But knowing that doesn't make him less dangerous. He's still bigger, still fully loose, still faster than a held wolf, and the fight goes on, and it goes badly, and he wears me down. Blow by blow he wears me down, and I can't match his loose speed with my held reserve, and I start to understand that I might lose this, that holding the wolf might be the honorable thing and the thing that keeps the crowd safe and also the thing that gets me killed, because a held wolf against a loose one, all else equal, loses.
I go down.
He catches me with something brutal and my legs go and I'm on the canvas, and the crowd is a wall of noise, and through it, distant, I hear the thing I need.
"Evan!"
Anna. Her voice, cutting through the roar, finding me the way it always finds me. And I lift my head and
