Chapter 7: The Melee

The Melee was five wolves against five, with no weapons and one rule: a fighter was out when she was pinned and yielded.

The Bowl was packed to the top row.

Nine banners snapped on the north wall, and the noise was a solid thing pressing on my ears.

Odessa stood next to me on the turf in her heavy coat, leaning on her stick.

"I'm sixty-one," she said. "I get to go out in the first minute and sit down. You'll have to do the rest."

"You're not even going to try?"

"I'm going to try very hard, and then I'm going to lose gracefully."

Across the field, Blackpine's five stood in a tight line.

The Beta was among them, and the lean tracker from the Hunt, and two huge men I did not know.

Ronan stood at the end of the line with his bandaged hand at his side.

He was looking at me, and he had not looked away since we walked on.

On the stand above his pavilion, Calista sat very straight in pale blue, with her hand on her locket.

The horn blew.

Nine bodies shifted at once, and the Bowl became a storm of fur.

Blackpine came at us in a wedge, the way they always did.

I had watched them do it a hundred times from the stands, wide-eyed, when I was a girl who loved them.

Bram met the left side of the wedge head on, with a roar that made two big wolves swerve.

The brothers peeled away right and took the tracker between them.

Odessa's gray wolf, old and thin and sly, slid in under the Beta's reach and bit him on the hock.

Then she sat down in the dirt and yielded to a man who had barely touched her.

"Told you," she said, as she shifted back, and she blew me a kiss.

Keep reading free with an account. Start His Luna? Never, He Rejected Me First from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.