his eyes away from hers. It was hard seeing the pity and sorrow reflected there. It was not the way he wanted her to look at him.
“You were taken...” she breathed.
A sigh left his frame, causing the wound in his side to ache, but the immediate physical pain held nothing against the pain in his mind—the pain brought back by remembering every vivid detail as if it all happened yesterday.
“My father fought for us. In the large arena, he and his brothers fought. He fought for us and his brothers fought for their wives and children.” He let his gaze wander to hers again. “He and many others fought in those horrible arenas, fighting beasts from unknown lands, the winner the last one standing—and we were forced to watch. Many times he was almost killed but that didn’t sate them. The Tasqals put him in that arena over and over and over...”
A breath shook out of him.
“You don’t have to tell me this,” Evren said, her hand moving to touch his leg. The warmth of her skin against his, the comfort that it brought with that simple touch, was almost overwhelming, but he had to continue.
After what she’d seen and the fact that he’d had to hide it all from her, he had to let her know everything. Even if she had to forget later.
“No. You must know this. You must understand.” He paused, inhaling deeply before he continued. “My father was fighting for us. To keep us safe. The Tasqals told him and the other men in the arenas that if they fought, they wouldn’t touch us—their wives. Their children.” He could feel the fire begin to burn deep within him at the memories. “But they lied.”
“What do you mean?” Her voice was so soft, so innocent in all of this that it pulled him from the rage he was falling into.
“Even as my father fought, they used my mother. In front of me and my brother, they used her. She was the first to die after bearing offspring for the vile beasts. She suffered, rotting from their horrible disease.”
Evren’s hands moved to cover her mouth in shock.
“Still, my father fought for us, me and my brother. We were all he had left. All he fought for.” He paused, the emotion making the muscles in his throat expand to the point it felt as if his grief was choking him. “Father fought, not knowing that the Tasqals were forcing us to shift, injecting some chemical into us so we could not take back our normal form until the chemical wore off.”
He paused again, the next bit of memory ripping into him so hard he clenched his hands into fists.
“They made my brother shift into a Dragsxli beast. Forced him to keep that form with their drugs. And...”
“No...”
“Yes.” Kyro nodded, the scene playing out in is head. “They sent him into the arena to fight my father.”
“No...”
“Father killed him.”
He watched her swallow hard, tears in her eyes as she looked at him. “Oh, Kyro...”
“I saw it happen. I watched it. I was just a child about three orbits old, but I was forced to watch, just as I had been forced to watch them use my mor.”
As Evren wiped her eyes, he wished he could end the story there, but he had to continue.
“Father took off his own head when he realized. Right in the arena. He turned to them, raising his chets, and he did it.” Kyro stared at the wall, the scene playing in front of him as if he was back in the cage in the pits of the arena watching.
“They cheered,” he continued. “The Tasqals cheered.” He blinked, his eyes still glassy from the memory. “I will never forget those cheers. From that day, I knew it would never end. I had to escape.”
“How? How did you escape?”
“They began moving us to a weapons program. They were training young Vorti to fight for them. I was young enough to brainwash, so they chose me too.” His eyes focused on hers. “I escaped when one of the guards was too idle putting on my neck brace. I shifted into a small animal and ran. I have been hiding ever since. Rokan too. But unlike me, he never went to the arenas. His family managed to escape during the Great War. The few Vorti who managed to abandon our planet have been on the run, hiding out in the open, pretending to be other species. It is the