Chapter 25: The Border Fight

Elias's POV

At dawn they cleared a ring in the road around the home stone, and I stood at its edge with the silver scar still pulling under my ribs.

I could not hear the two packs.

I could feel them, three hundred wolves shifting their weight on frozen mud, and I could read every mouth in the front row.

None of them were saying her name.

Bryn walked into the ring in a grey shirt with her torn ear stiff with dried blood.

She did not look at me.

I wanted her to, and I was ashamed of how much.

Sabine came in from the other side, and she had taken off the green cardigan.

She folded it, set it on the ground, and smiled at the crowd.

Then she shifted, fast and clean, and a tall brown wolf stood where the Luna had been.

I had expected a soft woman playing at war.

She moved like a hunter who had done this for years and hidden it for twenty.

The steward lifted his arm and dropped it.

Sabine went straight for Bryn's bad ear.

Bryn shifted in mid-step, and her grey body hit the brown one in the chest, and both of them went down in the mud.

Teeth closed on fur and let go.

I saw Bryn's hind leg open from hip to knee, and I felt my own hands curl.

The rule of the ring was plain, because the steward had said it twice: no one touches the fighters.

If I stepped in, Bryn's win would count for nothing.

So I stood there, and my whole body leaned toward her.

Sabine broke away and circled.

She dipped her head and came up with something in her jaws.

It was a twist of brown paper.

She shook it into Bryn's face.

A grey powder burst across Bryn's muzzle and eyes, and Bryn screamed.

It was a human scream from a wolf's throat, and every head in the crowd turned.

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