Chapter Text
The stadium stank of blood.
Sebastian padded barefoot out onto the sand, hot under the searing bright lights that dangled from the ceiling. The crowd roared in greeting, as his face flashed across the vid screens tall as buildings on either side of the arena. He was the crowd favorite in the Emperor’s arena.
He ignored this. They’d made him a slave, thrown him in the fighting rings, and let him claw his way up through the ranks. Alphas entered the fighting rings as slaves, and left them either dead or purchased to be some noble’s plaything.
He knew there had already been offers for him. Rich, fat, stinking nobility from this unnatural country of Delos, where the omegas ruled and the alphas fought for the pleasure of serving them. He knew they had already begun vying for his purchase price, but some long-forgotten emperor had written a law that only the emperor could claim the victor of a fight--any fight. It was only fair, to keep the best fighters from being hawked away while they were still in the lower ranks, and to ensure that the alphas who made it to the emperor’s stadium were the best and most brutal.
Sebastian was happy to help them with that. He would fight anything they put in front of him, regardless of gender or nationality. If it fought back, all the better. If winning kept him from being snatched up as a kept stud for some fat noble, he would fight with everything he had, until the day came that he lost, or if he had the bad luck to catch the eye of the emperor himself.
The opponent who appeared on the far side of the arena was tall and skinny, a few inches taller than Sebastian and all whipcord muscle. Sebastian circled, taking his measure. Most of his opponents at the higher levels had been big guys. There were no weight categories in these fighting rings, so the big fighters had the advantage. Whether their size came from fat or muscle, they didn’t need skill to hit like a tank. But they still went down quick enough when Sebastian got a shot at them.
This one, however, was scrawny. Scars criss-crossed his body, far more than Sebastian’s trophy display of scars, and he moved fast, with a glint of madness in his eye. Sebastian found himself grinning.
Finally
, a challenge.
Setting his stance low, Sebastian circled, drawing his enemy in. He was another alpha, but that hardly mattered. Sebastian’s feelings of loyalty carried very little weight compared to his desire to win.
The punches that flew at him were deadly fast. This fight was going to
hurt
. But there was a reckless edge to that speed. His opponent had a death wish, even worse than Sebastian’s. He could use this man’s recklessness and madness against him. Now was no time to show off. Choosing a defensive technique, Sebastian stuck to his basics. The basics would keep him safe, while his enemy got more and more reckless. He could wait. An opening would come.
All around them, the audience roared for blood. They thought Sebastian was losing, the fools. He was constantly on the retreat, only landing the occasional hit, but this fight was still his.
As the fight dragged on, they were both bleeding. Sebastian ached from a pair of broken ribs, and his right hand was throbbing, but he fought just fine when he led southpaw, and it seemed to rattle his enemy when he did. By the last round, he could barely stand, but the taller alpha was staggering. One of those scar-crossed eyes was swollen shut and he turned his head too quickly side to side--some of the blows Sebastian had landed had damaged his hearing.
Dredging up the reserves of energy that he’d hoarded through the earlier rounds, Sebastian pounded through those shaky defenses, landing blow after blow. When the whipcord alpha hit the sand, bleeding out under the stadium lights, he didn’t even try to stand.
Sebastian turned his back. Let him die, or let them carry him out on a stretcher. He didn’t care.
The roar from the audience was deafening, but Sebastian ignored that, too. Taking his pain with him as the only trophy he needed, he walked back to the little door that had let him in to the ring. He’d won. That was enough. They would leave him alone until there was another fight. Another anonymous alpha for Sebastian to maim, or maybe kill.
Except that they didn’t leave him alone. There were new guards waiting for him, escorting him to a cold, clinical room where his cuts were cleaned and stitched, and they strapped him down to a table where some silver machine sent torturous shocks through him. Sebastian cursed them in every language he knew, but when the machine turned off and his bonds released, his ribs felt only bruised, no longer broken.
