Alien General's Bride: SciFi Alien Romance (Brion Brides) (29 page)

And Faren was on his way to the Elders. They could not be awoken with force, but it was possible, in ways that defied Diego’s knowledge, to point out the urgency of matters that called them out of their meditation. Faren would also keep away the senators trying to influence the Elders. There were few generals that would dare to cross him, much less warriors, not to mention senators without military training.

Yes. Diego felt ready for whatever the fight was to bring. It was not the Brion way to despair or fear death. It would come when it was supposed to, neither sooner nor later.

A voice called to him. Over the roar of the crowd, it nearly drowned in its midst, but a single syllable was enough for him to know. Out of the other end of the arena, he saw Crane thump forward. He was as big as Diego remembered.

Isolde stood at the ringside with Eleya and her guards. Her eyes shined in the moonlight with a passion Diego had only rarely seen in them, and never like that. His heart went wild and the combat hormones didn’t help. He barely noticed moving when he was already standing before her, holding her in his arms over the reeling.

Isolde’s soft, gentle hands were in his hair, twisting them as hard as she could, sending sparks of pleasure through Diego’s groin. The absolute worst time to get aroused, but he could not bring himself to break the embrace. Her breath shivered on his neck, tickling in a sweet, maddening way. It was a perfect moment, the eye of the storm and even with all the battle excitement, Diego found himself never wanting to leave it. Only, perhaps, to lift her over the separating edge and take her right there before the crowd.

Isolde was shaking. He couldn’t fault her. To a human, Crane must have looked monstrous. He looked so even to the Brions.

“Don’t die,” she whispered. “Don’t die, Diego. Not now.”

He froze.

“Yours,” Isolde said, her voice shaking so hard as to nearly make it impossible to hear. “Yours. I am yours.”

Diego pulled her head back and kissed Isolde so hard it
had
to have hurt her. It didn’t seem to matter, though, because she almost purred into the kiss, biting his lip in revenge. If he had been half-hard already,
that
hurt as his cock strained against his pants, begging to be slammed into Isolde’s soft, warm pussy.

He pushed his tongue deep into her mouth, reveling in the sweet taste, and even more so in the moan it ripped from her throat, audible even over the crowd that cheered for them. His mouth left Isolde’s lips swollen and red and his
gesha
herself breathless, gasping for air
–  a
sight so tempting it took all his willpower to press another quick kiss on her lips and then turn to Crane.

There was no future, no Isolde, no anything if he couldn’t kill that monster of a man.

Walking to meet Crane, Diego felt like he really believed in fate for the first time. Of course he was a Brion and had trusted in the fates to know better all his life, but in that moment, he felt everything was always supposed to come together like that. He felt whole. Wasn’t yet, not before the binding, but now he was fighting for something he wanted more than he had ever wanted anything in his life. What might have been a distraction for others was only incentive to him.

He didn’t look back. Seeing Isolde breathless, her eyes clouded over with desire – now that would have been a distraction. Crane was not an enemy you could let out of your sight.

Despite Faren and Atren, in their own ways, already counting him dead, Diego Grothan would have bet on himself if he’d have considered that honorable.

Minutes later, Diego was circling his enemy warily, but he couldn’t keep out of his reach forever.

Crane’s fist, hard as rock, slammed into his gut, sending him sprawling backwards. Diego had a second to thank fate for Crane not having the sense to grab on to his shirt and yank him to the death grip of his huge hands. Small mercies. The brute didn’t seem to catch on to the fact the easiest way for him to kill Diego would have simply been catching him when he came close and strangling life from him second by agonizing second.

He had done that, Diego remembered, when he had still been sane. The sounds had been horrifying. Looking now into his monstrous opponent’s eyes, he was not the warrior Diego remembered. He had actually been a warrior then. Vicious, terrible, but not without reflection. The deranged look of bloodshot eyes that stared at Diego now, the snarl on his lips, frozen on Crane’s face… that was merely a monster.

It seemed Crane no longer comprehended what he was. His objective seemed to be beating Diego to death, which could have worked quite well for him as well, given that his punches were not something Diego wanted to receive more than once. Even a single one had not been fun and he’d taken a heavy beating already.

He wondered why he kept joking in his mind, when it was very clear Crane was a walking murder machine that didn’t even blink at any of the blows he’d landed. His flesh wasn’t strengthened, that much Diego could tell by the few punches he’d dashed in, only to jump clear of the monster the next. But even his real flesh, hardened by decades of battle and whatever they had done to him in the cage where they kept him, was hard as steel. The best he could have hoped for was that Crane would have bruises. In a few days.

There was an emptiness in Crane’s eyes that he dreaded the most. The monster didn’t stop to rest or wait for an opportune moment. He just kept coming at him, never giving him respite, denying him rest not because it was a strategy, but simply because Diego wasn’t dead yet.

The crowd had fallen silent. They were Brions too. They could see how little damage Diego’s hits did and how much Crane’s when Diego was too slow to dodge.

The last one nearly cost him his life when Crane jumped after him with a deafening crash, landing, knee-first where he’d just been.

Despite all that, Diego still considered himself to be in control. Only every sign that might tell him if his tactics were working seemed useless with Crane. How do you tell if someone is tiring, when they have no emotions, not even grunts of pain, no change of pace to be seen? That was why fighting madness was so dangerous. Crane could have been exhausted to death and might fall in a minute, or he could snake out one of those massive hands and crush Diego’s throat before he could even lay a hand on him.

There was no choice. He had to make a move before he got too tired, which meant he had to get close.

He was circling Crane, eyes watching every movement the other general – an insult to the title if there ever was one – made, his senses pushed to their limits in a way that sharpened everything to the point of almost seeming unreal. Diego waited. Crane just kept coming, changing direction every time he did.

