Chapter 20: The Final Bout

The Final Bout began at dusk, with torches burning along the top of the stone seats and the first stars out.

Every wolf in the Compact had come to see it.

Four thousand of them, shoulder to shoulder.

I stood at the south end of the Bowl in my leathers with Odessa at my elbow.

Bram was at the rope behind us, free at last, with a bruise on his jaw and a grin.

"He has an hour," Odessa said quietly. "Maybe less. After that his wolf goes back under and he's a man on the grass."

"I know."

"You could wait him out."

"I'm not going to wait him out."

She grunted. It sounded like approval.

At the north end of the field stood Ronan, in a plain white shirt and gray trousers, with the black signet back on his hand.

He looked thin and tired, and he looked at me.

The horn blew.

We shifted together.

I heard the crack of his bones across fifty yards of turf.

When his wolf stood up out of the wreck of the man, I stopped breathing.

He was still gaunt.

His ribs still showed through his coat.

But his head was high, and his eyes were gold, and he moved like a wolf who had been dreaming of this for three years.

He came at me flat out.

I met him at the center line.

We hit.

His shoulder drove into mine, and my teeth snapped on the thick fur of his neck and let go.

He rolled under me, came up, and raked a claw across my flank.

It stung.

I spun and caught his foreleg in my jaws and wrenched, and he screamed and twisted free.

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