I get my legs under me and stand out of his grip by brute force.
We're both breathing hard now. The rhythm of the fight has changed—heavier, more deliberate, less quick-fire exchange and more sustained pressure. He's holding ground rather than attacking.
I think about the hunters on the forest roads. I think about the syndicate, the land acquisition orders, years of preparation that ends with pack wolves in steel-jaw traps and Cassidy tied to a chair in a hunting cabin.
I think about what Gideon's version of a pack looks like, the one he's been building toward—and whether the syndicate's plans for this land leave room for the pack at all, or whether Gideon made a deal that eventually includes handing them wolves on top of acreage.
Total annihilation comes to mind.
I stop holding anything back.
I charge, full force, and Gideon doesn't have time to prepare for the momentum. He braces, but I hit him lower than he expects, and he goes airborne for a moment before the stone arch catches him. He hits it with his side, scrambles upright, and his back left leg doesn't take weight the same way it did a minute ago.
He favors it, but tries not to show it.
"You've already lost ground," I say. "It ends here or it ends worse."
His head drops slightly—not submission. He's reassessing.
"The pack needs this to end," I say. "Whatever happens to you tonight, I'm still cleaning up the mess you made. Let it be over."
He looks at me across the ring. The gash over his eye has matted the fur red. His flank is open in two places. His back leg is a liability.
"No," he says again.
He stops watching me.
That's the moment I see it—his eyes shift away from mine and track left, toward the outer ring, where Cassidy is watching the duel. The movement is too deliberate to be distraction. It's a decision. His weight shifts forward, hindquarters coiling, and the angle of his body rotates off the center line and toward the outside of the ring.
He's done with me. He's going for her instead.
Pack law prohibits interference during a formal duel, and Brynn will uphold that law even now. She'll record the violation. She won't step in. This is a fight to the death, and the witnesses are precisely that.
I don't wait for him to commit to the charge.
I cover the distance in two strides and hit him from the side with everything I have. The collision is brutal, rattling my ribs, the impact of my shoulder driving into his, the force of it carrying us both across the ring in a grinding slide of claws on stone.
We crash into the far side of the ritual boundary, nowhere near Cassidy, and I plant myself between him and that direction before he gets his legs back under him.
"Stay on this side of the ring," I say, and my voice drops into an in-human growl.
Gideon gets upright. His back leg buckles once before it holds. His breaths are sharp rasps, likely due to a broken rib. He took the collision as badly as I did. The gash over his eye is running freely now, red across the gray of his muzzle, and his flank wound has spread during the grappling.
"This is finished," I say. "Yield."
He charges.
It's slower than before, and I see every element of it—the broken rhythm in his back leg, the way his weight compensates left to favor it, the decision in his eyes that whatever this costs him, he's committed to the conclusion.
I step inside his angle and drive my jaws into the side of his neck—not the kill, not yet, the hold just below it—and I take him to the ground with my full weight on top of him.
He fights. His claws tear down my side and narrowly miss the artery on my neck, short desperate damage from a wolf who has nothing left to offer but refusal. I don't let go. The hold is clean,the pressure controlled, my weight keeping his legs from getting purchase.
The pack rings with cheers. Some for me. Some for Gideon.
He goes still beneath me, but doesn’t submit. For a moment neither of us moves. I can feel his heart pounding through the hold, feel his ribs working hard for each breath. His claws stop moving. His legs stop pushing.
I keep the hold and wait.
