Chapter 20: The Ring

Valerie's POV

He told me on the step, with the sky going pink behind him.

He told me about the camp, and the rule, and Darren standing in the Range alpha's firelight in a grey cloak.

When he was done I stood up and looked at him for a while.

"You were going to say nothing," I said.

"Yes."

"Because I'd step into the ring."

"Yes."

"I would have," I said. "You're right about that."

I took his face in both my hands.

"So tell me, Mathias, and I'll stand where you can see me."

"I won't move a foot. I'll keep my hands at my sides."

"But you don't decide what I can bear."

He shut his eyes.

"I won't again."

"Good."

Three days went by fast.

At sundown on the third, both packs stood on the river bank around a ring of old grey stones.

The water ran black and quick behind them.

The Crowe wolves took the east side.

The Redfern families took the west.

I stood at the front of them, with the eldest at my elbow.

Odette sat on a folding chair beside me with a blanket on her knees.

She had her own hair again, and her own thin face.

She had not looked at the Range side once.

"Is he there?" she said, very low.

"I can't see him."

"He's there."

The Range alpha walked into the ring in his own skin, grey-coated and smiling.

Mathias came in from the opposite stone, bare to the waist, with the bandage gone and a pink scar low on his ribs.

He did not look at me.

He looked at the ground, and then he looked up, and he found me with his eyes and held me there for one heartbeat.

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