Chapter 9: The Duel

Dawn came up gray and cold over Harrowgate, and the Bowl was full again.

Nobody had gone home.

I stood at the rope in my fighting leathers with my hands pushed into my armpits.

I did not tell myself why I had come.

Odessa stood next to me with her stick.

"You could have stayed in the tent," she said.

"I know."

"He's going to lose."

"I know that too."

The Warden raised her iron key.

"The challenged chooses the shape," she called.

"Alpha Strathmore?"

Ronan stood at one end of the field in plain gray trousers and a white shirt that hung loose on him now.

I saw how thin his wrists were, and my stomach clenched.

"As a man," he said.

The stands gasped.

A man's body had no claws and no jaws.

Wolves chose it only for the oldest and ugliest disputes, when someone wanted to feel the other one's bones.

"Then the Beta fights as a man," the Warden said.

"So the Compact decrees."

The Beta stripped off his coat and tossed it to the ground.

He was thirty pounds heavier than Ronan, and he had two good legs now.

Nobody had spent three years draining him.

He smiled when he saw Ronan sway.

The horn blew.

The first blow came before I could breathe.

The Beta's fist caught Ronan on the cheekbone and snapped his head sideways.

Ronan went down on one knee in the dirt.

A thousand wolves screamed.

Ronan got up.

The second blow took him under the ribs, and the third in the jaw.

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