Falling in Love with the King of Beasts

ELIA

That terrifying man roared a command to start, and all the women in the circle immediately tensed from their almost prayer-ful stances, to half-crouched on the balls of their feet, as the crowd surrounding them cheered.

Briefly, no one seemed to know what to do. The women all looked at each other, but no one moved. For a single breath, Elia hoped perhaps none of these women were going to fight. Until a feminine snarl erupted from Elia's right and she turned to watch a woman—graceful, though clearly strong, and painted entirely in fur—leap on the back of the woman closest to her, who was painted in swirls and spirals. The fur-painted woman took the other's head between both hands, and twisted her neck with a mighty jerk that snapped her spine.

The body sagged in her hands and she let it drop, standing over it as it twitched for a handful of seconds while she scanned the clearing.

For a moment, their eyes met and the fur-painted woman smiled and raised her eyebrows, but then darted across the clearing to a spot where another woman was rising, shaking, from a body in the dirt in front of her.

All breath left Elia's body. What nightmare was this?

Bile rose in her throat and Elia whirled, thoughtless of the carnage behind her, looking to clear her mind of the gore and death happening around her. Instead she found a circle of people cheering and screaming, barking and growling, like animals on the hunt. Their eyes passed over her with looks of contempt as she rushed to the tree nearby and leaned on it, throwing up the lasts of the alcohol and appetizers she'd had at the Patron's Ball.

As she coughed and spat, her entire body trembling, there was a great thud and a shriek nearby. Elia whipped around to find two women—one painted in feathers, the other in a strange set of lines and dots—wrestling in the dirt, teeth bared.

It was instinct to get away, to hide, but there were so many people… without thought, Elia grasped the lowest branch of the tree and pulled herself up, running her feet up the trunk like she had as a child. The ridiculous high heels she still wore slid on the bark, but she clung and the thick denim of her nicest jeans gave her traction on the branch as she hiked a leg over and pulled herself to sit against the trunk.

It wasn't a large tree, but there was a strange twisting in the branches, with clusters of upward pointing leaves at the end of every branch and twig that gave some cover from the battle below her, but allowed her to peer through and see much of what happened between the gaps.

"Is she allowed to do that?" the young voice she'd heard earlier whined.

Elia froze, but several people shushed the young one and no one came to tug her down, so Elia braced herself against the trunk of the tree and tried to catch her breath. Not that it worked. Her entire body trembled, humming with fear. She knew being up here only delayed what had to be an unavoidable end. Whoever these people were, they didn't hesitate to kill.

She peered between a gap in the leaves to see the fur-painted woman chase another across the circle, snarling, teeth bared, and launch herself on the other woman. They rolled and tumbled through the dirt together, and when the dust settled, the fur-painted woman was the one to rise, her face dark with the other woman's blood.

A strange noise erupted from Elia's throat.

Where was she?

How the hell had she gotten here?

And how long did she have before she died?

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