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When that happened, the victor sauntered over to take his pick of the men. The victorious Ravnian, a young man sporting a red beard—probably to make himself look older—walked up to his choice, bent him back over his arm and kissed the man ravenously. He then picked up the much smaller man and carried him from the arena.
The scene was repeated for each of the survivors, and though they all gazed over toward Larsson, no one approached him. Larsson saw Tarr stiffen each time they came anywhere near him.
When only he and Jaxper were left, the Ravnian who came in sometimes to whisper and poke at Jaxper strutted out in the ring and made short work of his opponent. He came over to Jaxper and smiled at him before picking him up and kissing the curve where his neck met his shoulder. His hand moved down to cup Jaxper’s bare ass and the Ravnian’s expression slackened with lust as he pushed his cock into Jaxper’s groin.
He turned to grin at his friends and held Jaxper in front of him, his back to the Ravnian’s chest. Hewrapped a big hand over Jaxper’s flaccid cock and slid his hand rapidly over it, pulling the skin back and forth, laughing. He swung the young man over his shoulder then and walked with him from the ring, casually slapping his ass a few times as he walked out. Larsson could feel his wolf very close to the surface, but he held it in check. He might need all his strength soon, if things didn’t go as planned for his mate, but he promised himself he’d find a way to exact revenge on the man who took Jaxper, one way or another.
Those words were the ones he’d said to Tarr the night before, and his chest tightened at the memory. They’d get out of this together or not at all. He had no wish to live without his mate, and if things started to look bad for Tarr, he’d break these stupid, useless ropes they had on him and fight beside him to the death.
Rabb Seneca and Tarr were the only opponents left in the ring. Rabb turned toward Larsson, smiled at him, and then blew him a kiss. Larsson gave him a grin of such blinding intensity that Rabb blinked. He was already imagining how he would tear the Ravnian into tiny, bite-sized pieces.
Tarr stood watching the exchange, his fists clenched and his face deadly.
The Ravnian turned and came out in the middle of the ring, posturing to his father and his
friends. Julan Seneca was there, of course, loudly cheering for his son and drinking from a large flagon of what must have been powerful liquor or wine. The men around him were drinking from similar flagons, and all were red-faced and reeling by this point, stomping their feet and howling with laughter.
Tarr watched silently as the huge young man posed and flexed his muscles. Then when he turned and faced Tarr, he bared his teeth in a sneer and stepped forward. He swung the chain at Tarr’s feet and Tarr jumped over it easily, landed on his feet and swung his huge club at Rabb’s head, almost in one motion. Rabb got the shield up just in time, but the impact caused him to stagger backward.
Yelling in rage, he swung his own club, but Tarr sidestepped the blow, ducking low and coming in at the Ravnian’s side to jab at him with his short sword.
Rather than pierce his flesh, Tarr simply poked him with the sword and sneered up into his face before dancing backward. As he must have known it would, it infuriated Rabb, and he roared with embarrassment and rage. Furious, he charged Tarr, who sidestepped him again like he was dodging an angry bull, and whacked him on his backside with the flat of the sword.
Larsson was beginning to have fun. Rabb was by this time so enraged, he threw down his own weapons and charged Tarr again. Tarr met him with a roundhouse blow to the chin, hitting the Ravnian hard—harder than Larsson had anticipated. Rabb’s head snapped back, his eyes rolled up in his head, and he fell back to the ground, unconscious.
Julan stood up and shouted something to the four guards still standing in the ring. They surged toward Tarr, who turned to face them and Larsson felt his wolf roar inside him. He felt his bones popping and cracking as he shifted faster than he’d ever done before, easily snapped the ropes holding him, and went rushing toward his mate.
Grabbing up the sword Rabb dropped, he sliced through the neck of the first one like butter and stepped over his body as he fell to face the next one. The man swung a massive fist at his head, and Larsson countered with a huge claw to the side of his head, raking half the skin off it in one swipe. The Ravnian screamed, clutched his face, and stumbled from the ring. Larsson’s wolf was sorry to see him go. He had a taste for blood now and wanted more. He swiveled his head to see Tarr dispatching the last of his opponents, and they gravitated toward each other, back to back, ready to face whatever came next.
As the stands emptied, Tarr strode over to Rabb, pulling Larsson with him. He jerked up the half-conscious man by his vest and leaned over to sneer in his face.
“Told you I’d win. ” Tarr sounded smug and self-satisfied and sexy as all hells. He held his blade against Rabb’s throat, the tip cutting into his neck and drawing a thin line of blood. Tarr looked up to see the crowd advancing on them, led by Julan himself. Tarr smiled an evil smile at him that stopped Julan in his tracks. He held out an arm to stop the ones beside him and yelled something at the others.
