Filthy Beginnings, page 4
part #3.50 of Ruthless Warlords Series
She didn’t want him to go.
Fear for him welled alongside the growing conviction that she was losing something precious she’d never even had the chance to have.
Until he looked over his shoulder and winked at her. Mouthed: see you soon.
Astonishment whispered through her. The absolute arrogance and outrageousness… she loved it.
She hid a smile.
It was the first one she could remember—and it felt like an extraordinary gift.
Until she looked up and saw Egan watching her from the observation deck, a calculating smirk spreading across his face.
4
“Get the fuck off me.” Damien twisted in the security guard’s hold. Now that he was out of the omega’s sight and didn’t have to worry about upsetting her, he was done with going quietly.
“Shut the hells up.” The bastard he’d taken down shoved a shock stick into his kidney.
Hurt like a bitch.
But nothing compared to what it cost him to let these fuckers drag him away from her.
“Faster, troublemaker.” The guard stuck him again, dragging him through a heavy metal door and down a long hallway filled with cells.
Damien’s lip curled as he stared over his shoulder at the security guard who was all brawn and no technique. “You think a show of power now is going to make up for the way everyone saw me toss you aside like a youngling’s doll? News flash, it won’t.”
Another snarl. Another charge.
But if these fuckers thought a little electric surge was going to break him, they were in for a surprise.
He’s been hit by his mother’s Alpha friends from the time he could remember.
He’d grown up in the ice caves of Abzal, enduring frigid winds that struck with such force and brutality they made a shock stick’s sizzling charge seem like a loving caress.
He’d trained and bled and broken so many bones in his eighteen planetary rotations, pain was a constant part of his daily life.
And he had three older badass Alpha brothers who did not coddle.
So, yeah, he was tough.
And these fuckers? They had no idea who they were messing with.
“In here, space trash.” They tossed him into one of the cells, his skin sizzling as he went through the dimmed laser bars—since no one had bothered to turn the power fully off. Fuckers.
Still, he caught his footing and stayed upright as the buzz of the laser bars signaled their return to full power.
Victory. With only a slight charring on top.
He took stock. They’d packed each cell with fighters, and his was no exception. Big scowling brutes with bloody lips and ripped clothes squared off around the cell, aggression oozing from their pores, the rush of the recent brawl still thrumming through their blood.
Fangs flashing, he scowled back.
The three guys closest to him shuffled out of his way.
As expected. He knew how to handle himself. For better or worse, he’d seen the inside of more than a few security holding cells over the course of his young but eventful life.
Could be due to his charm.
Or his trouble following the rules.
“In you go.” The shout from outside the bars had Damien turning around, just in time to see the laser bars dim again as security tossed an orange blur inside the holding cell—straight into the belly of another fighter.
Damien sidestepped the fray as they crashed to the ground.
“Hells, that hurt.” The new guy rolled over and stared up at the ceiling, blinking hard. The bitter odor of singed hair wafted through the space.
The other downed fighter shoved to his knees, his scales turning a dangerous red. “You knocked me down.” He cocked a fist.
The orange guy whipped out a vicious looking tail with barbs and slashed it in front of the other male’s beak-like nose. “Don’t even try it.”
The other male backed off, grumbling to himself as he shuffled to the other side of the cell.
Damien studied Tail Guy. He looked vaguely familiar. He was smaller than Damien, but still muscled, with pointed ears and long plaits that hung down his back.
“Wonderful.” The guy shoved to standing and adjusted his shirt, fingering the laser burn holes as if he was going to make them magically disappear. “I chose the wrong guy to stand in line behind, apparently.”
Ah, right. The fighter next to him when he’d been trying to talk with the omega. The one who’d warned him security was about to shock stick his ass.
There were no allies in a place like this where only one could be the ultimate fighter, but Damien appreciated the guy’s warning.
Plus, while the guy’s stance was alert enough to mark him as a solid fighter and his tail was clearly a formidable weapon, his expression was kind.
He was no killer.
Damien calculated the orange-skinned Alpha would last two rounds max without help.
Which was why he gave the other fighter a rare chin nod—his arms were busy anyway, still manacled behind his back—and said, “When they come back, I’ll make sure they know you had nothing to do with that.”
The guy’s eyes went round, his tail twitching. “Thanks.” He stopped fiddling with his shirt. “I definitely did not expect to end up here even before I made it in the dome.”
Join the fucking club.
Damien hid a grimace.
Two heartbeats in and he’d already fucked up.
“I mean, it’s not as if I’m expecting to win the main prize.” Tail Guy let out a nervous laugh, his smile a lopsided grin that reminded Damien of his sister, Anya.
“Good, because I am.”
A few of the other fighters in the cell grumbled. Orange-skinned guy, however, appeared unfazed.
