I letthe words hang between us. I wanted to say something else, but the moment for royal sentiment had passed centuries before either of us was born.
One of the guards signaled, and the gates began to rise. The scrape of iron on stone was nearly lost in the roar from above. Dominic braced himself, flexed his hands one final time. I took my place at the side, in the shadow where the firsts wait for their fighters to prove themselves or die.
At the top, the Council’s stage was set: a circle of packed dirt, surrounded by tiers of stone benches, every seat filled with something dangerous or beautiful or both. The arena was rimmed with torches, their flames blue and white, burning without smoke. At the far end, the dais for the Council, the Chairwoman in her robes of authority, flanked by the other adjudicators.
I could see the box where Menace’s people sat. Savannah sat with Bronc’s whore of a Luna, and all the traitors who voted against us also joined them. They’d somehow even had the Kozlovs—Kazimir and Lucia—with the patient hunger of old money in their box. They’d all feel my wrath when their man fell.
Across the pit, Menace and his first Bronc appeared. Menace stood in a cloak of battered leather and arrogance. Soon he’d be nothing but blood and memory.
Dominic took a breath and stepped into the light. The runes on his chest were hidden from the eyes of everyone. No one would know he had a significant advantage over the mutt. There was a ripple in the crowd, a collective intake of air.
The Chairwoman’s voice rang out over the arena: “Let all witnesses record the rite of challenge. By ancient law, by the will of the Council, by the blessing of the Goddess, two men enter, and one will leave. No weapons save those born of flesh. All debts paid in blood. Once the battle begins, it shall not end until only one stands.”
A hush fell. The only sound was the torch flame; the animal whisper of wolves on the wind.
Dominic let his cloak fall. He wore nothing underneath. The crowd’s roar rose again.
I locked eyes with Menace across the pit. He gave me a small, mocking nod. He knew somehow, that we had cheated, that the deck was loaded. But he was still here. Still ready to die for a girl he’d only known months.
Dominic stepped forward, and so did Menace.
The next moment would decide everything.
I stood at the edge, hands clasped behind my back, every muscle locked. There was no prayer for what was about to happen. There was only law, and blood, and the hope that when it was over, my daughter would know the pain that she had caused me.
The horn sounded, and both Dominic and Menace instantly shifted, their wolves both magnificent.
The battle had begun.
Chapter 28
Savannah
There’s a word for a sound that makes you want to crawl out of your own skin. A word for the howl that’s half birth-cry, half execution order. There’s not a word for how it felt to hear Menace’s wolf split the world open in front of me, but if there was, it would be something guttural, something wet and bladed.
I stood at the edge of the pit and let my nails gouge the railing. Blood welled under each thumb, a prayer for luck offered to a goddess who’d already weighed us and found us insufficient. The air stank of blood, old and new, the audience’s anticipation sharpening it into something bright enough to slice cartilage. The blue fire in the torches painted everything in morgue-colors, even Menace’s white wolf, who gleamed like a cauterized nerve.
Dominic’s wolf was larger than I remembered. It wasn’t just the mass, though he was easily seventy pounds heavier than Menace, his shoulders corded with obscene new muscle. It was the way he moved, a sinuousness that looked borrowed, as if the body wasn’t entirely his to command. When he lunged at the opening horn, the movement was wrong, too fast for the bones underneath. I smelled magic instantly—a tang of rot, sickly and high-pitched—and the crowd did too. They shrank back from the rail, supernaturals who’d seen enough sorcery to recognize a ticking bomb when it flexed its claws.
Menace met the charge head-on, no hesitation, no calculation. His body was a coiled spring, every muscle cabled to snap at the first feint. But Dominic’s leap was pure physics, not strategy, and Menace barely evaded the snapping jaws, his white pelt losing a ghost-patch to the black wolf’s teeth. The crowd roared. Menace circled, head low, and his lips peeled back in a grimace of calculated rage.
The first exchange was brutal, but it wasn’t the worst thing I’d ever seen. Not yet. They clashed, then separated, then clashed again, both landing blows, but Dominic was cheating—healing, even as Menace opened fresh wounds. Every time Menace scored a bite or a rake, the skin sealed itself with a rippling shiver, closing up the way a mouth does when you clamp your jaw tight against a scream.
Menace switched tactics, going low, aiming for the underbelly. He feinted left, darted right, and went for the femoral. It worked—Dominic’s wolf shrieked as Menace’s jaws closed around his thigh, twisting, worrying the bone. But Dominic just reared up impossibly, and slammed his full weight down, crushing Menace to the dirt. The thud reverberated through my spine. I thought I felt a rib crack.
I doubled over the rail, bile burning my throat. For a moment, the world narrowed to the two of them: white and black, hope and extinction, a metaphor so on-the-nose I would have laughed if I wasn’t swallowing the taste of my own fear.
Dominic’s magic-enhanced wolf pressed the advantage, pummeling Menace into the arena floor. I saw white fur turn pink, then red. I saw the way his tail curled protectively over his flank, the way his eyes never left the enemy’s. Even as he bled, he calculated. He waited for the moment the black wolf’s teeth reached too far, and then—like the world’s most beautiful trap—he snapped his head up and caught Dominic by the lower jaw.
Menace held on with everything, legs scrambling for purchase. He twisted, hard, and Dominic yelped. But the sound didn’t last. Dominic’s claws raked Menace’s face, blinding him on one side, leaving a flap of skin dangling over his left eye. I screamed, and so did someone in the crowd.
The fight went on. It had been minutes, but it felt like hours. The arena was a centrifuge of violence, every turn escalating the damage. Menace was on defense now, staying low, dodging the worst of it, but the black wolf’s stamina was obscene. Every time I thought Menace would get a breather, Dominic was on him, a storm without end.
At the twenty-minute mark, they were both streaked with gore. Menace’s coat was mostly pink now, and there were tufts of fur littering the sand. Dominic’s right eye hung half-closed, oozing something blue-black, and one ear was missing entirely. Menace was panting, tongue lolling, every breath a gamble. I could feel the pain through the bond, each new laceration sending aftershocks through my chest. I clenched the rail until my fingers went numb, then dug my teeth into my arm to keep from screaming.
There were times when Menace looked to be out. Twice, he went down and stayed down, just long enough for the crowd to start murmuring in defeat. But each time, he got up. Not because he was stronger—he wasn’t—but because something in him refused to give the bastards the satisfaction.
At the thirty-minute mark, Dominic tried to end it. He went for the jugular, literally. Menace sidestepped, let the jaws close over nothing, and then leaped for Dominic’s exposed throat. He barely missed. Dominic caught him mid-air and flung him into the pit wall, hard enough to leave a bloody streak. Menace slid to the ground and lay still, sides heaving, one leg at a sick angle.
