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. 

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: Rennyr is desperate to get out of his cell and into the arena where Jaine has been sent to meet her fate. Continuing on from last week. “But I have to fight,” he’d said…

“What you have to do is stay put and wait for the Master to have time to deal with you.” And the man was gone, striding away to catch up with his squad and the doomed prisoners.

Incredulous, Rennyr stared after him, fangs and talons deployed. It had never occurred to him he wouldn’t be in the arena today, able to watch over the woman—Jaine—and make sure she survived the carnage unharmed. She didn’t have the stance or bearing of a soldier. She wouldn’t last five minutes in the kind of melee he’d been involved in the last time.

No, no, no. He searched the tiny cell for something, anything he could tear loose and hurl at the force barrier in an effort to short it out. This place wasn’t built to hold Badari and certainly not one enraged at the threat to his prospective mate. Getting a good grip on the sink, he exerted every bit of his strength, drawing on reserves he’d rarely had to dip into, and slowly, with the shriek of stressed metal the unit tore free of the wall. Water spewed from the broken plumbing in a torrential downpour, drenching him as he spun with gathering force and threw the whole thing into the middle of the barrier.

With an explosion of sparks and a concussive sound that shook the immediate area, the doorway blew out as the force field yielded. Rennyr leapt through the opening and sprinted through the hall toward the arena staging room.

VS: But meanwhile Jaine has already been sent into the arena, so how is she faring? Shall I switch POV to her next or stick with Rennyr’s actions?

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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