I Married the Alpha They Threw Away novel · Chapter 14 of 24

Chapter 14: Blood Right

Nobody sets foot inside the white stones but the two who fight.

Every pup on this mountain knows that before it can shift.

I stepped over the stones anyway.

A gasp went all the way around the rim.

Corbin's wolf swung his head toward me with his lips peeled back, Bram's blood on his teeth.

I didn't run.

I walked straight at him across the quarry floor in my boots and Bram's shirt.

"Down."

He went down so hard the dust jumped.

His legs splayed out flat, and his chin hit the dirt a yard from Bram's throat.

He whined.

He couldn't even turn his eyes.

Up on the rim, two hundred and forty wolves made no sound at all.

I knelt beside him and picked up his right forepaw.

It smoked in my hand.

Somebody had pushed thin silver caps over his claws and wired them on, tight, at the first joint.

Under the wire, the pads were burned black and weeping.

He'd been carrying that burn through the whole fight, smiling about it.

I pulled the caps off one by one with my bare fingers.

They didn't burn me.

They never had.

I stood up and held them over my head in the moonlight, four little bright thimbles on my palm.

"Come down," I called to the rim. "All of you. Come and look."

The eldest elder came first, leaning on his cane on the steep path.

Half the pack came behind him and crowded against the stones.

He took his glasses out, and looked at the caps on my palm, and looked at the burned paw.

His face went old.

"Silver in the circle," he said. "The Alpha forfeits."

"She put them there."

Imogen stood at the edge of the stones, pale as her pearls.

"She stepped into a sacred circle and laid her hands on him. Anybody could see she..."

"His foot's been cooking for twenty minutes, Imogen," Hattie said from the crowd. "I can smell it from here."

People turned to look at Hattie.

Then they turned back to the Luna.

Imogen closed her mouth.

I went to Bram.

The black wolf lay on his side in the white dust with his eyes half shut.

His shoulder was laid open, and the smoke coming out of it was thick and black.

The wound was trying to close and couldn't, the edges pulling in and tearing back.

I took one of Corbin's silver caps and drew its edge across my palm.

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