"No," she said. "That can't be right."
"That's what he said," I told her quietly.
The blood drained from her face.
He was hers.
He had to be, if Liv's magic felt the same to every other person but him.
Right?
The fight began, and we all looked back at the pit.
Jonah and his opponent circled each other, both of them dressed only in workout shorts. There would be two fights today. One in human form, and one in wolf. If the winners were different, they would fight a tie breaker, with shifting allowed.
Jonah threw the first punch.
The other man dodged it, and threw one of his own.
Jonah ducked easily, hitting him with a hook to the side of his face before taking the man to the ground.
I could barely track their motions.
A few punches.
A hard roll.
The other guy had Jonah pinned for a few seconds, but Jonah managed to use the position to break the other guy's nose with his forehead and retake control of the fight.
With two solid, consecutive punches after he broke the other bastard's nose, he had his opponent slumped over on the hard, packed dirt beneath them.
Roaring cheers echoed around the pit, but ours weren't among them.
When I looked back at Liv, her face was even paler than usual.
She wasn't just watching our friend fight anymore. She was watching her potential fated mate battle for the right to make vows to protect his ex-fiancée.
I took her hand.
She held on for dear life as someone roused Jonah's opponent with what looked like some kind of smelling salts. He looked dazed when he got up.
Both men dropped their shorts, and shifted. While fur exploded out of Jonah, his wolf taking control, the other man's transformation was slower.
The fight was over before it began.
Jonah's gray wolf slammed his shoulder into the other wolf's face, then went for his throat. Blood dripped to the dirt, visible enough from where we sat above the pit, as Jonah's wolf held the other in place with his teeth. If the pinned wolf tried to get away, he would die.
"He calls me Zap. I should've put it together," Liv whispered, as we watched Jonah calmly lift his fist in the air while Gwen announced him as Rumor's new Beta.
"None of us knew," Callum said quietly.
I knew he was regretting not trying his magic on me earlier. He tended to blame himself, even for things that weren't his fault.
Zapwas the name of my cafe's version of energy drinks. I'd worked with the Nymphs to get the plants we needed to make them, because they were a twist on magically-enhanced tea leaves with a few other things added.
I'd heard him call her that too, and had assumed he was talking aboutherenergy. Not some energy she accidentally gave him.
Jonah climbed the ladder that led out of the pit.
