He doesn't look back.
I press my hands together in front of my mouth and watch him go.
28
ALDEN
The pack howl rises as one voice and breaks on the cold air.
Gideon and I circle each other.
In wolf form he's substantial—gray-brown coat, heavy through the chest, twenty years of enforcer conditioning showing in the way he moves. Low, controlled, weight distributed evenly, chin tucked to protect the throat.
He's done this before, not a challenge fight, but enough field work to know the mechanics. I know his habits. He knows mine. We've sparred at training dozens of times over the years, and the thing about sparring an opponent long enough is that you learn their tells and they learn yours.
He favors the right side. He telegraphs his lunges by dropping his left shoulder first. When he wants to end something quickly, he goes for the flank.
I keep my left side toward the outer ring and wait.
He moves first—fast, direct, a hard angle toward my left flank where the rogue tore through several days ago. The wound is closed but not healed, and he knows it, because Gideon makes ithis business to know everything about the pack's vulnerabilities, including mine.
I pivot hard right and take the impact on my shoulder instead, his teeth grazing muscle without finding the injury. I wheel on him before he resets and drives my jaws toward his throat.
He drops his chin in time. My teeth find the side of his neck instead, closing hard, and for a second, we're locked together, both of us pulling in opposite directions. He twists free with a sound that's more frustration than pain and puts six feet between us.
Blood on his neck. First draw.
He circles left. I track him.
"You're slower than you were," he says.
The words are human—he's speaking through the partial shift, the way older wolves can, holding language while the body stays wolf. It's a skill that takes decades to develop.
"You're older than you were," I say through my partial shift. "Adjust."
He charges again, this time from the right, going wide and looping back inward to catch me mid-turn.
I let him commit to the angle, and take the collision chest-to-chest. The force staggers us both, claws tearing through the dirt as we separate. He leaves a gash along my right shoulder. I open his left flank.
We bleed on the ritual stone together, and the pack watching us makes no sound.
The next exchange is faster—he feints high and drives low, I counter with a body check that puts him back two yards, he recovers and catches my back leg with his jaws. Not the hamstring, not the joint, but enough to slow the step. I shake him off and feel the sharp pull of it with every stride for the next thirty seconds.
He notices. He goes after the same leg.
I let him close the distance like I'm favoring it, then pivot at the last moment and drive my skull into the side of his head. The crack reverberates through the ring. He staggers sideways, legs crossing under him, and shakes his head twice. The gash over his left eye opens—a split from the impact—and blood runs freely into the fur below.
"Yield," I say.
He looks at me from across the ring. "No!" he snarls.
We come together again.
He's adapting—the left-shoulder tell is gone now, the lunges coming from still starts that are harder to read. He catches me across the muzzle with a raking blow that turns my head and rings my ears, and in the half-second where my vision grays slightly, he goes for the flank wound. His teeth find old injury, and the pain hits clean and hard through my whole left side.
My legs hold.
The wolf in me doesn't register pain the way the human does. I twist and bring my full weight down on Gideon's back, driving his forelegs into the stone. He goes down briefly, back arching to throw me, and we grapple across the ground in a tangle of claws and straining muscle. His jaws find my neck and he pulls, not enough to pierce deep, but enough to feel it.