“Oh, yeah? The whole tournament? Wow. Good for you.” The other male was chatty. “My goal is to make it to at least the last sixteen fighters in the main event so I can win the consolation prize money. If I make it farther, great, but that’s the bare minimum. I’m from Lezera, have six omegas sisters, and no damned funds to get them prime omega contracts. Goddess knows, I can’t keep ‘em—but I want the best for them.” Genuine affection coated his voice, but he was fumbling with the holes in his shirt once more, his tone strained. “We calculated that with that much prize money, I’ll be able to get them contracts. If I get there.”
Damien grunted.
Looks like he’d be helping Tail Guy, after all—because any guy who was out to take care of his six omega sisters was okay in Damien’s view.
“So, I’m talking to the future champion, huh?” His new friend sized him up.
“No question.”
“So, ah, what the hells happened out there with the prize then? Was that also part your plan to win it all?”
Damien tensed.
Fuck if he knew.
She had definitely not been part of the plan.
One moment he’d been striding off the gangplank, eyeing the competition while going over what nutrients he still needed to consume to reach his proper intake, and calculating how soon he could get away from the distracting welcome hoopla and head to the training center, when an itch rolled across his skin. In the next heartbeat, aggression poured through him and he’d jerked forward like his body was on the edge of a tether. Sounds had amplified. Colors too.
He’d shoved his way through the throngs—and seen her.
The most beautiful female he’d ever seen in his life.
His cock had hardened to stone. His wrists burned as if dipped in fire.
And everything inside him—usually so jumbled and seething and wild—had just… settled.
Her body moved in time with his racing heart, stunning colors shimmering across her golden shimmering skin, exactly the same as the hues that glittered across the ice on his home planet when the suns hit just right.
There she was: his purpose.
His to claim. To rut. To knot.
Need and excitement had thundered through him and he’d taken a step toward her—only to notice the crystal walls imprisoning her, the lines of exhaustion on her pretty face. All the fuckers leering at her.
After that, things got a little blurry.
Every cell inside consumed with the primal need to seize the omega and take her some place where he could bury his dick inside her and breed her until his young was in there too.
But then he’d gotten shocked, and the worst of the rut lifted. He’d gained enough control to know his initial instinct was neither smart nor possible.
She might be his, but she was also a consortium prize. That meant she was a valuable asset, one protected by full-time security and, he suspected, a tracker inside her bloodstream.
Of course, he had enough connections to get his hands on a black-market tracker remover, but even after he removed it, the consortium would not let her go so easily. Too many fighters had come to win her.
They’d hunt for her—and whoever had taken her.
If it was only to make an example of them both.
The consortium did not take kindly to anyone messing with their property.
And once they found out who he was—which they would since he’d given his real name when he bought into the tournament—his brothers would bear the brunt of the consortium’s anger.
Rather than prove his family could count on him, he’d leave them worse off than before.
That he could not allow.
The Skolov family had already suffered enough. Been hunted enough. Hustled enough.
The whole reason he’d entered the tournament was to secure the kind of mind-boggling prize money that would enable his family to buy a seat at the Brotherhood table.
Membership to the most powerful crime organization in the galaxy didn’t come cheap, but it was the goal his brothers had been striving toward for as long as Damien could remember. Because if you couldn’t beat ‘em, best to join ‘em. And, as his eldest brother Nikolai liked to remind him, it was smart to keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.
But it would never happen if some hot-heated idiot in the Skolov family stole a consortium omega and went to ground.
So no, seizing the pretty omega and running wasn’t an option.
Neither was buying her outright since he didn’t yet have that kind of ready cash flow.
Which left him with only one path: do what he’d come here to do. Win the tournament.
Because there was one fact he knew for sure: he was not leaving this planet without her.
Even now, rage, possession and need twisted through him, a primal drumbeat in his blood.
He was one hundred percent certain that if he peered beneath the thick leather cuffs at his wrists he’d see the dark black lines that signaled a rare fated-mates connection.
She was fucking his and his body knew it.
“You think they’ll kick us out?” Tail Guy, talking again.
“No.” He wouldn’t allow it.
“Gotta love your confidence.”
“Get used to it.” Especially since Damien had already decided to help the guy make it through to the final sixteen fighters.
Another laugh. “Gladly. Maybe it’ll rub off. I’m Crex, by the way.”
“Damien—”
“Skolov.” A sneering voice from outside the laser bars took over Damien’s introduction. “Fourth of the notorious Skolov brothers. Outer-planetary ice vermin. Wanted by the Federation for petty theft, racketeering, illegal fighting, and a slew of other charges.”
Damien grinned. His reputation preceded him, per usual.
Turning toward the speaker, he stared down at the silver-haired space worm on the other side of the bars. Egan Avitus, the face of the tournament and a higher-up lackey in the consortium bureaucracy.
The same fucker who’d watched the omega dance from up on that observation deck.
“Nothing to say for yourself?” Wrapped in a flashy dressing gown, cape, and too many rings, not a slicked silver hair out of place, the bastard oozed smug. A wall of hulking security guards stood right behind him, including the green skinned, tusked Alphahole who’d shocked him repeatedly.
Damien stepped closer to the bright laser bars at the front of the cell. “I’ve plenty to say. But I let my fists do the talking.”
