Lottery Arena: Escaping my Mate

Preparation

VALERIAN

As I walked down the stairs behind the guard I couldn’t help but smile a little. I hadn’t expected the day to take so many unexpected turns.

My mate was beautiful and strong. I didn’t want to lose her after just meeting her. I knew I was going to have to work hard to prove to her that I wasn’t just some asshole wolf, like all the others she’d dealt with.

She’s our mate. She’ll come around, she won’t be able to fight the pull forever. Tikaani thought to me.

It’ll take everything we have to track her down in there. If she’s done this two years before without being captured then she has to have one hell of a wolf. I thought back to him.

You just leave that to me, I look forward to scenting her out. He growled out.

I still thought the whole premise was wrong, and it was clear Amaris did too. But we were flies caught in the spider's web.

We’d have to play the game to get out of it, If we had any hope of changing anything for the future. I couldn’t stop thinking about how beautiful she was, it had been wrong of me to look when she was on stage, but once I knew she was mine I couldn’t not look.

She was soft and stunning. Lilac would forever be my favorite scent.

I’d reached the front gates and had been taken through when I heard the commotion coming from the other side of the fence about 50 yards down.

I quickly walked down the pavement toward the direction of the cries. They were a little ways off, heading toward a separate building I hadn’t paid any attention to when I arrived.

The Commander had a girl over his shoulder, she was kicking and punching his back with little effect.

The guard that had interrupted our meeting was carrying the other girl, she was fighting like hell too. I could barely make out Ms. Anne’s voice telling them everything was going to be alright, that they were safe now.

“Like hell we are!” I heard one of them scream out clear as day. “What did you do with our father?!” The other one screamed just as they disappeared through a side door.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, clearly they weren’t as alone and scared as the guard had made them seem.

Did the pack do this often? Take girls against their will? I don’t know why I seemed surprised by this, the shewolves had to come from somewhere for the arena, it’s not like we had an endless supply of them in our pack.

I walked further down, edging closer to the forest on that side of the fence. Where had they even come from, I wondered, looking around.

Their clothes were beat up and dirty, and they looked thin even from a distance.

Do you smell it, Valerian? Tikaani asked solemnly.

I did...blood. I sniffed the air, smelling... fresh blood. I walked toward the wooded area following the scent.

I didn’t have to walk far at all before I saw him. There was a dead male wolf on the ground. I crouched down to get a closer look, he couldn’t have been older than 35.

He’d been shot in the back of the head, did the Commander or guards do this? Was this the girls’ father?

I heard several people coming, and quickly moved off behind a thicket of overgrowth and trees. Several guards came and lifted the man onto a portable gurney before covering him with a sheet. They carried him away without saying anything. I knew there wasn’t anything I could do, he was already dead.

I checked to make sure it was safe for me to come out. I got out of there before anyone could see me, feeling sick to my stomach.

I lived about a mile from the shewolves’ compound. Our community wasn’t massive by any means.

But it was large and well maintained thanks to the lottery arena.

The hundreds of single males lived in apartment blocks.

After they’d taken my sister Sky, I was moved into a one bedroom apartment in a large building.

The larger homes in the community were reserved solely for newly bonded couples from the lottery arena or any families that had managed to survive the fallout intacted, and there weren’t many of those.

The Alpha, along with my sister and her bonded mate Haze, lived on the south border of town. They had a very large pack house filled with several omegas serving them, as well as other high ranking pack members.

One week is all the time I had to figure out my plan. Next Monday was the start of the lottery arena. I needed to gather crucial supplies to bring with me in my allotted backpack.

I couldn’t risk losing Amaris to someone else, she was mine, and no one was going to take what was mine ever again.

Just as I unlocked my apartment door and stepped in, I smelled her.

Sky.

She always smelled like warm coffee and doughnuts mixed together to me, even when we were kids.

She was standing in my living room looking at a picture of us with our parents when we were kids. “I hear you’ve been selected for this year’s lottery arena.” She said walking toward me as I raced to her and scooped her up in a hug.

I sat her back down after a second or two. God, had she grown into such a beautiful woman. “Valerian, I don’t have much time, I came because I need to tell you what to expect in there.” She said, becoming quite serious.