Ruaan blinked.
Once. Twice. Three times.
His hand went to his nose automatically and he pressed it and immediately regretted pressing it because the pain that shot through his face was the kind that made his eyes water without permission.
'Broken?'
Maybe. Probably. It hurt like hell.
He blinked again and looked around.
He was definitely not by the staircase.
He was in a cell. Bigger than 109 but uglier — no beds, just floor, concrete walls, one gate. And on that floor, around him, were nine other people. Not all grey uniforms either. He could see dark blue mixed in, which meant they'd been demoted mid-game. Button draw didn't care about your rank.
Grey button was grey button.
Everyone looked bad.
Someone beside him screamed.
Ruaan's head snapped up.
By the gate, a man was standing. Tall. He had one of the bottom ten by the throat, just — holding him there with one hand, effortlessly. The man in his grip was clawing at his wrist and getting nowhere.
Ruaan pulled back. Everyone around him pulled back too, the whole group pressing toward the far wall like the wall might do something useful.
The gate swung open wider.
Light came in.
And in that light, three silhouettes.
Ruaan didn't need to see their faces. The black uniforms were enough. Full black. No trim. The top three.
Cullen Ray walked in first.
The last one behind him spread out immediately — moving toward the group against the wall. The sounds that started coming from the corners of the cell were not sounds Ruaan wanted to catalogue. He heard something crack. Someone yelped. Someone else was crying already, before anything had even happened to them.
Ruaan sat on the floor and could not make his legs work.
The two were moving closer. He could see them coming. He looked left, looked right, looked for anything—
"Don't touch him." Cullen didn't even look at them. "That one's mine."
That was it. He didn't raise his voice or explain further.
Both men stopped dead. One had his fist already pulled back. He dropped it. The other literally took a step back without being asked.
Just Cullen Ray saying four words, and two of the top three obeying as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
Ruaan watched it happen and understood immediately. This wasn't just top rank. This wasn't just winning games every Thursday; it was about more than that.
Cullen Ray owned this place.
All of it.
Including, apparently, Ruaan.
Both of them stopped.
Ruaan's blood went cold.
'No,' his brain said, very clearly and with great urgency. 'No no no no! I don't want to be owned by him. I don't want to be fucked by him... not by anyone!'
He moved. He got one foot under him, pushed off the floor, made it approximately half a step—
A fist closed in his hair.
The world tilted.
His face met the floor with a crack that he felt in his back teeth, and for a second there was nothing — no sound, no sight, just white — and then everything came back too loud and too bright and with a lot of pain attached to it.
He had never — in twenty-six years, with a father like his, with everything he had been through — he had never been hit like that. Never been grabbed like that. Never had his head introduced to a floor by someone else's hand.
It felt new in the worst possible way.
Around him, the sounds continued — someone was screaming, someone was begging, something cracked that might have been a finger or might have been something worse — and through all of it, Ruaan lay on the floor and finally, completely understood.
'This,' he thought. 'This is what Bandaged Arm didn't want to go through again.'
He understood it. He didn't forgive it. But he understood it.
His hair was grabbed again.
His head was pulled back and up, forced to an angle that put Cullen Ray's face directly in front of his.
Cullen looked at him.
And something in his expression shifted. Slow.
"Oh," he said softly. He tilted his head. Studied Ruaan's face the way you study something you want. "You're pretty." A pause. "Even prettier than the last one."
He glanced back over his shoulder. "What was his name again?"
One of his men looked up from whatever he was doing, blood dripping from his knuckles. "Finn, Boss."
Cullen snapped his fingers. "Right. Filip."
The man didn't correct him.
Nobody corrected him.
Ruaan's head was still spinning and the floor kept tilting slightly and Cullen was looking at him like he was something to be decided about.
"Look behind you," Cullen said.
Ruaan didn't move.
Cullen made him move — one hand turning his head, firm, no room for argument — and Ruaan looked.
He wished he hadn't.
The other nine were against the walls and on the floor in various states that he did not want to describe even inside his own head.
Some had broken their bones, some in the wrong angles. One of them had stopped moving entirely and Ruaan couldn't tell if he was unconscious or something worse and he didn't want to know.
His hands were shaking.
His whole body was shaking.
Cullen turned his head back and looked at him.
"So," Cullen said, almost gentle. "You can end up like them." He glanced back at the room. "Or worse." He looked back at Ruaan. "Or—" the corner of his mouth moved "—you become mine. Until the next game." A pause. "If I feel like letting you go by then."
Ruaan looked at the room, he really looked.
His throat closed up completely.
He wanted to say something. Anything. His brain was sending the signal... 'speak, say something, beg if you have to' — but nothing came out. His mouth opened and closed like the words were there but the way out wasn't. Behind him, someone screamed so loud it bounced off the walls and then cut off suddenly, which was somehow worse than the scream.
'Please,' he thought. He couldn't say it but he thought it hard. 'Please. Not that. I don't want to end up like them.'
He had never begged for anything in his life. He had Calder blood. Calders didn't beg. Calders didn't get on the floor with their hair in someone else's fist either, but here he was, so apparently the rules had changed.
Something cracked in the far corner. Someone sobbed. One of the dark blues — a man twice Ruaan's size — was curled on the floor holding his arm at an angle that arms were not supposed to go, and the top two men standing over him looked bored about it.
Ruaan's hands were flat on the floor and shaking.
'Say something,' he told himself. 'Beg. Swallow it and beg. You can hate yourself for it later.'
His throat still wouldn't open.
Cullen watched him try. Watched the whole thing — the shaking hands, the working jaw, the words that wouldn't come — and smiled like it was the most interesting thing he'd seen all week.
"Pretty and proud," he said. "I like that."
He leaned in slightly. "Last chance. Them—" he nodded at the room "—or mine."
Ruaan looked at the room one more time.
He looked back at Cullen's face. That damn smug look on his handsome face. That hand in his hair.
His jaw tightened until it hurt.
His fists closed on the floor.
He gritted his teeth and said:
"I choose—"