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“Fighters, to center stage for the ceremonial face-off!”

The announcer’s voice booms. The floor manager waves us together, and officials fan out in a loose horseshoe around us, palms open, as nervous as ushers at a bomb defusal.

We walk toward each other.

At the presser, they started us a yard apart. Here, someone’s moved the tape. The floor manager gestures us in, closer, closer, until she gives up and lets our bodies decide.

Six inches. Maybe less.

I can smell him. Cedar and cold soap, and under it, sweat from the cut, salt and heat and skin. His chest rises and falls in front of me, shallow and quick. I could count the freckles scattered over his collarbone. Up close, the pulse in his neck flutters like a trapped moth.

His lips are parted. Barely. A dark flush creeps along his throat. His pupils have swallowed nearly all the gold.

I step in. Half a step. Just to see.

His breath hitches.

“Scared yet?” I murmur.

“Terrified,” Zane breathes back.

It isn’t a taunt. It rasps out of him, thin and raw, and the look he gives me has nothing to do with fighting.

The officials edge closer. One of them reaches in.

Neither of us throws a punch. This is worse. Every hair on my arms stands up, my skin tight and buzzing in the narrow space between his chest and mine. If I inhaled deep enough, my ribs would touch his.

I let my gaze drop. Down his chest, over the carved plane of his stomach, to the waistband hugging his hips. Then I drag it back up, one slow inch at a time.

His jaw flexes. His hands clench at his sides, knuckles bone white.

I smirk.

“See you tomorrow night,” I say. “Try to last more than one round.”

Zane leans in.

His lips brush the shell of my ear. Warm. Dry. Devastating. His voice comes out so low it barely qualifies as sound.

“I’m going to make you submit.”

The words go straight through me. My knees threaten to quit. A shudder rips up my back, and I clamp my teeth to keep it from reaching my face.

“Gentlemen!” An official’s hand lands on my biceps. Another on Zane’s. “That’s enough, thank you.”

They peel us apart. The arena bursts back into color and noise, boos and cheers and a thousand phone cameras. Zane doesn’t look at me again. He walks off the stage, shoulders locked, spine straight as a rifle barrel.

I walk off the other side and try to remember how legs work.

The commission’s locker room sits behind the scale platform: a long tiled space with metal benches, a row of lockers, and communal showers at the far end. Both camps share it. Old arena. Old plumbing. No one planned for two men like us to share the same hallway.

Cruz and Jonah head out for food. Theo goes to find a reporter. Victor points a finger at me on his way out.

“Eat. Shower. Rest. That’s all.”

“Yes, boss.”

The door thumps shut behind him, and the silence rings.