Stolen (Tribes #2) - Milana Jacks Page 0,1

any longer. A drop of rain hits my nose, and I turn up my face and squint. The sky’s all but black.

“This should be fun,” Mas says, face tilted up as well.

Competing on this muddy terrain while it’s raining, and the clouds signaling a thunderstorm as well? Yeah, should be fun. The two-hundred-and-some males shuffle. Whispers and hooting sound as Feli takes to the stage, his boots smearing mud all over it.

“Here we go,” Mas says and cracks his neck. Portals are the way we travel across the land, and Mas gets off on being the finest portal master in the lands. Anyone who takes up portal controls during the games is his target. Not to kill, though Mas has no issues with eliminating males, but more to wrestle portal control from the one who’s running it.

Before pulling up the portal controls, a series of holographs that Feli will monitor during the games, Feli glances at Mas and smirks, swiping his hand over the control panel.

Screens pop up all around him, showing us the terrain Feli designed for the games. I recognize some local places here in the village, others in the middle of nowhere inside Ra territory, and one that looks familiar, as if it’s one of our villages in the south.

“Is that what I think it is?” I ask Mas. If it is one of our villages, then Feli is telling us he has a portal hidden inside our territory.

“Possibly, but I can’t be sure. I gotta get in there.” Feli might have breached a territory inside Ka land, one that contains Mas’s portal controls. While we all have entry points into each other’s territories, we keep them secret so that our spies can move safely in and out of enemy land.

“It could be a trap, Mas.”

“I know, but I have to check it out anyway.”

“You could get stuck in there for spans on end.” If it’s an illusion, a replica of our land to lure Mas and me into it, we’d get stuck inside a dead-end portal leading nowhere. Such illusions are hard to breach and could prove deadly if there’s no way out.

“Don’t worry about me. Worry about Gur.”

“Yeah, well, he’s not here, and separating us works to their advantage.”

Mas presses a claw over his lips and taps them. “Where’s the prize?”

I shrug as if I don’t care while my fingers itch to reach into my pocket and pull out the prize’s underpants, a piece of red cloth that hides the place between her legs. The scent has faded since I first found it, so I can’t wait to sniff straight from the source. Just thinking about the smell makes me hard.

I adjust my erection.

Mas taps his nose, telling me he can smell I’m hard, and no amount of lying would convince him otherwise. Our Kai, the alpha of my tribe and my brother, sent me to kill Gur. If I can secure the prize, the womankind, in the process, that’s great. But if I can’t, Gur takes priority over the games. I should be worrying about where Gur is and not when I’ll get to see the prize and how I’m gonna sniff between her legs.

“One hundred ninety-two males entered. Closing the games in…” Feli lifts a hand and counts. “Five, four, three…” I search for Gur.

“He’s not entering,” Mas says.

“Fuck.” The games get deadly out there. It would be easy to eliminate Gur. Out here, killing a Ra earl could incite another conflict. If he won’t enter, killing him with nobody seeing me do it becomes almost impossible.

Feli closes the entries to the games, and the bitchhole Ra cheer. Pissed, Mas and I growl low in our chests. We expected Gur to enter. An Earl usually enters even when he doesn’t want the prize. It’s a show of support for his people and makes for fantastic competition because everyone wants to beat up their superior for fun and games. Normally, you couldn’t beat up an earl, or a Kai, in our case, or he’d kill you. That’s why the games are fun. They always have been and always should be. But over the turns, our people and the Ra alike have grown so bloodthirsty that we don’t know what fun means anymore.

A few spans ago, even my brother killed our own males during our games. It set a bad precedent, but I trust he did it because they left him no choice. I heard those males were protesting because he admitted a Ra tribal