,” Katie said. “Did you see that? How did they—”
“How can they move so fast?” Dani asked, her voice laced with awe.
Buster spoke up. “Earth aliens don’t move that quickly?” When Dani gave him a look that screamed, Duh he continued. “Hunters can move faster than your eyes can track. Most of us have learned to rein it in, to use our speed and strength only when riled. Like now. Those two are using all that energy, that speed, to win.”
I didn’t like what he’d said. It was as if my eyes had hit the fast-forward button and the men moved with an unnatural speed. I heard fists connect with bone, but couldn’t see it, my eyes and brain not processing quickly enough.
They came apart, circled. Breathing hard, their chests rose and fell. The major’s face was coated in sweat and there was a cut above his right eye. Von had bloody knuckles on his left hand.
They were going to beat the shit out of each other no matter how fast they moved. I just couldn’t see it happen.
“He’s fighting for your honor, and yet you chose to be here. I wonder if perhaps he has made a mistake?” a deep voice beside me asked. A very large hand neared my head, his fingers trailing through a strand of my long black hair where it blew around my face in the slight breeze. “Or if you really are special?”
I glanced up and I saw an Everian eyeing me with a very male, very interested grin on his face. His hand stroked down my arm and I stepped back. Von had caressed me like that and I’d loved his touch, but this felt like a complete violation of my personal space.
He didn’t let me get far, his hand closed on my wrist.
“Let me go,” I said, my voice slow and clear.
He did, but my relief was short lived. His grip slid to my fingers and he bent low, kissing the back of my hand and my wrist with a little too much lingering, and tasting.
Ew! Gross? Had he just licked me?
“Stop that!” I said, yanking on my hand, trying to get away.
A collective gasp came from the crowd and I looked up. Von had stilled and turned toward me. He’d heard me over the noise of the crowd, over everything. His eyes widened, then flared with anger at the sight of this guy touching me.