Chapter 20: Spared

Yvaine's POV

I did not know I had done it until it was over.

My arms were still stretched out in front of me, and my hands shook and burned.

Across the ring Hamish stood up out of the grass with the torn place on his shoulder closed to a bright pink seam.

He turned his head and looked at the Alpha's wolf.

Then he went for him.

I have never seen anything like it.

He was black and enormous and fast, and every wound he had taken was shut, and the old brown wolf had nothing left to answer with.

He hit the Alpha full in the chest, and the old wolf went over backward.

Hamish's jaws closed around the brown throat.

He held there.

Nobody in the yard breathed.

The Alpha's yellow eyes rolled up to the sky, and his hind legs scrabbled once in the dirt, and then he went slack.

"He yields," an elder called, and her voice shook. "The Alpha of Cedarvale yields."

Hamish did not let go.

His sides heaved.

He looked across the ring at me with black wolf eyes, and I understood that he was waiting.

I walked into the ring.

Nobody stopped me.

The grass was wet with blood, and I stepped over it and knelt by the two of them.

I put my hand on the black fur of Hamish's neck.

It was hot and damp and shivering.

"Let him go," I said.

He growled low in his chest.

"He bought me when I was five, from a father who sold me," I said. "He doesn't get to die for it. He gets to live and be seen."

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