Forced into the Arena, I Made Her Join Me

Caesar shook his head in pain.

I seized the opening, tumbled away, and scrambled up the nearest branch on all fours. The near miss left me gasping, and the searing pain tearing across my back nearly knocked me out.

Then, Sasha's voice crackled over the loudspeaker, breathless with excitement. "It's raining tips, folks! Huge thanks to our top donor!"

Hugh hollered up at me in the tree, "Come on down, Lucian! Didn't you say once you build enough trust with the animals, you can touch them? So why aren't you touching the lion now?

"Come on down. Go bond with your precious boy, then!"

Sasha's voice rang out again, cruel and almost cheerful, "Lucian, to make sure you're really enjoying yourself, I cleared out every staff member from the predator zone. Right now, it's just me and Hugh. No one else is here to save you."

I lay sprawled on the rough branch, heaving and coughing up blood. The blood loss had my head spinning, but my will to live was razor-sharp.

I had to stay alive.

That thought pushed down my anger and humiliation. I swallowed my pride and begged, "Sasha, let me out. I swear I'll let this slide. We'll make it a clean divorce. You can have all the assets. Please."

Sasha sneered, idly picking at her fresh manicure. "Don't kid yourself. I don't believe for a second you'd go through this and just let it slide. You're hard to kill, you know that? Just like your dead grandma."

"He just loves you too much to die on you," Hugh jeered from the sidelines.

Sasha looked up at me, shaking on the branch, barely hanging on. For once, a flicker of pity crossed her eyes.

"Lucian, since you love me so much, I'll be generous. I'll tell you the truth. I pulled your grandma's oxygen tube out. That's why she died."

My mind went blank as if a hand were closing around my throat.

"She was just like you are now, clutching my pant leg and begging. She cried half the night before she finally stopped breathing. Watching her was fun."

The last tether in my mind finally snapped.

Grandma raised me, skimped on her own stomach cancer treatment, and emptied her savings to send me overseas.

She kept outrunning the disease, slipping death's grip over and over. In the end, she died in despair because of Sasha, the vicious woman I married.

I never should've left Grandma with her just to go overseas and train as an animal trainer.

The searing pain in my back and Caesar's roar felt a world away. A tidal wave of hatred and regret slammed into me.

I stopped caring about anything else. I yanked the remote I'd treated like a good-luck charm from my pocket and mashed the buttons mapped to every electric fence gate in the predator zone.

"Sasha, you're going to pay with your life!"

Weren't they here for the live stream thrill? Fine. I'd give them a real show.

A shrill alarm blared through the entire zoo. Sasha and Hugh screamed in panic.

"What's happening? What's going on?"

"Lucian, what buttons did you push? Wait. Is… Is that remote real?"

They stared, terrified, as the electric fence gates unlocked with a heavy thunk. One opened, then another, until a dozen or so predator enclosures snapped open on their own.