The dank creak and rattle of metal cages, chains, groans and huffing bodies were nearly as overwhelming as the stench. It was a constant onslaught of blood, vomit, and bodily waste of which I had never experienced before.

I shifted slightly, trying to ease the pressure on my knees from the slick, stone floor without adding too much weight on my shoulders. My most recent misbehaviour had ended with my wrists shackled behind my back and chained to the ceiling in a reverse hanging. I could either hold myself up on my knees and save my shoulders, or fall forward and let them tear and dislocate from my own weight.

It had taken me far longer than it should have to come to terms with the fact that what was happening ... was, indeed, happening. That what should have been nothing more than a bad sci-fi movie plot was real, and I was the main character.

Well, I was the main character of my own story and a mere blip in the grand scheme of what was happening around me. I wasn't in Kansas anymore ... Or Nevada, as it were. Or even London, from before that. Or Norway, from before even that.

No ... it hadn't been until I was standing in some sort of sand-filled, echoing arena with multiple bellowing, monstrous creatures hell-bent on killing me while hundreds, or even thousands, of people, cheered on that I'd really accepted that this was real. This wasn't an elaborate prank devised by my brother or friends.

This wasn't my ex locking me in a basement for a year.

This wasn't my mind going down a crazy rabbit hole while my broken body was airlifted out of a combat zone.

This was real, and I wasn't on Earth anymore. If I didn't kill whatever alien creature was charging at me in that sandy arena, then I was going to be the next body in the stinking pile, lost on the other side of the galaxy.

My mother was going to die one day never knowing what happened to me, and somehow that hurt more than the rest of my family doing the same, even my twin brother.

Perhaps if I still had my eyes I would have figured it out sooner, not that it would have helped the situation as a whole, but I would have come to terms with it sooner.

That said, there was a small peace in not knowing what the creatures around me looked like. What I had heard and smelled so far painted a picture in my head that would never be allowed to air on public television.

Too many legs. Not enough legs. Legs that were slimy and slithery. Legs that were more bug-like than human. Arms and appendages that stretched the imagination. Claws and talons clicking with each step. Grunts and roars and chitters. Bodily functions that sounded and smelled like the stuff of nightmares. I'd lost count of how many different types of creatures I'd picked out of the sea of noise.

I was quite literally terrified to know the realities of who and what was in the cages around mine.

And the smell ...

It wasn't just the horrid stench of unwashed bodies mulling in their own filth that assaulted me. It was the fear, anger, and despair they all emanated. Some of them were nothing but terrified while others smelled of pure rage. Most were a combination of emotions, and none were happy, though some gleaned obvious satisfaction from winning. I couldn't blame them for that. But to take on the role of Devil's Advocate ... whatever the strange creatures were around me were, however aggressive and terrifying and ready to kill me at a moment's notice they were ... we were in the same boat. We were all in cages. We all wore shock collars that would leave us in a pain-filled unconscious mess, or turn our heads into a pile of melted brain-gravy, depending on the guard's mood.

Or owners?

It was hard to figure out what was what. I couldn't understand the languages, and there were many. Some had human-like connotations while others were just garbled sounds of clicks or squeals or ... something. There were too many obviously different tongues to even begin to pick up a word or two.

And even if I could, I couldn't speak, and I doubted anyone would understand British Sign Language this far away from the United Kingdom.

I could barely make a sound, not since my throat had been slicked with an iron blade years before when I was trapped in that basement.

And speaking of iron ... The bastards had put solid iron rings around my neck and wrists because the collar wasn't enough.

So now blind, mute, iron-bound. I couldn't see what was happening, scream my rage, or even shapeshift. The iron made it impossible to heal as quickly as I normally would. It made me heal human-slow instead of shifter-fast.

Thrice handicapped, but still alive.

Still fighting, to my own detriment.

I figured out that I had to fight in the arena to stay alive, but I didn't stop there. If they wanted me in the cage they'd have to make me go in. If they wanted me out, they'd have to drag me out. If they wanted me on my knees they'd have to fight me to get me there, and if they wanted me to walk a certain direction to go somewhere new, I was breaking as many appendages as I could get my hands on.

I'd chosen to stay feral. I decided to fight everything.

I could do that. I was trained. My twin and I had been born into one of the oldest shifter lineages left in the world ... our world. Our family and pack had raised us to be strong. Fast. Smart.

Survivors.

We'd joined the Royal Navy together when we turned eighteen and three years later we advanced into S.A.S Special Operations. A feat in itself, even more so because I was a woman. Once you hit a certain level though, they stopped caring if you had a uterus, and only cared about how good you were. My brother and I turned out to be extremely valuable together. We were inexplicably linked.

After I'd lost my eyes to a face-full of acid that had burned so deep it had damaged my brain, my father and uncle together had helped me get through rehab, then created their own rehab designed specifically for me to get me walking again, talking again, running again ... and fighting again. My brain healed and my skin mostly healed, leaving me with light scaring around my eyes and face. My eyeballs reformed but the vision was lost completely in my human form, and mostly in my shifted form. I could see some lights and shadows in that form, but that was it.

I had to count my blessings. I'd seen human women attacked with acid and the results of it were devastating. I was damn lucky to be what I was because I came out of it mostly OK. Some damage was too much even for shifters to heal, and this was one of those times.

I'd lost my eyes. Not my life. My pack had helped me learn to navigate the world with my other senses as well as I ever had before, but I still missed things. I couldn't hear everything. There were always going to be things I couldn't 'see' around me.

My brother had asked me to describe what it was like to get around and how I figured out the layout of a room from just standing in the doorway. It wasn’t completely accurate, but I told him it was reminiscent of Daredevil’s vision in the comics or shows or whatever.

It worked something like that for me. Echolocation, I guess. I tried not to think about the logistics of it and had just let it be. Just do. Just make it work. Just figure it out.

Right now, I knew that the room we were in was more like a cave that had been shaped into what it needed to be rather than built with brick and stone. Eight large cages were on either side. The cave mouth to the right led up into the arena, and the metal double doors to the left were where the guards and other perusers came and went. They were also where captives were taken in and out.

The right was only used when it was time to fight.

I knew that all of the other captives were males. I'd met one woman in the arena three fights before and, well, I was here, and she wasn't, so she was dead, which left me the only woman in a room of fifteen angry, battle-hardened men.

I didn't need to know their languages to understand the connotations of what they yelled through their bars at me. I also didn't need any physiological anatomy lessons on the various intergalactic species around me to figure out the rhythmic flaps, grunts, groans, and moans made in my general direction.

That, it seemed, was universal.