I’m not formally participating in either weekend snippet hop right now because I’ve had a medical issue which is constraining my time and energy (not cancer), and right now am in that time frame where it’s all testing, with the answers I need yet to come. I’ll keep posting a  weekly snippet because the effort to do so isn’t too taxing, but I just can’t make it around to everyone else’s blog to comment. I apologize for not commenting last weekend but I was in the hospital.

Here’s the link to the Weekend Writing Warriors central page, so you can visit all the participants sharing excerpts today…a fun way to sample new books and find new authors! (Also welcome to the Sunday Snippet visitors!)

Sharing from my second scifi romance gladiator novel RENNYR.

If you want the full story of what they go through and how they battle to survive and protect each other, and their romance, with all the nuances and details, the book is available wide. 

The excerpt – I’ve jumped ahead to the next day:

All along the corridor the force barriers deactivated and men were herded away as he had been previously. His own cell remained locked. Rennyr paced, the great beast inside him impatient to get on with whatever today held for them.

He paused in midstep and rushed to the force barrier as a new squad of guards and robos arrived, passing him by again and going to the big cell at the end of the corridor. He heard a commotion, shouted orders and the buzz of blasters and guessed a few of the prisoners must have resisted the guards. Heart beating wildly, he prayed to the goddess the woman hadn’t been involved. Footsteps echoed and the remaining special prisoners marched past his cell, closely watched by the guards. Rennyr focused on her in the middle of the group, pale and appearing shaken but unharmed.

She glanced at him and for a moment time stopped. Swallowing hard, he yelled out, “What’s your name?”

“Jaine,” she said as she kept walking, jostled by the men around her.

“I’ll find you,” he shouted but she was too far away now to acknowledge his pledge.

“Hey,” Rennyr yelled at the guards, surprised and worried because no one was stopping to collect him. “You forgot one. Let me out.”

Captain Symonds shook his head. “Calm down, you’re not fighting today. You can relax. Westklin’s not going to waste a potentially valuable property like you on another death match, not now. You passed the test.”

“But I have to fight,” he said, dismayed not to be given the opportunity to defend his newly found mate.

VS: So what will Rennyr do next? Jaine has no chance in the arena…more next week.

RENNYR (BADARI GLADIATORS SERIES BOOK 2) by Veronica Scott

Rennyr was a genetically engineered senior soldier in his Badari Warrior pack until one day he woke up on a strange planet naked, disoriented and about to be sold into the gladiator arena for the rest of his life. Unscrupulous guards faked his death in the lab where he was created and sold him into slavery in the galaxy’s hinterlands. Kill or be killed is the rule in his new life and a Badari never gives up. He’ll fight to stay alive until the Badari goddess sees fit to decree his death and release him from the wretched existence.

Jaine Mitchel of the Sectors was on her way to an exciting research internship until pirates seized the spaceship on which she was a passenger and took her to feature in a gladiator ‘death match’ in the galactic hinterlands. She has no hope of surviving in the arena until a man she only glimpsed in passing breaks out of his cell and saves her life, declaring her to be his fated mate. Given to Rennyr as his reward for winning the death match, Jaine must share a cell and a bed with the handsome, not human, gladiator and together they have to find a way to survive in this merciless world of violence and death. Their mutual attraction is off the charts. Falling in love is the easy part, finding a way to escape or even to remain together is the challenge. At any time their mutual owner could decide thumbs up or thumbs down on one or both of them, or sell them separately.

Their only hope is a mysterious gladiator master from offworld who may be coming to buy Rennyr. Will he take Jaine as well? Could Rennyr win freedom for them both if he does well enough in the arena? Badari Warriors claim their mates for life and Rennyr has no intention of losing Jaine…RENNYR is an 80K word novel and can be read as a standalone. KYDEN is the first book in the series.

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