Chapter One
“Kick his ass, Aria!”
“Fuck, yeah! I wanna see some blood!”
“Oh, fuck you! She’s gonna get pummeled!”
The crowd was loud and feisty tonight.
Call me crazy, but I loved it.
The sparsely constructed, rusted metal stands haphazardly shoved against the underground walls of the arena rattled and creaked, joining the cacophony of the loud yells and catcalls from hundreds of voices.
Every few moments, a bottle or can would fly across the large warehouse-like space, adding to the general chaos of the atmosphere. This kind of shit was pretty much par for the course in this part of Boston, especially in the clandestine, underground MMA fighting rings.
They weren’t necessarily known to be the safest and most pristine places.
Like I said, I loved it.
I was used to this, to the dredge and stank of the dirtiest and most back-alley people and places in Boston. After all, I’d spent most of my life running in these circles, doing what it took to survive in the city’s foster system. There weren’t a lot of options for an orphaned kid, and I’d had to work with what life had thrown at me.
The bell rang out, and I glanced up as my opponent walked straight-faced down the aisle.
He was a big motherfucker, his arms as thick as my thighs and his snarl missing several teeth from whatever street fights he’d lost—or maybe won—over the years. His skin was spotted with small scars, and his right eye twitched unnervingly. There were no rules in the underground, and even though I’d been pressured to stay in the female leagues, fighting people my own size, I’d gotten bored. It’d stopped being fun when I started winning matches within the first couple of rounds.
So after a lot of pushing, my mentor, Vincent, had convinced the guy who ran the fight ring to let me go up against men.
It definitely wasn’t boring.
“Fucking hell, Aria. You sure you got this? Remember, if all else fails, stay low and go for the kidneys,” Vin reminded me, stepping close to the raised ring and squinting up at me through the ropes.
“I got this. I’ve been fighting my whole life. And don’t worry, I won’t take him down too fast. I know this is a big draw for the crowd. They fucking love it when I beat up a guy.”
He shook his head and rolled his eyes. “This dude is a legend. And you can’t count fist-fighting in the street when you were twelve as experience in fighting.”
My dad had been a fighter too, and after he’d died when I was ten, it’d only felt natural to follow in his footsteps. Mom had passed away when I was just a baby, so there’d been no one left to talk me out of it.
Vin had known my dad, back in the day. He was an older guy, an ex-fighter himself, and a lifelong Bostonian. He watched out for me even though, at nineteen, I didn’t need that much looking out for anymore.
I shook out my shoulders and neck, loosening them up. “Yeah, but I have a reason to fight, one he doesn’t. Rent’s coming up, and I really don’t want to have to start taking odd jobs from the creepy as hell dark magic users again. One job from them was more than enough.”
Vin’s dark brown eyes shifted back and forth. “Shit. Don’t say that too loud. There are quite a few magic users in the audience today. They’re watching you.”
My gaze drifted toward the crowd. Shit. He’s right.