Chapter 181

Amaris stood there in horror at what she had just done. One of the guards came up the stairs to collect her. Jason stepped forward and grabbed Amaris' arm. "It's fine. I have her." He waved off the guard. Amaris looked at him. Not sure if she trusted him completely, but her gut told her that there was more to his story than what they knew of his betrayal. Jason grabbed her arm and began to move her, so the guard backed off and walked away. His mate followed along behind him timidly. Jason took his time getting Amaris down the stairs and starting to walk around the arena. Once they were out of sight of the guard, Jason pulled Amaris aside. His mate came around them and stood in the way so that no one could see that Jason was talking to Amaris. "I think I have a plan to get you out of here. You need to trust me. We have very little time. During the next challenge when everyone is paying attention to what is going on, I will sneak you out from behind the royale box." Jason spoke like he already knew what the next challenge was. "The Challenge, hopefully will go on for quite a while, so it will give us some time to get you out before you are noticed." Jason smiled unsure. "I do need to ask one favor. Take Persia with you." Jason looked at the lovely but shy young girl next to him. The two of them locked eyes as she looked back at him with surprise. "No! I will not leave you here. We both go or not at all." She said with finality. It seemed to Amaris that this little tiny woman may look meek, but she was not going to take no for an answer. By the scowl on Jason's face, this conversation was not finished. "We need to go, but wait for my signal and pretend to be sick again. Move to the back of the box, and I will take care of the rest." Jason stood up straight and grabbed her arm and led her through the door way like nothing ever happened.

Amaris tried to look back at him, but her held her upper arm out and in front of him like he could not wait to get rid of this thing he disliked. Once inside the huge doors, Amaris could see that they led to an enormous underground cavern. There was a large staging area directly inside the doors, and then it opened out to another large arena, but this one held a maze of large hedges and vines. There were three sets of seating areas, one on either side and at the far end there was more seating with a raised box in the middle. Even from this distance, Amaris could tell that the vampires were in all the seats that were at the far end. Their pale faces shown like a bright light was on them. The prisoners were split into their teams on either side of the arena as before. Jason suddenly yanked on Amaris' arm hard and pulled her to the right where he was heading. "Let's go. Walk." He said gruffly. He pushed Amaris ahead of him, as the aisle was only big enough for one at a time. Amaris could see that the guards were standing at the very top and very bottom of the rows in the stands. As she walked by, she noticed Anna sitting in the stands, and Taji was now with her. He must have snuck from one group to another in all the chaos of moving groups. Amaris watched to see if she could catch Anna's eye to get her attention, but she and Taji were both looking at Lyle whom was sitting between them. Amaris watched as Taji reached down and put his hands on Lyle and closed his eyes. She knew what he was trying to do. He was not yet aware that her powers did not work in this place. They told her so when she first came in, and she had seen first hand that they did not work when she tried after she first entered the temple. While she continued to stare, she saw that Lyle regained consciousness. He sat up and was talking to them animatedly. Both Taji and Anna had to grab him as he made to get up and go somewhere. They sat him down and were talking to him. All at once, Amaris walked into what felt like a warm wall. She finally focused in on where she was going and realized that she had walked into the back of the line of prisoners that were waiting to be seated. The prisoner turned around to see who ran into the back of them. "Hey watch it! You id..." The man did not finish his sentence as Amaris looked up into the face of none other than Andreas. He did not hesitate and gave her a huge bear hug. "Are you okay Mari?" he asked looking down at her. That was when he noticed who was walking behind her. Amaris found herself being shoved behind Andreas, as he moved forward. "I should rip the arms off of you Traitor! You betrayed your own family for what? A piece of ass!!!" The guards came running down and grabbed his arms and restrained him. Amaris too had her arms wrapped around Andreas' body trying in vane to restrain him, but the guards were able to subdue him better. Andreas spat in Jason's face. Jason said nothing the whole time. He just stood there and took everything that his brother said and did without any reaction. His face was completely emotionless. The guards dragged Andreas off as he continued to howl "Traitor!" at the top of his lungs. One of the guards had grabbed hold of Amaris' arm and yanked her into line again. Jason nodded to the guards and grabbed Amaris' arm from the one holding her. Amaris could hear Jason's mate whispering to him. "It's ok. They don't know the whole story. It will be ok. We will get all of us out of here and make this alright."