Still growling, he was herded into a shower room. The water was frigid, but it was still enough of a luxury that Sebastian took the opportunity without argument, and dressed gladly in the clean black slacks they brought him. He lashed out when they brought the chains for his wrists and a leash for his throat, and managed to bloody a guard’s face before the shocks through his slave collar subdued him.
His guards were silent throughout these processes. Sebastian considered asking them what was going on, why his treatment had changed, and where they were taking him, but decided he didn’t want to know. The options were few, and he would find out soon enough. Likely that his guards wouldn’t answer, and Sebastian preferred to keep his pride and not ask.
An enclosed silver transport waited outside, where there were new guards, just as talkative as the last ones. Betas, all of them. Useless, mundane betas.
By the time he got to the palace, Sebastian suspected where he was going. Had to be the emperor, or one of his favorites. He had been bought. The slave collar around his neck tingled, and Sebastian snarled at the gawping courtiers in the hallway as he was prodded along. Now he regretted not killing his enemy in the arena. He wanted
somebody
to die for this.
They brought him to a throne room, where the omega nobility chattered and stared at his approach. He bared his teeth at them. Mewling whores who didn’t know their place. How dared they chain
him
, an alpha, their natural superior in every way.
And at the center, on the throne, wearing a tilted crown and a smirk, was the emperor of the omegas (that was the start of any number of dirty jokes, in Sebastian’s homeland of Naxos). Dark-haired and slender, with eyes as empty as the void, he wore his finery with a wanton nonchalance.
“A whore in a crown,” Sebastian said, with a laugh, because he had never, ever known his place, and never been able to keep his damn mouth shut. Not in Naxos, when he was outranked by other alphas, and not as a prisoner of war, when it could have meant his life. His nostrils flared, blatantly scenting the omega, although the pheremones mixed and muddled in this crowded hall, and he couldn’t pick out which one belonged to the bitch on the throne.
“We were impressed by your fight,” the emperor tittered. “Very brutal.”
“I’m so glad I passed the test to be your stud. Do tell me who I’ll be fucking.”
“Oh, you’ve got a
mouth
on you,” the emperor drawled. “Cute. I hear they call you the Tiger. Well, kitten, I don’t want a stud. I want a pet. Try not to be boring.” He made a sharp gesture with one hand, and the guards hauled Sebastian forward by his chains, linking the leash on his collar to a metal ring set into the floor to one side of the dias. The length of it left him just out of reach of the throne, even if he strained, and the courtiers cleverly stayed out of reach. He obviously wasn’t the first of the emperor’s pets with an attitude problem.
“What happened to the last one?” Sebastian asked, although he’d very clearly been dismissed from the emperor’s attention.
“I had him skinned,” was the response, with a psychotic smile.
The emperor of the omegas was mad. Completely and utterly insane. Sebastian started to laugh, and then couldn’t stop. This goddamn country. Omegas in charge, half of them nutters, and for some reason military strategy seemed to come like second nature to the bitches.
And they ignored him. The most deadly alpha in their stinking little country, who had just an hour before had the rapt attention of the entire city, and now he was chained like a dog at the foot of their throne and
ignored
.
Court went on around him, a mix of inane chatter about gossip and entertainment around the edges, and the business of court that the emperor conducted meanwhile. Bored within minutes, Sebastian sprawled on the steps of the dias. As long as they were all going to ignore him, they could just go to hell while he took a nap.
He was woken up when the court dispersed, and chained up in a windowless cell down the hall from the emperor’s room. Sebastian couldn’t be bothered to complain. It was clean, and the mattress was the thickest he had slept on in months. Being ignored was just fine with him. It was considerably better than being expected to provide entertainment, or to pleasure some sagging omega past his prime.
