Chapter 6 - Kahn
The combat ring had been built into the stone courtyard behind the great hall, a circle of packed earth ringed by low wooden barriers that the pack had been leaning against since dawn. Kahn stood on the raised platform above it, arms folded, watching.
He told himself he was watching all of them with the same level of interest. He was almost convinced.
The first four candidates moved through their fights with expected efficiency.
Sloane went third, and she was as good as he expected her to be.
Perhaps more. Her warrior barely broke a sweat keeping the engagement controlled, but Sloane didn’t make it easy for him.
She took the five minutes and walked out with her chin up and a thin, satisfied smile aimed directly at Kahn.
He looked at the ring.
Chris stood to his left, positioned carefully behind Viktor, his face angled away from the candidates below. He’d been quiet all morning. A worried quiet.
“She’s next,” Viktor murmured.
Caitlynn came through the side gate without ceremony. She’d pulled her hair back, and she’d swapped her usual sweater for a fitted long-sleeve that did nothing to hide the fact that she was built nothing like the women who’d preceded her. Softer. Rounder. Human in every line.
The warrior waiting for her, Dex, was barely twenty. Kahn had chosen him specifically. Youngest fighter in active rotation, still growing into his shoulders, instructed three times to pull every strike. If there was a gentle option in this trial, Dex was it.
Caitlynn sized him up from across the ring, her face a mask of determination.
“You good?” Dex asked her because, apparently, he had the self-preservation instincts of a golden retriever.
“Fantastic,” she said. “Can we just get this over with?”
The horn sounded.
Dex moved, and she went down in the first ten seconds—not from a full strike, just from the sheer physics of a shifter’s shoulder catching hers. She hit the dirt hard enough to raise a small cloud of it.
The crowd along the barriers went still.
Kahn’s hands tightened on the railing.
She lay there for exactly two seconds. Then she rolled, got her palms under her, and pushed herself back upright. None of the determination had left her face, though her face was flushed, giving the freckles a stark appearance.
“Okay,” she said. “Fair enough.”
She got knocked down again thirty seconds later. Hip-checked into the barrier. Dex had barely touched her, practically deposited her against it. Still, the wood rattled with the impact.
“She’s going to fracture something,” Chris said quietly, from behind Viktor.
Kahn said nothing.
She got up.
The third time she went down, it took longer. Both hands on the dirt. One knee. Her breath came out in a hard exhale. She stayed there for a moment, head dropped, and the murmuring along the barriers started.
Stay down, someone near the railing said, low and dismissive. She’s done.
Kahn’s teeth came together.
She got up.
She didn’t try to fight smart; she had no training for that, no frame of reference for how a wolf moved or where the openings were.
What she did instead was refuse to stay where she’d been put.
Every time Dex set her down, she came back up.
Her form was terrible. Her footwork was nonexistent.
At one point, she appeared to feint left using the single most telegraphed movement Kahn had ever witnessed in twenty years of watching fights.
Dex didn’t even have to dodge. He just leaned.
“She’s going to hit him with sheer stubbornness,” Viktor observed, almost admiringly.
“She’s going to give herself a concussion,” Chris retorted, anger audible in his voice.
“She’ll be fine,” Kahn said, though he didn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe it.
Four minutes in, Dex caught her shoulder and swept her legs, and she hit the earth flat on her back. Several people along the barrier winced audibly. She lay there staring at the sky. Dex stood over her with his hand out, his brow furrowed, clearly hoping she’d just take it and call it done.
She looked at his hand. Looked at the sky. Looked at his hand again.
She ignored it and got up by herself.
The horn sounded at five minutes.
The courtyard was silent.
Caitlynn stood in the center of the ring, breathing hard, dirt on her jaw and a cut across her cheekbone that was going to bruise spectacularly by evening. Her hair had given up entirely and hung loose around her shoulders. Her hands hung at her sides, fingers slightly curled.
She looked up at the platform.
At him.
Her green eyes were exhausted and sharp and burning with rage. There was blood on her chin. She didn’t lift a hand to wipe it.
I’m still here.
He heard it as clearly as if she’d spoken it aloud, though her lips hadn’t moved.
What are you going to do about that?
“Well,” Viktor said. “I’ll be damned.”
***
By the time the great hall filled that evening, the candidates who remained had clearly gotten the message that something was different. The four women who’d passed all three trials sat apart from each other, though their eyes studied their rivals carefully.
Kahn sat at the high table. He’d been sitting there for an hour, and he was reasonably sure he hadn’t moved once.
Gideon rose.
The room quieted as it always did when Gideon rose. Not because they were afraid of him, though some were, but because he occupied space like a man who’d been taking up space since before most of them were born and fully intended to continue.
He explained the ritual. The lottery selected. The trials determined. Any woman who passed all three had proven herself worthy.
Kahn watched the four remaining candidates' faces as they processed this. The two she-wolves from allied packs shifted, exchanged glances, recalibrated. Sloane scoffed, furious. She believed, Kahn knew, that it ought to have been her from the start. A member of his own pack.
Caitlynn frowned at the table. Turned the information over in her head visibly, like she was checking it for exits.
“I must tell you that there is a difference,” Gideon continued. “There is a chosen bond… and a fated one. There are bloodline signatures going back eons. Creating a bond strong enough to withstand anything. Anything short of completing the bond… Kahn didn’t look at Caitlynn.
He looked at the far wall. He looked at the candles in the iron sconces. He looked at a specific point in the middle distance that demanded absolutely nothing from him.
He felt the moment she understood.
He didn’t know how; the bond wasn’t complete, shouldn’t have been functional at all yet, but he felt it.
His wolf went very, very still.
No, Kahn told it. Not yet.
His wolf had no opinion on timing.
Gideon finished. The room stayed quiet for a long moment.
Kahn had missed out on the announcement; his careful study of the wall managing to keep him occupied enough. He became aware of it when Caitlynn rose.
“Do I have any say in this?”
Gideon looked at her. “No. This is how it’s always been.”
She didn’t look at Kahn. She didn’t look at Sloane or the other candidates or Gideon or any of the assembled pack members watching her curiously.
She walked out.
Every person in that hall watched her go, and not one of them moved to stop her, because there was nowhere for her to go, and they all knew it, and somehow that made it worse.
Kahn sat at the high table and stared at the door she’d disappeared through.
His wolf pressed forward. It was not the restless, curious push of the past two weeks, but something heavier. It was a shame. He shoved it back. Folded his hands on the table.
He hadn’t chosen this either. It didn’t matter that he was the Alpha. The magic had decided, and the magic was not something he could argue with or override or dismiss with a sardonic remark and a raised eyebrow.
It was done. And they had no choice but to accept it.