Chapter 19: The Duel

Cora's POV

At noon the sky over the Moon Stone was hard blue, and both packs stood in a ring on the frozen ground.

Garrick waited in the middle of it.

He was upright, and flushed, and his eyes had a bright, fevered shine.

He wore a leather vest and held a long blade in his right hand.

Even from where I stood I could see the dull sheen on the steel.

Silver.

"Cora Wexley answers the challenge," the old Ashfall elder called out. "By the right of the founding line."

A rumble ran around the ring.

Bram stood at my shoulder, close enough that I could feel the heat of him, and he did not say a word.

I shrugged off the coat he had lent me and handed it back.

Then I walked out onto the frost in my father's shirt and a pair of borrowed trousers, and let my wolf rise.

She came up through me in a long, easy surge.

The change was already familiar.

I dropped to four paws in the snow with white fur rippling down my back, and the packs murmured as one.

Garrick stared at me.

For the first time in three years he did not look at me as a wife who would hold his wrist.

He looked at me as a threat.

"Do it," he said, hoarsely.

The elder dropped his arm.

Garrick rushed me.

He was faster than he should have been, with the tonic burning in his blood, and the silver whistled through the air where my throat had been.

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