Cole said, “He’s going to endher.”
Julian pressed back onto his paws like a mountain rising from tectonic plates and lunged toward Cassandra again, dark muzzle wet with her blood, fangs bared. He gripped her thigh in his mouth and shook his head as though trying to dismember her. Her leg stayed attached, but she toppled over. He dragged her a couple feet, but then she bucked, and Julian sputtered, emitting a great choking sound as though he’d gotten a mouthful of fur. The moment he let her go, she crawled away from him, belly to theground.
But he was still wheezing, batting one of his legs across his muzzle as though trying to brush off Cassandra’s blood. Heretched.
Voices began to rise, shouts, jeers, cheers. Like spectators at a sports match, the crowd was becoming boisterous. Although they kept a safe distance from the wolves, Nora and Lori orbited around theirAlphas.
At the sound of Julian vomiting, Cassandra flipped around, positioned herself in a crouch, and, with a keening moan, heaved herself up. Her momentum was so sluggish it looked as though she were moving in slow-motion and yet she managed to tip Julian over. Both wolves crashed down in a mix of bloodied brown fur, bodies writhing andjerking.
A snarl echoed against the tawny trunks of the swaying pine trees and ricocheted like the blaring sunlight on the tall glass façade of theinn.
A whimperensued.
And then the wet snap of an overextendedvein.
My skin broke out in goose bumps as one Alpha stole the life ofanother.
50
Julian hadfallen.
The upset created a ripple of cries and outbursts down below but also on the deck. Every Boulder body tightened and straightened, every set of eyes strained, and every mouth pursed. No one spoke beside me, not even Liam through the mind link. We all just stood shoulder to shoulder, solemn in our shock andgrief.
Yes,grief. . .
Even though I hadn’t much liked the Pine Alpha, I liked Cassandra evenless.
A sharp cry tore through the field as Nora rushed to Julian’s mangled, inert form. Robbie sprang away from his pack and caught his mother before she could throw herself atop her brother. She whimpered and whined and snarled at her son, while he spoke quietly into her ear. After a long moment, she stopped snarling and slid back into skin. Shaking with sobs that were so shrill they could probably be heard in the middle of town, she burrowed her head against Robbie’schest.
My gaze skated over the strange scene below. People had begun pouring onto the field to felicitate their Alpha, who was still in fur. On the other side of the field, Sarah had crumpled to her knees. I started to go toward her when August caught my wrist and shook hishead.
“No,” he said, his tone brooking noargument.
“ButSarah—”
“Sarah will be taken care of.” His grip was all at once loose but firm, as though he was fighting his urge to hold me tighter. “Stay uphere.”
Margaux and a redheaded girl had kneeled next to Sarah, but still I itched to go to her. What decided me to stay away was the pulse of terror throbbing through the link. My already clenching stomach roiled and contracted with August’sfear.
I returned to the railing, and he let go of my wrist. Although he didn’t put his hands on me again, he held on to me through the tether as though he didn’t trust me not to sprint down thosestairs.
“I won’t go,” I reassured him, but it did little to loosen his invisiblegrip.
I turned my attention back to the ground below. For the final time, the fur receded into Julian’s pores, his muzzle retracted, and his limbs twisted back into his humanones.
“Do you wish to contest the fairness of the fight and challenge the Alpha today?” Lori hollered, back in skin and clothes, her voice thundering over all theothers.
Along with every shifter present, I watched Nora. Watched as she turned in her son’s arm. Watched as her lips trembled. Watched as her head shook, first with a shudder, then with ananswer.
No.
“Do you wish to challenge the Alpha in one moon cycle from now?” Lori asked, voice loud andclear.
Again, Julian’s sister shook her head. Robbie plucked the blonde hair sticking to his mother’s pale forehead and cheeks. Margaux tossed a sort of cape over her mother-in-law’s shoulders, and then Robbie wrapped an arm around her and helped her off the field. A cry ripped from her throat, and then another, her grief echoing against the Flatirons and the farthest and tallest mountainpeaks.
“Alpha of the Creeks!” Lori turned to her mother who was still in fur. “The fallen’s heart is yours for the taking, and with it, the fallen’spack.”
The fallen’sheart?
