Chapter 13: The Challenge

"Dalton Loxley," the Alpha of Redwater said, loud enough for the whole court. "I hear your wolf has left you."

Nobody answered him.

He strolled to the middle of the cobbles with his hands in his coat pockets.

"By the old law, any Alpha may challenge a sitting Alpha at the Stone. If the sitting Alpha refuses, he yields his pack."

Dalton was still on his knees.

He looked at Rosalind once, and she saw him understand that she was not going to hold out her hand.

He got up.

"I accept," he said.

"Dalton, no." Edmund stepped in front of him. "You can't even shift."

"If I refuse, he takes everything."

"He'll take it anyway."

"Then I'll make him work for it."

Edmund's face crumpled for half a second, and then he stepped back.

"The ring is the ring," he said thickly. "I won't touch you until you yield."

The wolves of nine packs drew back to clear a circle.

The Alpha of Redwater took off his coat, folded it, and handed it to a guard.

Then he shifted.

He went down on all fours in one smooth rolling motion, and a big gray wolf with a torn left ear stood where the man had been.

Dalton stood in the circle in his shirtsleeves, a man facing a wolf.

The first charge threw him ten feet across the stones.

He got up.

The second one opened his shoulder, and the red moon showed the blood very black.

He got up again.

Rosalind did not look away.

She had braced for it to hurt, and it didn't, not in the way she had feared.

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