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Graham woke to the familiar sound of a distant, hungry crowd... and the loud growl of a nearby generator. He was lying on his side, darkened concrete before him, broken earth below him. It was bright, but after a moment, staring at his shadow, he realized it wasn’t daylight; a brilliant worklight was trained on him. He lay still, trying to make sense of things, to figure out what felt so terribly wrong.
Alice, was his first thought, but he had no sense of her nearby. She was simply gone from inside of him, and the hollow place she’d been felt like a gaping hole.
He glanced down without moving, and found that he’d been bound, at wrist and ankle, both anchored to the wall he was looking at. He might be able to break the chains as a man, but he could definitely break them as a lion... which was when he realized that his lion was as gone as Alice.
He must have made some kind of noise of alarm at the realization, because a boot found the small of his back.
“You awake yet, your lordship?”
Graham felt the hollow place inside fill with rage and recognition.
He rolled to the wall and brought himself up to a seated position. He was in a battered, three-sided concrete room. Bars had once enclosed the fourth side, but they had been burned and wrenched away. An extension cord snaked to a bright worklight on a tripod, focused on him. He felt like his limbs were heavy, and his bones were humming out of tune. “Cyrus,” he growled.
“Surprise!” Cyrus gave him a toothy smile, standing well outside of the range of Graham’s chains. One scruffy looking bodyguard stood just past him with a rifle in his hands. Graham couldn’t be sure if it had more sedative, or real bullets.
“You were a hard shifter to track down, Grant Lyons. Or Graham Long, as they call you now. Long time no see, Long.” Cyrus laughed at his own joke. “Johnny Ace was very put out that you didn’t want to pay his hush money. It didn’t take him long to find another bidder.”
Graham only grunted.
Cyrus narrowed his eyes. “I owe you, Lyons, I owe you a lot. You busted up my business real good, didn’t you. And it’s been real hard to get it started again. Have to keep moving around, doing shows in new places, building new audiences. I had a good thing in London, and so did you.”
“There was nothing good about it,” Graham had to protest.
“You were good,” Cyrus reminded him. “Best fighter I ever had. Gave the crowd a real show, took a beating like a heavy bag and kept swinging. I would have made you rich beyond your wildest dreams. And you threw it away... for what? To be a gardener at a fancy resort where they treat you like trash?”
Graham nearly smiled. His life at Shifting Sands had been idyllic. He should have known it wouldn’t last.
There was a chorus of cheers from somewhere not far from them, and Cyrus grinned. “We’re warming them up for you, Grant.”
Graham got to his feet at last and could feel the sedative slowly leaving his limbs. There was still no whisper of his lion’s presence or the slightest hint of his mate-bond. “I’m not fighting for you again,” he said firmly.
“Oh, I think you are,” Cyrus laughed. “You’ve gotten soft over the years, Grant, and you’re weak.”
“Unchain me and see how soft I’ve gotten,” Graham challenged.
“Oh, you’re still a fighter,” Cyrus smirked. “But that’s not what I meant by soft.”
He snapped his fingers and a second, larger, bodyguard came from around the corner, a familiar figure stalking beside him.
Alice.
Her hands were bound, but only with rope. Her hazel eyes were blazing. “Graham? Graham, are you alright?”
“Does she even know your real name, Grant? I wouldn’t have guessed that girls would be your weakness,” Cyrus said thoughtfully, moving to brush her brunette hair back behind one ear. Alice jerked her head out of reach and glared at him.
Cyrus clearly decided that his fingers were worth more than making the point and turned back to Graham. “You never seemed particularly interested in the tail we offered you in London. Maybe they just weren’t... large enough for your taste.”
Alice went redder than she had been, seething.
Graham could feel the sedative burning off in the heat of his fury, but he held himself stone still, not wanting to tip Cyrus off.
A weaselly-looking man darted in from the opposite direction, a clipboard in hand. “How long, boss?”
“Not much longer,” Cyrus said thoughtfully. “I’m not putting him into the cage until the sedative has worn off. That wouldn’t be the show they’ve come for.”
“We adding her to the roster?” the man asked with a raking glance at Alice. “She’s tall and strong, she’d probably start a lot of betting.”
“That depends on Grant here,” Cyrus said, voice silky. “He fights... or she does.”
It took every ounce of Graham’s willpower not to betray the rage and agony his words woke. Alice, in a cage. Alice, defending herself against one of Cyrus’ fighters. Alice, hurting.
“I’ll fight.”
The man scurried away again.
Was it the sedative that was keeping him from reaching his lion? Graham felt more himself with every moment... as much himself as he could be without the voice that had shared his head for so much of his life.
“Who are you people?” Alice demanded as they pushed her to the opposite side of the enclosure from Graham. “Why can’t I hear my..?” She didn’t finish, as if it suddenly occurred to her that they may not know about her bear.
“Can’t hear your animal? Isn’t that a nice trick?” Cyrus said smugly. “As well as providing us with this charming, isolated arena, Alistair Beehag had a whole arsenal of wonderful treasures that his nephew has quietly been selling on the black market. Oh, some run of the mill sedatives, poisons, hallucinogens, truth serums. But I was also able to snap up a good quantity of this particular drug—it forces a shifter to remain in their human form. You can mix it with a sedative, or administer it straight.”
Cyrus grinned as Graham finally realized what he intended to do.
It was going to be a do-over of his last fateful fight.
Only this time, he was going to be the one who couldn’t shift.