You Are Not Rejecting Me novel · Chapter 20 of 24

Chapter 20: Not a Clean Fight

Idris's POV

I do not remember deciding to cross the ring.

I remember my brother's body in the dirt, and the pack's silence, and Owain lifting his bloody muzzle to look around.

I remember that Nia's hand left mine.

"The Alpha has not yielded," I said.

My voice came out low and flat.

"By law, a fit second may take up his fight."

Owain shifted back.

He stood in the ring bare and breathing hard, with Cadell's blood on his teeth.

"You want to take the challenge, Idris?"

"Yes."

"Your brother's finished."

"Then I'm what's left."

He laughed softly and rolled his shoulders.

"I put you on the ground once at a pack picnic, you know. You were ten."

"I remember."

"You cried."

"I did."

I took my shirt off and dropped it, and I felt the cold air on my back.

"I'm not ten," I said, and I shifted.

The world went wide and bright.

Every smell came up at once: smoke and pine, the blood on the ground, Nia's scent from the edge of the ring.

Owain came at me in wolf form before I had finished turning.

He was fast.

He had always been fast, and he had never once been fair.

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