Chapter 4
1403 Words
The Challenge
ARIEL
The rain had finally stopped, leaving the Training Courtyard a muddy, treacherous pit of murky slush.
I stood on the second-floor balcony of the Pack House, my hands gripping the cold iron railing so hard my knuckles turned white. Below me, the entire pack had gathered in a suffocating ring of silence.
They were waiting for blood.
"He’s going to get himself killed," I whispered, though the words tasted like ash.
"Is he?" Karen’s voice was harsh beside me. She was sipping a glass of wine, looking down at the courtyard with a mixture of fear and bloodlust. "Vance is the strongest Beta this pack has seen in twenty years. Lyold has spent four years in a cell eating rot. He’s weak. Broken."
She sounded like she was trying to convince herself.
Down in the mud, Beta Vance was stripping off his shirt. He was a mountain of a man, thick-necked and scarred, with a cruel smile that had haunted my nightmares ever since Marcus got sick.
Vance was Karen’s creature…her enforcer. He was the one who kept the pack in line while Marcus wasted away.
Opposite him stood Lyold.
He hadn’t bothered to strip. He still wore the black shirt and heavy combat trousers. He stood perfectly still, his arms hanging loose at his sides, watching Vance stretch with an air of absolute boredom.
"Rules of the challenge!" the Lawkeeper shouted from the edge of the ring. "Submission or unconsciousness. No killing blows allowed on pack soil!"
Vance laughed, cracking his neck. "I can’t promise he will wake up, though."
Lyold didn't speak. He just crooked a finger. ‘Come here.’
Vance roared. His body squirmed, bones cracking aloud as he threw himself into the shift. Fur sprouted, muscles boosted, and seconds later, a massive brown wolf stood panting in the mud.
Vance’s wolf snarled, drool dripping from his jaws. He was huge, easily two hundred pounds of muscle and aggression.
Lyold remained human.
A murmur went through the crowd. To fight a shifted wolf in human skin was suicide. It was arrogance beyond measure.
"Shift, you i***t," I breathed, my heart beating against my ribs. "Lyold, shift!"
Vance didn't wait. He launched himself across the mud, a brown blur of teeth and claws aiming straight for Lyold’s throat.
I gasped, looking away—THUD.
A sickening sound of meat hitting stone echoed up to the balcony.
I snapped my eyes back open.
Lyold hadn't moved. Or rather, he had moved so fast my eyes hadn't tracked it. He had stepped inside Vance’s guard, grabbed the wolf by the scruff of the neck mid-air, and slammed him into the mud.
Vance growled, scrabbling for purchase, his claws tearing deep gouges in the earth. He snapped his jaws at Lyold’s leg.
Lyold didn't flinch. He kicked the wolf in the ribs.
CRACK.
The sound was like a gunshot. Vance howled, a high-pitched, pathetic sound that shamed the title of Beta. The wolf skidded ten feet across the slush, wheezing.
The pack was dead silent.
Lyold stood there, wiping a speck of mud from his cheek. He looked... disappointed.
"Is that it?" Lyold asked, his voice projecting effortlessly to the balcony. "Is this the best Silverwood has to offer? A dog that doesn't know how to bite?"
Vance, humiliated and enraged, scrambled up on three legs. The wolf’s eyes went red with madness. He charged again, abandoning all strategy, going for a kill shot.
Lyold didn't dodge this time.
He caught the wolf.
Literally caught him.
Lyold’s hands shot out, grabbing Vance’s upper and lower jaws, holding the wolf’s mouth open inches from his own face. Vance thrashed, his claws raking down Lyold’s forearms, shredding the black shirt, drawing blood.
Lyold didn't even blink. He held the massive beast in place with terrifying, impossible strength.
Then, Lyold leaned in and roared.
It wasn't a human shout. It was an Alpha roar, raw and deep, tearing from his human throat with enough force to vibrate the glass of the balcony doors behind me. It was the sound of a predator that ate other predators.
Vance froze. His tail tucked. He whimpered.
Lyold sneered. He shifted his grip, grabbed Vance’s front right foreleg…the arm he used to command his warriors…and twisted.
SNAP.
The bone broke cleanly. The sound was wet and terrible.
Vance screamed…a human scream from a wolf’s throat…and collapsed into the mud, shifting back into his naked, human form, clutching his shattered arm and sobbing in the dirt.
"Winner: Lyold Silverwood!" the Lawkeeper announced, his voice trembling.
I stared down at him, my breath trapped in my lungs.
He was a monster.
He was violent, cruel, and terrifying. And God help me, I had never seen anything so magnificent.
My body betrayed me instantly. A flush of heat, quick and runny, flooded my veins. My inner wolf was pacing, tail wagging, scratching at the walls of my mind.
‘Alpha. Strong. Mate. Protector.’
"No," I whispered to myself, clutching my stomach. "He is the enemy."
Down in the courtyard, Lyold didn't look at the defeated Beta writhing in the mud. He turned slowly, lifting his head.
He looked straight up at the balcony.
Across the distance, his gray eyes locked onto mine. He saw me watching. He saw the fear. And he saw the flush on my cheeks.
He brought two fingers to his lips, kissed them, and mockingly saluted me. The blood from Vance’s wolf was smeared across his jaw.
He owned the yard. He owned the pack. And by the look in his eyes, he thought he owned me too.
Suddenly, a hand clamped onto my upper arm. Hard. Nails digging into my flesh.
I turned, gasping.
Karen was no longer looking at the courtyard. She was looking at me, her face pale, her lips drawn back in a rictus of panic.
"He’s going to kill us," she hissed. "Do you see that? That isn't a wolf, Ariel. That is a demon."
"Let go of me," I tried to pull away, but her grip tightened.
"He wins the investigation period," Karen spat, her eyes darting around. "He stays in the house. He will dig. He will sniff around. And if he finds out about the night Thomas died... if he finds out what you did..."
"I did what I had to do!" I hissed back.
"And so will I," Karen whispered. She leaned in close, her perfume cloying and sweet, masking the scent of her rot. "He is looking at the boy, Ariel. I saw him in the garden. He suspects."
My blood ran cold. "He suspects nothing."
"The eyes," Karen said, her voice dropping to a deadly quiet. "The boy has his eyes. If Lyold claims him... if he realizes that brat is his blood and not Marcus's..." She tightened her grip until I winced in pain.
"I will kill the boy, Ariel."
The world stopped. The sounds of the courtyard faded away.
"You wouldn't," I choked out. "He is your grandson…"
"He is a bastard!" Karen snarled. "He is the spawn of the man who murdered my Thomas! I have tolerated his existence because Marcus claimed him to secure the line. But if Lyold takes the throne? The boy is useless to me."
She released my arm, shoving me slightly toward the railing.
"You have a job to do, Regent," she commanded, composing herself as the Elders began to file out onto the balcony. "You will treat Lyold like the criminal he is. You will keep him out of the archives. You will keep him away from the boy."
She smiled, cruel and harsh.
"Make him hate you, Ariel. Make him hate you so much he never looks twice at your son. Because if he tries to claim that child... I will bury Leo in a box so small you won't even need a shovel."
She turned and walked back into the house, leaving me shivering in the cold wind.
I looked back down at the courtyard.
Lyold was still there. He was watching me. He had seen Karen grab me. He had seen the fear on my face.
His brow furrowed slightly, a trace of something…concern?….crossing his scarred features. He took a step toward the building.
I turned around and fled inside, slamming the balcony doors shut and locking them.
I couldn't let him save me.
Because if he saved me, he would destroy my son.
- Writer
