Half Were Mine novel · Chapter 18 of 24

Chapter 18: The Ring

Nobody moved to stop it.

The Elder opened her mouth, and then she shut it, because the charter was on my side and she had read it aloud herself.

Torsten took one step toward the rope.

Cormac caught his arm.

"Let her," my brother said, low. "Alpha. Let her."

Torsten's whole body strained against it.

Then he stopped. He stood at the rope with his hands in fists and his eyes on me.

"No shifting," the Elder said. "Hands and feet. First to yield, or the Alpha's word to end it."

Rhett pulled off his watch and tossed it to an enforcer.

"I'll go easy, Harlan," he said. "For old times."

I said nothing.

I had lived with him for four years. I knew he dropped his left shoulder a half second before he threw the right.

He did it now.

I slipped the punch by an inch, and his fist went past my ear with a crack of air.

I hit him in the ribs, twice, as hard as I had ever hit anything.

He grunted and stepped back, surprised.

"Good," he said. "You always did like to hit."

He came at me properly then.

He was bigger and heavier and trained, and he planned every move three steps ahead.

A fist caught me over the eye, and the yard swung.

I tasted blood.

"Say you're sorry," Rhett said, close to my ear, quiet enough that only I heard it. "Say it, and I'll stop. Say it and come home."

I spat red on the dirt.

"No."

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