Chapter 7: The Stone Ring

The stone ring stood on a bare hill behind the Lycan keep, and the whole court was there before sunrise.

Two hundred Lycans stood around the standing stones, and a hundred Crescent Moon wolves stood beside them.

Joss had gone to the border at midnight and brought back every warrior who would come.

I stood at the edge of the ring between Gwen and the young Lycan rider whose life I had saved.

Nobody had asked me to be there.

I had come because it was about me, and I would not hide from it.

Cade walked into the ring and stripped off his shirt.

Soren came in from the other side in his trousers and nothing else.

The King stood at the north stone with his hand raised.

"Wolf against wolf," he said. "To yield or to the death. No weapon but tooth and claw."

"Begin."

Cade shifted first.

I had watched him shift a hundred times, a single fast ripple and then a big black wolf.

This time it started and stuck.

His back bowed, and a shoulder cracked out of its socket and snapped back.

He screamed.

Fur sprouted down one arm and not the other, and his face stayed half a man's.

The Crescent Moon wolves around the ring made a low sound of shock.

"Come on," Cade ground out through his teeth. "Come on."

He fell to his knees in the dirt, shaking, and the wolf would not come.

Soren waited.

He did not strike a man on his knees.

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