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I led him into the back where some of the females were practicing various makeup styles. With the fighting pits shut down, there was nothing else for them to do. After all, without Champions, there could be no Prizes.
“This is the back room,” I said. “Here is where the Prizes prepare themselves for the Claiming. There’s really not much to it. Those are the tables where the females can put on their makeup. And there are the cabinets where we keep the dresses. Would you like to see?”
He did not indicate whether he would or not, but as this was an inspection and I really had nothing to hide, I decided to show him anyway.
I led him to the closets and opened the doors one by one, exposing the flimsy negligees that the Prizes had no choice but to wear.
Some of the Prizes were skilled in adding little details and adornments — something they thought the Champions would notice, but I never thought they did. They were caked in blood and had just come from one of the worst places to be in the entire prison, narrowly escaping death. Did the females really expect them to notice small stitched pink hearts around the hem of a sheer dress?
I pushed the negligees to one side so the lead guard could see there were no trap doors or hidden sections. The thought of escape crossed my mind from time to time but I never took it seriously.
Failure would result in death, as there was nothing else worse than a life sentence at Ikmal. And who was going to try to escape more than a prisoner with nothing to lose?
The guard barely even looked at the closet and for the first time since this whole thing began, I wondered if that was the real reason he was there.
Maybe he already had information, some knowledge that things weren’t as they seemed at the prison. Did one of the Prizes know or do something that they shouldn’t have?
If they did, I didn’t know about it. But how was I supposed to prove that without even knowing what it was that they’d done?
I shook my head and told myself not to worry. It would turn out to be nothing.
“Next we have the sleeping quarters,” I said to the guard. “They’re right through here.”
But the Lead Guard took the initiative and instead of following me, headed in the opposite direction, to my office.
“There’s nothing there,” I said in vain as he pushed the door open and entered.
It was my inner sanctum, the only place that was private and for me only. It was a luxury none of the other Prizes possessed.
I checked around the door before I entered. There was precious little space with the both of us inside.
“Like I said, there’s nothing in here,” I said.
But the lead guard didn’t move. He stood there, back to the wall, looking down at me.
“Are we alone?” his fuzzy electronic voice said.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. “Why? What’s all this about?”
He leaned over and pressed his hand to the door, shutting it behind me. Now we were alone in that tiny, cramped room, and I worried about what he would say next. The space suddenly felt very close… very intimate.
“Look,” I said, my fear getting the better of me. “I don’t know everything the Prizes get up to. If they’ve been doing something suspicious outside these rooms, then there’s really nothing I could know about it and I suggest you speak with them directly.”
He reached up and unfastened the straps holding his helmet in place. This was irregular and not something the guards ever did and it sent alarm bells ringing in my head.
This couldn’t lead to anything good. I knew that much.
“There’s no need to remove your—” I said, but the rest of the sentence lodged in my throat.
The moment I saw his curled tuft of black hair, I knew what I would see beneath that visor. And when his strong cheekbones and smooth chin came into view, I’d already passed into the realm of disbelief.
And when his eyes were finally exposed and there was no way to go back, no way to unsee his face, I just gaped.
It was the face that came to me each and every night in my dreams. The face that I’d thought I would never again see in the flesh. The cause of the greatest suffering of my life… and its cure.
It was him. My alien inmate. My fated mate.
It was Ohara.
