Wrong Girl, Right Alpha novel · Chapter 29 of 48

Chapter 29: The Yard

"It's the shoulder," Ronan said, and spat the leather into his hand. "From the Challenge. It aches at night."

The old healer said nothing.

She stood in the creek with the bowl against her hip and looked at me, and she did not look sorry.

"It's after sundown," Ronan said. "I'll tell you anything you ask me tomorrow."

I heard how neatly he'd turned the word against me.

He was gray around the mouth, and his left arm hung from the shoulder.

"Tomorrow," I said.

"Tomorrow."

I should have walked into that water and torn his shirt off his back.

Instead I watched the healer's face.

She was a woman who had sworn something to her Alpha and was paying for it by the hour.

So I turned, and I went back up the hill, and I made myself wait.

By noon the next day, it was the south dormitory that decided to test him.

Half the pack stood around the sparring ring behind the pack hall.

They had come to watch the Alpha's practice, and I came out with Hazel on my hip.

Ronan stood in the middle of the packed dirt in his shirtsleeves.

Across from him stood a south-dormitory wolf, twenty-six and thick through the chest.

He was one of the dozen who had stood along the back wall on the night of the Challenge.

He had gone back to the dormitory after that night with a bad temper and nothing to do with it.

"A dominance bout, Alpha," he said. "Any wolf can ask. I'm asking."

"Any wolf can," Ronan agreed.

The ring went quiet.

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