Fated to My Vampire Lord novel · Chapter 19 of 24

Chapter 19: The Circle

At dusk the next day the great circle held nine hundred wolves, and four cameras stood on tripods at the edge.

Ottoline had set them up herself.

"If they will not see it from the Courts," she said, "they will see it from the Ridge."

I stood in the middle of the stones in a plain grey shift, barefoot on the frozen rock.

It was the same circle where I had stood six years of full moons with my hand gone dead.

Tiernan stood outside the ring of stones, because the Accord said he must.

His hands were behind his back.

I could feel every muscle in them through the bite, clenched hard.

"If he kills you," Otis had said earlier, "I will personally make a very rude speech."

"That's your plan?"

"It's all I have. I'm a kitchen human."

Dad walked into the circle from the other side, in his shirt, with his sleeves rolled to the elbow.

He did not look at the cameras.

"I'll make it quick," he said, for me alone. "You have never fought anyone in your life."

"You never let me."

"I let you live."

He changed.

It took him a moment, a heavy rolling shudder.

Then there stood a grey wolf, huge and scarred across the muzzle.

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