Midway through the second day, he actually heard the emperor’s name, in amongst the swaddling of titles that these courtiers padded around every sentence. James Moriarty. Killed his predecessor and took the throne. Sebastian didn’t judge on that count. Heirarchy by cleverness wasn’t so different from the heirarchy of strength back home, and anyone who could be outwitted or outmatched clearly didn’t deserve to rule.
They continued to ignore him.
He was a trophy, a mere ornament for the emperor’s court. From what he could gather, the emperor always had an alpha trophy at hand, and Sebastian had just had the bad luck to have come to his attention when he was in need of a replacement. But sooner or later the emperor would go into heat, just like any other omega, and he would need an alpha around to take care of that.
Sebastian didn’t mind so much. At least Moriarty was young and pretty. And until then, he could nap.
Court was achingly boring. There were petty disputes brought before the emperor for judgement and simpering ploys performed by the courtiers for favor. Meals were much the same, although there was often entertainment present, in the form of musicians or dancers. Only the war councils held the potential to be interesting, and he was banished from those, left to wait in the hallway and snarl at his guards like a feral cat. Moriarty never once addressed Sebastian, only indicating by a hand gesture to the guards whether he wished his pet brought along.
It was two days before Moriarty paid the first hint of attention to him since he’d been chained to the dias.
A troupe of wrestlers came to perform for the court. All betas, but apparently they’d won some sort of awards out in a backwater province for their training. Moriarty picked two of them at random to compete for his amusement.
They were talented, tumbling swiftly over each other in a variety of holds. The two he had picked seemed very equally matched, constantly pinning each other and then slipping from the hold with a new twist. But Sebastian watched with a fighter’s eyes, and noticed that there were far too many openings left ignored, which their apparent level of skill should easily have exploited. But instead, they always went for the more flourishing move.
He laughed. “It’s choreographed.”
Moriarty held up a hand and the court went still. “Admirable,” he said to the wrestling trainer, as though he hadn’t heard Sebastian’s comment. “Aren’t they ever so amusing. And at this level of training, surely you don’t mind a demonstration against my pet? He’s a mere boxer.” His eyes flicked over to Sebastian, measuring. Sebastian got the immediate impression that if he was wrong, he was going to be in a world of pain. “But it amuses him to think he knows something about wrestling. I’m certain you can prove him wrong.”
And if he was right, the wrestling troupe was going to die.
Well, at least this was a break in the doldrums of his life. A guard unlocked Sebastian’s chains, and he took the opportunity to stretch his arms and shoulders, growling to himself. Barefoot and shirtless, the way he’d come to the court and the way it pleased Moriarty to keep him, he stepped into the makeshift wrestling ring.
The emperor was right--he
didn’t
know wrestling. He’d always done better with his fists. But no one expected purity of style from him. Just fight without throwing punches, right?
He let his opponent come at him, deflecting his grip and knocking him aside, with a modified street-fighting technique that seemed like the best choice here. The wrestler was smaller than Sebastian, so he used that to his advantage, keeping a rock-solid stance against his attempts to topple and then slipping cat-like out of his grasp.
It was an odd fight, both of them off-kilter from unfamiliar styles, but Sebastian had just spent the past twenty minutes analyzing this idiot’s wrestling, whereas the wrestler had no idea what to expect. He toyed with him as they struggled, learning some of the techniques and turning them back against his enemy with a new twist. It didn’t take long for Sebastian to get one step ahead of him, making him look like a fool by being constantly just out of reach and slipping easily out of his holds.
The instant Sebastian managed to get two steps ahead of him, he was behind the wrestler, an arm around his neck. The dull snap of his spine breaking was deafening in the silent throne room.
Triumphant, Sebastian let the body drop, pacing back to his spot at the foot of the dias and sprawling there, waiting to see what would become of the losers. He could feel the emperor’s gaze on him, pleased to have his full attention where it belonged.
After a very long pause, Moriarty’s eyes returned back to the wrestlers who had
dared
to present a dumbshow as a combat. “Boil them,” he hissed.
Sebastian grinned.