The pack ring goes completely silent.
I stop breathing.
Gideon is pinned, the hold firm, Alden's weight keeping him down, and thirty seconds pass in a silence so complete that I can hear the torches hissing at the perimeter.
Gideon's chest rises. Falls. Rises.
He doesn't yield.
He doesn't yield, and Alden holds, and the pack holds, and I hold. But if he doesn’t yield, Alden will have to kill him.
He doesn't speak. His body remains taught and rigid.
Alden growls, and stamps his front paw, but still Gideon refuses to yield.
30
ALDEN
Ihave him pinned for the second time and I hold the position longer than I need to.
The pack is silent. The torches burn. Gideon's chest moves in shallow, labored pulls beneath me, and the blood from the gash over his eye spreads across the stone in a dark, widening stain.
His legs don’t move. His claws stop flexing. Everything about his body says it's finished, and everything about his expression, what I can read of it at this angle, says he hasn't accepted that yet.
"It's done," I say. My voice comes out lower than intended, roughened by the shift still sitting close to the surface. "Yield."
He doesn't answer.
"Gideon." I adjust the hold, easing pressure without releasing it. "The pack has heard what you did. The council has it on record. Your loyalists are being detained. There is nothing left to win tonight." I keep my weight on him. "Yield, and this ends here."
His chest heaves once, hard.
"You think I built forty years in this pack," he says, each word effortful, "to hand it to a man who chose a human over his own blood."
"I chose well," I say.
"It's weakness."
"It won." I look at him directly. "This is over. Your son is on his knees. Your supporters are walking away. Whatever you planned with that syndicate, it's in Brynn's hands now." I lower my voice further. "I don't want to kill you. You've served this pack. That counts for something, even now."
A long silence.
The torches hiss. Somewhere in the outer ring, a wolf shifts weight and the gravel sounds loud in the quiet.
"Then you're weak," Gideon says. "An Alpha who won't finish what he started."
Sighing, I look at the pack. They wait for my decision.
He twists onto his back and digs his claws into my stomach. It’s weak, and doesn’t break my skin, but it’s enough to push me back. Gideon rolls onto his feet and lunges.
His attack is weak and slow and I sidestep, catching his neck between my teeth.
My jaws close on the side of his neck.
I feel the snap before I hear it, and when the sound hits, the pack falls silent. The sound travels outward from the ritual stones like a stone dropped into still water, and every wolf in the crescent ring is motionless.
Gideon's body drops.