The crowd of some twenty or so men stopped behind Julan, some jostling to get near the front.
“What do you want?” Julan cried, his face strained and angry.
“What belongs to me! My nobyo. And my men. All of them. And you’ll make no move to stop us from leaving. ”
A loud voice from behind them in the stands made the entire crowd swivel around. “I doubt there’s much chance of that!” Robosium Jex called out. He held a disruptor in his hand that was pointed at the head of Julan’s young female. Several of his men had seemed to materialize around him out of nowhere, and all were well-armed. “Just in case you need a little extra incentive,” Jex said, smiling.
“Yes,” the old man spat out angrily, his face red with fury. “Take what you want and go. Never come back here!”
“Probably don’t have to worry about that,” Tarr said, smiling at him. He jerked Rabb to his feet, still holding his sword at his throat. “Get my men,” he said to Julan. “Take them all to the trader’s ship and be quick about it. ”
Tersely, Julan ground out an order to the men next to him as Tarr and Larsson backed slowly from the ring with their hostage. By the time they got outside the arena and Jex and his crew joined them with Jex’s own hostage, Tarr’s surviving crew members had begun to arrive, looking dazed and tired. When they’d all assembled, Tarr called out to Julan Seneca.
“Don’t follow us and don’t try anything stupid. We’ll leave your people bythe ship’s landing site when we takeoff. They’ll both be unharmed as long as you cooperate. ”
“We’ll cooperate,” Julan said through his teeth. “But if our paths ever cross again, I’ll…”
“Yes, yes, I’m suitably terrified. ” He glanced over his shoulder at Jex. “Lead the way, Jex. Your men can bring up the rear. ”
“With pleasure, Tarr,” he replied and began moving out toward his ship, docked on the outskirts of the settlement.
Tarr shrugged off his big vest and threw it over to Larsson, who was beginning to shift back to his humanoid form, though his mouth was still too full of teeth to talk clearly. “Put this on, baby. That ass looks too good to be on public display. ”
Larsson shook his head at him, not liking the nicknames he seemed to be incapable of not using. He was grateful for the vest, though, and wrapped it around his waist. It was big enough that it covered him fairly well.
“I’d give you my pants too, but these boys of Jex’s have been on a long v oyage. I don’t want to distract them. After all, the Tygerians are known for their manly beauty. ”
Larsson rolled his eyes, but couldn’t hold back a fond smile. His mate was so full of shit. He wondered briefly if he’d ever get used to his strange sense of humor. Probably not, but no one could ever say that life with Tarr would be dull.
> Epilogue
Larsson sat in the galley of Jex’s ship, nursing a mug of tea and staring out a porthole into the blackness of space. Larsson had talked to people who didn’t travel in space who thought the view would be that of spectacular stars surrounding them on all sides. In reality, while there was some light reflected from planets or other bodies around, most of the so-called sky was just black. Light arrived at the observer’s position without being scattered by any kind of atmosphere, so mostly it was just endlessly dark.
He was bored and waiting for Tarr to come down from the comm deck. Not that he had any business up there, but the man had to have his hand in everything. Larsson could only hope Jex would keep him away from any unfamiliar controls.
The door to the galley opened and Tarr came in, looking nervous. It was such an unusual look on him that Larsson was instantly alarmed. “Oh shit, what did you do?” he asked.
Tarr looked surprised and a little wounded. “What? I didn’t do anything. I just needed to talk to you. ”
“Oh,” Larsson said, wondering what this was about. They’d had almost no time alone together since they’d left the Ravnian moon, and so far they’d both been so exhausted from their ordeal they fell into bed at night, usually awakening sometime in the night with their limbs wrapped around each other, but too worn out to do much more.
Actually, it was past time for Larsson to claim his mate, and his wolf had been restless. He watched Tarr restlessly now as he poured himself a cup of some Nilanium brew that Larsson thought both smelled and tasted terrible. The clothes Jex had given him to wear were tight on him, just the way he liked, and Larsson was having a hard time not staring at the muscular chest revealed by the thin, tight shirt he was wearing. He stirred his tea a little impatiently, waiting to see what Tarr wanted.
He sighed as he sat down and smiled over at Larsson. “There’s no easy way to say this, so I guess I’ll just tell you. I know I…um…mated you when we were on Ravnia, just before we were captured, and you gave me the bite. But I won’t hold you to it. ”