The Alpha King's Heart novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Twenty-Nine for Strake

The King went down on one knee with the blade in his side.

Smoke rose from the wound, and I smelled burning.

Silver.

It was eating him.

"Piers!"

I ran across the chain.

Nobody stopped me, because nobody could believe a human woman would run into a challenge ring.

I dropped beside him and put my hands around the hilt.

It was hot enough to blister my palms.

I pulled anyway, and it came out in one long wet slide, and he roared.

I threw the blade into the dirt.

"Stay with me," I said. "Look at me. Stay."

"Macy, run," he whispered.

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Well," Strake said. "How touching."

He stood over us with his silver rings on both hands and his shirt open.

He was not even breathing hard.

"The challenge is mine, and he's down," he said. "I take the crown."

"You used silver," I said.

"Silver's a metal. It has no law."

"It does in the ring," said a voice from the edge.

The old gray-maned Alpha had risen from his chair.

He was leaning on a cane, and the whole square had gone quiet to hear him.

"A challenge for the crown is fought with tooth and claw," he said. "A blade in the ring is forfeit. It was written in my grandfather's time, and I have never seen it broken until today."

"Alpha," Strake said, "you are old."

"I am old enough to remember what a wolf's word is worth."

He raised the cane.

Behind him, one by one, the other Alphas of the council stood up.

They had come to watch the end of a king.

Now they were all looking at Strake.

"The Harrow Creek challenge is void," the old wolf said. "Dray Strake is stripped of his sector and his ring-right. Seize him."

Strake's own wolves did not move.

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