With years of experience, Diego went for the opening in the brute’s defense the moment he saw it, not second-guessing himself for a moment.

His surprise was fast and unpleasant as Crane sidestepped him faster than he would have thought the big general could move. Protecting the leg Diego had been going for in order to pull the monster down and deal with him from there, Crane caught
him
instead at last. One hand holding him, the other twisting around Diego’s neck, pressing it against his chest, Crane went still.

The pressure felt like being crushed under an airlock’s triple-reinforced door. Clawing at the hands holding him, faced away from Crane, Diego saw the crowd frozen silent. Distantly he wondered if Crane really was mad and some of his fighter instincts had simply remained, or if it had been Eren’s ploy to make him underestimate the monster after all.

It didn’t matter. All that mattered was survival.

He had to be quick. Crane could have strangled him fast, but fate – the blessed, ever-giving fate – had kept some of the mad, sadistic need to feel someone suffer. That gave Diego seconds.

Instead of trying to pry the hand suffocating him away from an uncomfortable angle, Diego slowly forced the hand holding him flat against Crane and away from him. Strong Crane could be, but Diego Grothan was not made out of paper either. Both his hands pushing Crane’s right arm away from his body, his entire weight behind it, levering it from Crane’s own chest, Diego could do what he had planned to do from the beginning.

Of all the bodily modifications, he had always found reinforced bones to be the dumbest idea. It seemed to give such advantage to a warrior’s strength. He could feel it himself at that moment, Crane’s immense strength combined with steely bones, cutting his air off in its merciless, unrelenting press.

But it was also dangerous to carry that much hard material in your body. From the moment Crane announced his choice, it had been clear to Diego he wouldn’t be able to overpower the monstrous general physically. He had to use the only weapons available, weapons Crane had brought to the arena inside him.

His vision began to blur, but he didn’t need to see. All he needed was to get Crane’s right arm far enough… As his consciousness began to slip as well, Diego brought his legs up, nearly jumping into Crane’s lap and, holding the arm out straight, kicked at it with his legs with all the strength he had left.

Crane’s arm snapped with a nauseating creak. The reinforced bones were strong, but not unbreakable. That pain must have registered at last, because he made a sound like a grunt and the awful pressure around Diego’s throat relaxed for a second. That was all he needed to slam his elbow straight into Crane’s kidneys and slip away, stumbling, as Crane’s hold lifted.

Diego got away to a safe distance, trying to get oxygen flowing through his lungs once again. His head spun, but he was even now in very present danger. Crane still lived. The punch he’d received in the stomach wouldn’t delay him more than a moment and he’d shake off the pain in his arm like it was nothing. Diego gasped for air, everything still swimming before his eyes. That had nearly been the end of him.

Heavy footfall signaled the approach of his enemy. Crane’s expression hadn’t changed – the same perpetual snarl on his lips, the same madness in his eyes. His right arm was broken just above the wrist, the sharp edge of bone gleaming in the moonlight.

Diego had been foolhardy once. Now he had to do it again.

Reinforced bones were hard, that’s what they were. Getting hit by muscles boosted by them hadn’t been painless, as Diego’s body kept telling him. Yet it had to have been worth the sharp edge he saw now, a weapon within his reach. That was the curse of modifications. Bone wasn’t sharp enough to jam it through someone’s chest without a very fucking good angle, which Diego was not going to get with Crane, but industrial bone… All he had to do was make him stumble.

It took him three tries. Crane didn’t seem to comprehend the danger his own body had become to him. He only understood his left arm was now his stronger. Twice, he kicked Diego back with another set of punches that would hurt for a good while. On the third go, Diego managed to trip him at last. Everything from there happened as fast as he could possibly move.

With one, two steps he was at Crane’s side, twisting the broken arm to his head, only barely recovering from the thundering blow that swiped him off his feet and jammed the sharp bone into Crane’s throat. The monster thrashed, but it was too late. Diego kept the monster’s own arm in place until he stopped moving.

Then he stood. The crowd roared, but his eyes searched for Isolde. Her back was to him, Eleya obstructing her view of the arena. Diego was grateful. It was better she didn’t see the conclusion of a Brion death fight.

He lifted his eyes to the stars above and took a deep breath. He had won and he was alive. He had Isolde. He was complete.
 

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Isolde

As they led her away, Isolde was glad Eleya had told her not to watch the fight to the end. Even the sickening snap of Crane’s arm breaking had been horrible for her to see. From the shocked silence of the crowd when Crane finally died, she assumed it hadn’t been an easy death even in their opinion.

Her legs shook as Deliya and Narath cleared their way through the crowds. The relief was almost palpable around them all. When Crane had stepped in the arena, Isolde had been sure her heart would stop. It was nothing like seeing the trophy beast in Diego’s quarters – that was already dead, the fight already concluded. Even having seen him fight before and witnessing the trophies in his room, Isolde hadn’t been able to summon the certainty that Diego would win.

And when Crane caught her general, she’d looked away of her own volition, unwilling to see the death of her
gerion
. She only looked back when the Brion crowd collectively breathed out again as Diego stumbled free.

Further away in the midst of people, Isolde saw Atren and his men following them at a distance, keeping a vary eye on those around them. Eren’s champion was dead now, it wasn’t hard to assume he wasn’t in the best mood. Danger lurked at their heels, even if Diego still miraculously drew breath.

“That was amazing,” Narath said as they went. “It is good you did not see, but there is no doubt Diego is the greatest general we have now.”

“Yes,” Eleya agreed. “This should make things better for us in the palace. I do not think any of the other generals loyal to Eren want to cross Diego at the moment, even with him having just fought.”