Orion could have made the counterargument that Maya was just as much his sister as she was Donovan’s mate. Plus, Orion was her alpha. No matter how you cut it, he had a deep, vested interest in her survival.
Instead, after an extended silence, he nodded. “Point taken.”
Then he and I were shedding clothes and racing across the desert toward a location where scouts reported werewolves from multiple territories had already gathered. Vega had arrived first with a contingent of her warriors, Prince showed up solo, and the alpha who I’d only met twice—once while capturing him then again on the oil rig—was also in attendance backed by a good number of his pack.
Many of Orion’s fighters had traveled ahead of us also, so as we drew closer Orion greeted them with lupine nods. Bellwether, however, was the one my own gaze flew to across the blinding sand. The middle-aged alpha waited with his arms crossed, the boutonniere still in place but that extra button no longer unfastened. His gaze slid across my naked body as I shifted upward into humanity, and I felt both small and exposed beneath his gaze.
“Have you made your decision?” the man who’d forced a kiss upon me demanded in lieu of greetings.
Despite our less than pleasant interactions, I almost felt sorry for him in that moment. He’d set up all this pageantry, hoping I’d cave beneath the pressure, that a matebrand with someone he disliked would prevent further upheaval to his clan. I was the one who’d instigated the mess he was fixing, so it was only fair that he get some mileage out of that fact.
Still, I wasn’t going to become his mate. No way in hell.
“My mind hasn’t changed,” I started.
But before I could accept my punishment, Bellwether suggested something entirely different. “Let’s settle this with a contest then.” Unspoken, I heard the hope that I might rethink if provided with enough incentive. Also, perhaps, the hope that his capability as leader would show to good advantage in front of the assembled audience—it couldn’t look good to beat an unarmed female who was willingly giving herself up to the punishment.
“A contest?” I repeated, assessing how much ground I could afford to give him. “With what as the prize?”
“Forgiveness if you win. A mating if you lose.”
After my initial survey, I’d kept my eyes on Bellwether’s feet the way any smart wolf would when facing an alpha. But now I looked up.
Not at Bellwether but rather at Orion. Because this could be a way around me meeting Gabi battered and bloody. We all needed to be at our best to make sure Maya was returned to us safely, and it seemed worth a small risk now in exchange for the larger advantage then.
And it was only a small risk. Especially if I worded my reply just right…
“If you win,” I told Bellwether, “then I’ll form a mate bond immediately.”
“Good,” my opponent agreed, either not noticing my word twisting or assuming that whatever had previously prevented me and Orion from rekindling our matebrand still did so.
Was that true? I glanced again at Orion, wishing for the mate bond that would have let us speak without sharing our conversation with everyone around us. Just an hour earlier, he hadn’t wanted to rush into consolidating our connection. But maybe he’d had time to marinate on the idea and had come around to my way of thinking in the interim?
After a hesitation, Orion nodded and my breath gusted out in both relief and anticipation. Then, returning my attention to Bellwether, I attempted to nail down the nitty gritty. “I suggest knife throwing.”
In lieu of an immediate answer, the older man laughed, which provoked a murmur of hilarity to roll across his pack’s sliver of the audience. “You’re not a one-body,” he chided me as the guffaws faded. “We’ll fight as wolves.”
Now Orion spoke for the first time since shifting back to humanity. “To first blood.”
“Of course,” Bellwether answered. “I have other uses for Elspeth’s many assets.”
I regained my paws while my opponent was still speaking. Because Bellwether’s verbal blow had landed exactly as intended. I could smell the fury rolling off Orion and it was better to get my own fight started before he could be drawn in.
Chapter 22
Werewolves love lupine contests of skill. I’d learned that at Gabi’s knee, had understood it as an animal weakness.
It felt entirely different from the inside.
Because Bellwether’s wolf was larger than mine, but size wasn’t everything. Just watching him circle suggested flaws I might be able to exploit. A heaviness to his step. The way he turned his head as if his peripheral vision wasn’t quite perfect. No wonder exhilaration surged with every beat of my heart, the dry desert wind carrying the electric tang of approaching combat.
Of course we were doing this. A lupine fight was pleasure and perfection. It was exactly the right thing to do.
Well, the right thing to do as long as I won. My opponent was waiting for me to make the first move, but I’d learned a lot over the past month while practicing with my house mates. Early on during our trainings, I’d thought my beginner’s luck had simply run out when, after a few triumphant bouts, I entered an extended losing streak. But Hailey had explained that it took them that long to figure out my Achilles heel…at which point I was toast.
“You act like a human, even in wolf form,” she’d told me. “We respond instinctively, but you always pause for a millisecond before each attack to plan and think.”
“I shouldn’t think?”
“Think all you want. Just do it when you’re not fighting.”
Easier said than done. Over time, I’d gotten better at letting my wolf body move me in the right direction without figuring out why I needed to move that way. But I still had a tendency to pause at critical moments. It was better not to let Bellwether catch on to that fact.
So I stood my ground, giving nothing away, until he lost patience and lunged at me. Then I used the human-thought-out plan I’d come up with while assessing him. I darted sideways, taking advantage of my nimbleness to nip at his stiff hind leg.
All I needed was a single drop of blood and this would be over…
Of course, Bellwether wasn’t going to fall for my first ploy. He rounded on me, jaws snapping. I barely managed to roll clear and end up back on my feet, sand spraying out between us, before Bellwether once again went on the offensive.
For what felt like an eternity after that, he pursued while I zigzagged avoidance. Bellwether’s size should have meant he was the first to flag, but I’d only had a month of real training in lupine form. So my movements turned sluggish before his did—my other major downfall as a fighter. I was panting by the time Bellwether anticipated one of my evasions.
His jaws snapped shut just shy of my nose, and when I backed up I found myself pressing into the unyielding ring of audience. Which is when my world expanded back out from me and Bellwether to include the sand and the sun and the dozens of shifters who’d assembled to watch our spectacle.
They’d reacted audibly before this point, but this was the first time individual words intruded upon my consciousness. “She looks like her father,” a not-too-distant male voice observed, “but she doesn’t fight like him.”
It was all I could do not to whip my entire body around to identify who was familiar with the parent I’d previously known nothing about. Now wasn’t the time to focus on genealogy, however. Instead, I gathered myself and leapt across Bellwether’s back, his teeth coming together to yank a tuft of fur out of my belly while not quite making contact with my skin.
Meanwhile, a second voice responded to the first. “Do you intend to acknowledge her as your granddaughter then?”
