Is this happening?
Something electric, some kind of communal understanding, shimmers through the packs. It’s like a wave. It builds as it goes—
And then, with battle-ready roars from all sides, wolves launch themselves into action.
All the males of fighting age and stature hurl themselves toward the center of our hilltop, pouring in from all the surrounding hills. The family groups they leave behind at the gathering fires huddle together, protecting the young and the fragile.
For a moment I wonder if we misread this moment. If the wolves are assembling to take Ty down together—the only slight chance they would have to best him.
But it becomes clear very quickly that there are already chosen sides in this battle. That Ty has support.
A lot of support, I see, as they arrange themselves behind him, and a wildfire emotion too militant to be a simple sob gets trapped in my throat.
It’s Ty and his men, of course, but it’s also the rest of the younger, newer kings. The ones who can clearly imagine a different path and a different way to live. The ones who looked at Ty’s success and didn’tbegrudge it—or at least, not as much as they wished they could replicate it.
On the other side, with McCaffrey at the forefront, it’s exactly what I expected it would be, though it’s clarifying to see them clumped together tonight as if they’re the ones on a stage. Janus. Alfric. That crusty-looking grandpa wolf from Utah. All the old, bitter, angry wolves who prefer the world we lived in before. The world where they lorded it about in their dens and their territories as they saw fit while their packs were too cowed by the humans and their weapons to argue.
They still want to control things the way they always have, even though we’re three years into a completely different world.
No matter what happens here tonight, I’ll remember who stood for the archaic old ways that—big surprise—favor males like these scared old men. I’ll remember these little kings who are so desperate to keep what little power they have that they’d sandbag their own packs’ prospects to do it.
“Fantastic,” Ty drawls as he eyes the battle lines from above. “Looks like a party.”
At first everyone adheres to the old rules of protocol. When one of McCaffrey’s lieutenants steps forward, my brother Liam laughs out loud.
“I can’t accept this insult to my king,” he declares. “I will fight in his stead.” He doesn’t look at Ty as he says it. He keeps his gaze squarely on McCaffrey’s man. “And may the moon guide me as I teach this lesson.”
Ty inclines his head.
Then we all get to watch as my brother spanks McCaffrey’s man. It only occurs to me to look at my new sisters toward the end of the fight, when it’s still unclear if these will be fights to the death or simply to surrender. Leah and Magnolia are both sitting down. Leah is covering her face. Magnolia is in what looks like an intense conversation with pacifist Aunt Gretchen.
Kendra, by contrast, is standing with her head high and a look I can’t read on her face. When she catches me looking, she swallows. “I know who my father is,” she says quietly.
“That’s something that could have any number of meanings,” I point out. Then I shrug to show that I don’t mean that aggressively myself. “It’s all right to acknowledge that this is complicated.”
Kendra blinks, then looks back toward the fight. “Your brother is currently fighting the mate my father handpicked for me and intended for me to choose. I was ordered not to put myself forward here with the rest of the unmated females. There were consequences when I did anyway.” She shoots a look at me out of the corner of her eye. “I am ... not displeased with the shift in my circumstances.”
Giving in to an urge, I reach over to grip her hand. I squeeze it. “There has to be a better way. I intend to find it.”
Kendra nods, hard. She squeezes my hand in return, and the look she gives me is fierce. It makes me wonder if this sister thing will be more like having friends than I imagined. “I will help you,” she vows.
Liam wins decisively, though he does not rip out the older man’s throat. He makes it clear he could, his teeth holding his opponent fast until McCaffrey’s man has no choice but to whimper, thereby announcing his surrender.
Though Ty’s dark eyes gleam, he otherwise doesn’t acknowledge it. This is strategic. If he were to start crowing about this victory, it could look like he cares too much about winning and therefore, some will argue, it will prove this is about his ego after all.
I can tell that he wants to fight himself, but he can’t. Not while the kings who oppose him only send out their lower-ranked men.
On the solstice, any wolf can challenge any other wolf for any reason, but this is different. It’s obvious that the older kings are sending in their seconds to show they don’t respect Ty enough to fight themselves.
If Ty fights them anyway, it will make him look weak.
This is exactly the kind of shit Ty hates and wants to be done with. I’m betting the older kings know that. They likely expect Ty to crack and jump in.
I know he won’t.
The fighting goes on, rising slowly through the ranks of different packs’ lieutenants on our side—each of them jostling to take a turn and demonstrate their support of Ty—until it finally reaches Connor. Kind, reasonable, extremely tough Connor, who has always stood at Ty’s back.
As Connor stands in the ring, I think about the fact that he’s an older wolf too. He was the VP for the king that Ty deposed, and rumor has it that Ty kept him on to soothe those who thought Ty was too much of an upstart and too hotheaded to handle the changes he created with his challenge.