Egan lost a bit of his poise. “Typical thug.”
“And you’re not?” Damien thought of the female. The cage, the hot lights, the hopelessness he’d sensed from her. When he’d signed up for the tournament, he’d been so focused on the money, he hadn’t considered the rest of the bounty he’d gain once he won. He was now.
The desire he’d sensed inside her was as beautiful, rich, and vivid as the colors sparkling across the crystal cage and over her skin.
She was extraordinary—and his.
No one else would touch her.
And all the fuckers who kept her penned up would experience an excruciating death.
“I’m an entrepreneur.” Unaware his fate had already been decided, Egan kept on talking. “I make the consortium and the Brotherhood money, and I’m good at it.”
Damien followed his instincts. “Which is why you’re going to open the pen, let me out, and send me to the barracks so I can prepare for the fighting trials.”
Egan’s lips thinned. “What would make you think that?” He ran his spindly, jewel-covered hands down the length of his purple cape as if he could smooth his frustrations as easily.
“Because winners draw more tickets and more tickets means more profits and visibility and if you know who I am, you already know I’ll make you plenty of money.”
“Cocky bastard.”
“With reason.”
“I can smell trouble a star system away,” snarled the consortium lackey, “and you, Damien Skolov, have trouble written all over you.”
True enough.
“But you’re going to let me stay anyway.” Because he might not be a genius like his brother Maxheim or a charmer like Alexi, or even a leader like their eldest Nikolai, but Damien had read enough telegraphed punches in his time to interpret Egan’s body language: he might want to bury him in a small ditch behind the stadium, but he wasn’t going to.
Not yet anyway.
Which meant someone else—someone even Egan couldn’t defy—had allowed Damien to remain, despite the trouble he’d caused.
Interesting.
“You’d better not give me any more trouble. You might be in this cell for fighting, but we both know what preceded it. Prizes are off limits until won.” Egan rattled on. “Any fighter found to have sullied consortium merchandise without permission will be banned from the tournament.”
Damien pictured choking the guy out—repeatedly. All in good time.
“You will follow the rules or you will not remain. No matter what anyone else says.” Threats delivered, Egan nodded toward a goon on his right and the manacles encircling Damien’s wrists unlocked and clattered to the ground. Next, the laser bars dimmed—but they didn’t blink out.
“You are free to go.” Smirk in place, Egan gestured down the hallway toward the metal exit door. “For now.”
Fuckers would not let him out without a little more payback.
Bracing himself, Damien started forward and then stopped. “If I go, he goes.” He jerked his head to where Crex stood, watching the exchange with a wide-eyed, nervous expression.
Egan’s spine snapped ruler straight. “That’s not your decision.”
“I think it might be.” He studied Egan and wondered just who had made the call to keep him in the tournament.
His brothers had no clue where he was. Yet. He’d told them he was going to his usual training retreat. But even if they’d figured out where he was, they didn’t have the pull to keep Egan from kicking him out of the tournament.
That lack of influence was half the reason Damien had come to the tournament.
To show his brothers he could be the male they needed him to be.
No more a runt. No more a youngling. No more a burden.
He was eighteen planetary rotations old now, and all grown up. Ready to step up.
Ready to be another badass like them. Maybe even badder: the fighter they needed to watch their back.
Now, he had another objective too: her.
With such high stakes, it made him uneasy not knowing who’d countermanded Egan’s impulse to kick him out or what was behind the decision. He’d found that most Alphas in the galaxy weren’t motivated by the goodness in their hearts.
But he’d make it work. He always did.
“Fine.” Disgust sharpened Egan’s voice. Anger too. “You can both go.”
But again, no one lowered the laser bars’ power. A few of the guards snickered.
Damien marched through the painful-as-fuck bars without hesitation—and kept right on walking toward the building’s exit.
A curse from Crex indicated he was close behind.
Damien let the guards have their fun. He’d find them after the tournament was over. They wouldn’t be laughing then.
But he had more important matters to tend to first.
Like finding out the name of his omega, and how he could make a better impression the next time around.
His palm hit the metal door just as Egan spoke. “You won’t win.” Glee thickened his voice. “A non-consortium, non-Brotherhood fighter has never won this tournament and that will never change. You may think you’re something, but you’re not. You and your family are space trash and you always will be. I run a gambling enterprise. I only bet on sure things and I’d wager my fortune that neither the money nor the prize herself will ever be yours.”
Damien read the underlying message loud and clear. Egan and his consortium had already chosen their tournament winners, and they were going to do whatever it took to protect those interest.
But Damien had always known the contest was rigged. He just didn’t care.
The more odds they stacked against him, the better he liked it.
“I’ll take that bet, Alphahole.” He shoved open the door and strode out.
Because nothing was going to keep him from her.
5
That evening, Scarlett stood by her narrow bed while security checked beneath it and Egan Avitus circled around her, his polished black boots clacking on the bare tiled floor, his scent mask making each of his exhales sound like a menacing rumble.
