Bond of Shadows

Chapter 6.2

The wolf, freed, made the decision none of us had. It bolted, claws screaming sparks. Its breath hitched wetly; it wouldn’t last long, but it had freedom and that was enough.

Kaelen’s head snapped toward Brant. “Idiot.”

Brant bared his teeth. “It was an accident—”

Soren didn’t wait for them to decide whether to kill each other. He flicked his gaze to me. A thousand thoughts in a heartbeat: truce? later? mine? Try not to die?

“Move,” I snapped at Kai, already dragging him after the arc the token had taken. Calculus over pride; strategy over blood. The

warrens webbed here—low arches, branching black. The token could have ricocheted anywhere.

Feet pounded behind us—Kaelen’s? Torren’s? All of them, likely. The air was a knife in my throat; my ribs burned like someone had braided wire under my skin. I forced my breathing even. In. Out. Don’t hyperventilate; don’t show weakness.

“Left,” Soren said, suddenly at my shoulder. Not an order. A suggestion delivered like a certainty.

“Why?” Kai wheezed.

“Listen,” Soren said. “Tokens sing when they spin. Listen.”

We did. For a half-second between our own echoes, I caught it: a faint, ringing tick, like a nail bouncing off stone.

I veered left.

The tunnel tightened. Wet, old stone. Claw marks scarred the walls—fresh over ancient. The smell of iron thickened.

“There,” Kai gasped, pointing.

The token had settled in a shallow of rock at the edge of a drop: a vertical shaft that plunged into a deeper black. My stomach went light looking into it. If the disc had bounced one more inch—

“Careful,” I said, because the gods enjoy irony.

We slowed. Behind us, the slap of Kaelen’s boots grew louder.

I slid a boot to the token’s edge, felt its chill through the leather. My balance shifted. The shaft breathed up cold, damp air like the mouth of something that had been sleeping a long time.

Soren lifted a hand, palm open. “You fine?”

“Yes.”

“You’re shaking.”

“I’m steady enough.” I wasn’t, but he didn’t need that truth.

He didn’t argue. He crowded closer—heat at my back, presence like gravity. Closer, my wolf hummed, shameless. I wanted to snarl at her and at myself.

I hooked my toe under the token’s lip and nudged. It slid onto stone, safe.

Then a knife whistled.

Soren jerked me sideways by the collar of my shirt. The blade cracked sparks where my head had been. Torren stood at the mouth of the passage, one eye swelling, grin back in place.

“Found you,” he said.

Kaelen came up behind him, limping, eyes bright with the clean, simple joy of imminent violence.

“Leave the trinket,” Kaelen said. “I’ll even let you run.”

He meant the opposite. He’d chase the run, savor it.

“Time’s bleeding,” Soren murmured, too low for them to hear. He didn’t take his eyes off Kaelen. “You take the token. I keep them.”

“I’m not leaving you to—”

“Silas,” he said, and somehow my false name sounded like a dare. “You like winning, don’t you?”

I do. The admission burned like liquor.

Kai’s fingers trembled over the disc. “We need at least one,” he whispered. “Please.”

The please wasn’t for me. It was for whatever gods listen to boys who make bad bargains to save kind packs.

Behind Kaelen, Brant rolled his shoulders, fresh blood streaking his face; Torren spun another knife on his fingers, showy. The shaft yawned at our heels, patient.

I made the decision that would keep us alive.

“Kai. Token. Now.”

He snatched it up, clutching it to his chest like it might beat.

“Go,” I said. “Find daylight, make the circle, hand it in. Don’t stop for anything that breathes.”

“What about—”

“I’ll be behind you.” A lie I intended to make true.

He ran.

Kaelen didn’t lunge for him. He wanted me. He wanted Soren more.

Soren rolled his neck, green eyes bright with something that wasn’t quite joy and wasn’t quite rage. “You take the limping one,” he said conversationally.

“Brant?” I asked.

“Kaelen. I’m not generous.”

We moved together without agreeing to it, two blades meeting a larger grindstone. Kaelen came in heavy; I let him. Redirect, deflect,

carve small victories from big men. Soren slid at my periphery—an absence of wasted motion—catching Torren’s wrist mid-throw and planting his face into stone. Twice. Torren sagged. Soren let him drop.

Kaelen liked pain. He smiled when I bruised his ribs again. He laughed when I stomped his instep. But when I hammered my elbow into the meat just above his kidney—again, again—his smile slipped to something harder.

“Silas,” he breathed, almost approving. “You might be worth breaking.”

Bite, my wolf begged, savage. End him. End him.

Not yet.

He feinted high. I didn’t buy it - until his hand flashed lower, faster than a man his size should move. Fingers hooked my binding under my shirt, just at the seam. He yanked.

White-hot panic detonated in my chest.

I slammed both palms into his throat, hard enough to rattle cartilage. He staggered a step, not enough, never enough.

Soren saw it. He didn’t look at my chest; he looked at Kaelen’s eyes. He read the moment exactly and changed the fight.

He drove a heel into Kaelen’s bad knee—the one I’d kicked earlier—then clocked him with a short, brutal cross when the joint buckled. Kaelen reeled. Soren didn’t chase the head; he went for control, snapping Kaelen’s arm into a lock that would have ended a lesser fighter. Kaelen tore free with a snarl, leaving skin behind. Blood sheeted down his forearm.

“Run,” Soren said, not to Kaelen. To me.

“I told Kai I’d—”

“Run.”

I ran.

Not away—through. Past Torren, who flinched now, knife hand shaking. Past Brant, breathing like a bull, blood stringing from his nose. Past Kaelen, who was too busy not falling to pick which of us he hated more. My ribs screamed. My lungs burned. My wolf sang hot and wild in my veins—Faster. Closer. Our boy ahead. Keep him. Keep him.

I caught Kai at the next junction, shoved him right when he would have gone straight, felt the change in air before the light opened—raw daylight like a blade down the throat of the tunnel. The arena roared back into full, vicious sound around us.

“Go!” I shoved him toward the dais, toward the herald’s staff and the iron bowl where the other tokens lay clattering as heirs slammed theirs down. “Don’t trip. Don’t talk. Don’t stop.”

He didn’t. He ran like prayer made flesh, slim shoulders arrowing through bodies. An heir lunged for him; I tripped the i***t and kept moving, scanning—Soren? Kaelen? Guards?

A horn somewhere signaled another success. The count leaped. Eight. Nine. Ten. The number shrieked in my skull—fifteen and no more.

Kai burst onto the dais, slammed the token into the bowl, stumbled to his knees. The herald’s mouth twisted; he lifted the disc high.

“Accepted!”

The stands howled. Somewhere, a child screamed joy. Somewhere else, a mother sobbed relief.

I turned back to the warren mouth, chest heaving, vision sharpening to knife points. Dark. Noise. Blood. No Soren.

Ours, my wolf said, softer now. He comes.

A beat later, he did—spattered, breathing hard but not ragged, eyes flicking once to me (alive), once to the dais (count), once to the tunnels (unfinished business). He didn’t slow. He veered, vanished into another mouth of dark, hunting his own token like a promise he intended to keep.

Kaelen limped out after, face pale with contained fury, Brant and Torren behind him like shadows that had learned to bleed.

The King, far above, reclined, watching it all with a smile like a red cut.

I pressed a hand to my ribs, feeling the saw-edge of the bindings dig at bruises, forcing my breath even. One token down—for Kai.

None for me. None for Soren. The count ticked upward.

“Fifteen,” I whispered, the number a blade.

Then I went back into the dark.