Chapter 22: The Challenge

The old Elder crossed the grass on her cane, took my clawed hand in both of hers and bent over it.

She breathed in.

Her shoulders shook once.

"Dunbar," she said, loud enough for the whole bowl to hear.

"Cedar and cold water. I have not smelled it in twenty-two years."

A sound went around the ring, three hundred voices drawing breath.

"It's a trick!" Ansel said. "She's had a drug that makes her smell like anything. Kneel, Iris."

The command hit the air with all his weight behind it.

I felt it brush my skin and slide off.

I did not kneel.

On the Blackwater side, six or seven wolves in the front rows dropped to one knee because they could not help it.

I looked at him.

"Ansel," I said, in my own voice. "Say that again."

"Kneel."

"No," I said, and Sable's voice came under mine, and the word rolled out across the grass.

Every wolf in the ring felt it.

The six on their knees stood up, and several of them stared at their own hands.

Ansel's face went white.

"Alpha Dunbar," the Elder said. "The challenge is accepted. The Rite is done in the shape of the wolf."

I pulled off my jacket and my boots.

I did not look at the crowd, and I did not look at Ronan.

Sable took me, and the dark rose up, and the bones in my back cracked and re-formed.

Across the grass Ansel shifted too, a big tawny wolf with a mane of light-brown fur.

He was strong, and he had trained for years.

He hit me before I was fully on my feet.

His teeth closed on my shoulder, and the pain was bright and cold.

I twisted and sank my own jaws into his foreleg.

He yelped.

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