Chapter Eleven #2
“I love you too, and I believe you want to mean what you’re saying.” He turned his head to look at me. “I believe that will be the outcome if you can help it. I don’t know if I believe you can help it.”
“Same.” This was not the conversation I’d wanted to have, but I wouldn’t shut him down. Not now. I didn’t want to hear what he was saying, but he needed to say it. The least I could do was listen.
“How long?” he asked.
“How…Until the fight?” He nodded, and I reached down to take his hand. “About another twenty minutes. Maybe a bit less. I want to be the first one out there.”
“Then for the next ten minutes, would you just hold me and let me feel like we’re getting married in a few days, nothing’s going to change that, and everything’s fine?”
“I can hold you.” I lay down across the bed and held out my arms. “I can’t promise anything about how you feel. I don’t have that much power. At least not over you.”
“Close enough.” He lay down and curled against me with his head on my chest.
We lay in silence. Not the comfortable silence I enjoyed with him, but a silence laden with finality.
I would come back to this room, or at least so I hoped, but I wouldn’t be exactly the same person I was right now, because I would have killed.
That was, of course, assuming I actually did come back to this room.
I had to. Like Kyle said, we were getting married in a few days.
Something we’d talked about off and on nearly as long as we’d been together.
I was the one who had proposed, on Christmas Day in front of friends and our guards, and I was damned if I was going to let a fucking challenge fight stop the wedding.
I pulled Kyle closer and savored the feeling of the body I’d gotten so accustomed to over the past two years.
The mind and soul that were joined to mine in ways no one really understood.
We called it “fated mates,” but what even was fate?
What cosmic power decided that two people should be permanently joined on a soul level?
We were pretty sure, based on the fact that some mates were completely incompatible as people, that the mate bond existed between the wolf souls that dwelled in us, but that wouldn’t explain Tareth, who had no wolf soul, being Justin’s mate. There was no way to really know.
At the moment, it didn’t really matter, either. Kyle was my mate. Our souls were joined. We belonged together, and in three days we would stand in front of friends and a Justice of the Peace and make sure we legally belonged together too.
If I survived that long.
Shutting off my brain wasn’t even close to possible, but I did shut down the mate bond so Kyle wouldn’t overhear what was going through my head. He wanted to rest with me, and I didn’t want to disrupt that if I could help it.
He was the one who broke our embrace, sitting up to look at his watch. “It’s time.”
“Thanks.” I sat up too and kissed him. “I know you want to know what happens, but please don’t watch. Xavier’s going to stay nearby to make sure you’re all right. He said if…If I’m not able to, he’ll make sure you get back to Winthrop.”
“Okay.”
His voice was completely flat, and yet it held all of the emotion. I didn’t know how to respond, so I just kissed him again and left the room.
Downstairs, once again Seth fended off people who tried to talk to me, including the Boston wolves.
Word had spread that I faced a challenge, and my friends, naturally, didn’t want to see me die.
I didn’t know if they intended to talk me out of the fight or encourage me, and I was glad Seth didn’t let them speak to me.
I couldn’t afford the distraction right now.
I did manage to be the first outside, but by mere seconds. Zane, Paul, and Bob were right behind me. Seth got between them and me. “The Anax needs to ready himself for the fight.”
“Seth, it’s okay,” I said. “They can talk to me. I appreciate you not letting me get mobbed inside, but this is just three friends.”
“Yes, Anax.” He didn’t sound pleased, but he did move aside.
I spoke first because I didn’t want the three men to call me Anax. “Old friends. You’re out here to witness the fight. I hope you aren’t going to tell me not to go through with it.”
“Of course not, old friend,” Zane said. “We know you better than that. We don’t know what spurred Edward to issue this challenge when he had previously stated he had no intention of doing so.
He is not suited for the rank, nor is he strong enough to defeat you, and he knows it. This may be a diversion.”
“Pretty effective one, if so.” I looked past them toward the house. Others were starting to head our way. “Speak quickly if you have something to say.”
“We believe Davis may have persuaded Edward to challenge you to lead up to another attempt on your life,” Bob said. “I overheard whispers between two of the remaining Pacific alphas. One was… Wally, was it? Who confronted you downstairs?”
“Wally, yes.” If he knew something about Davis’s plan, maybe it made sense that he’d stuck around even though he clearly agreed with Davis’s way of thinking. Davis might have ordered him to stay. “He was talking to another Alpha from the former Pacific Region?”
“Colin Somers of Six Rivers Pack,” Paul said. “Another of the ones who has, for the moment, joined my region.”
“I see.” I folded my arms. “I’m sorry, old friends, I see you have something important to tell me, but unless you want everyone witnessing the fight to know about it, we need to stop talking now.”
Ah, but we don’t, Bob said through our bond.
Listen. Wally and Colin were talking about Davis’s plan to remove you so a new Anax has to be chosen.
Davis told them to watch the challenge fight and make sure Edward gets you out of the way.
Sounded like no one cares if Edward dies too, as long as you aren’t able to be Anax anymore.
Thank you. That gave me something else to worry about.
From the sound of it, Davis was planning to somehow cheat in the fight that he wasn’t even part of.
He hadn’t challenged me himself because he knew there was no way in hell he could win, so he’d talked someone else who couldn’t possibly win into doing it, which made no sense.
I was usually pretty good at putting pieces together, but this was like trying to do a puzzle where half of the pieces were missing and half of the pieces that were present belonged to a different puzzle.
I had no time to sort it out as the rest of the arkhons and the Southeast Region alphas joined us. I couldn’t think under the gazes of somewhere around forty werewolves, some of whom were looking at me with something close to hatred while others looked at me with compassion and fear.
Yeah, this was going to suck.
The arkhons and alphas formed a wide circle around me. Zane, Paul, and Bob joined them, standing where I could see them from my current position, which I appreciated. At least I could look at friends.
As Edward strode to meet me, I scanned the circle.
As the challenged party, it would be up to me to choose a monitor for the fight.
Someone who would issue the commands to shift and begin, and who would declare the fight over when either Edward or I was dead.
I had to choose carefully, just as I’d always done in the past. Assigning one of my friends or allies to be the monitor was a reasonable choice but left open the possibility that someone would assume there was collusion or favoritism.
I needed someone who was either neutral or would be presumed to be on Edward’s side—but if I chose the latter, it had to be someone who could be objective regardless of which of us they actually supported.
Given Bob’s information and the fact that right now, I had no way to know who was on whose side, someone neutral would be the wisest choice.
Someone who didn’t care whether Edward or I lived.
The arkhons all cared. All of them were under the Anax’s direct rule, whereas the alphas had the arkhons as another layer.
Alphas from the Southeast Region would, in theory, be Edward’s allies, but I knew full well that alphas of any given region might or might not actually support their Arkhon.
So one of Edward’s alphas was the best choice.
I wasn’t completely familiar with the Southeast Region, but the name of one pack in that region popped into my head because of the conversation with Max and Russ.
The Alpha of Tosohatchee Pack would be the monitor for the fight.
The train of thought leading to the decision was all over the place, but it felt right.
“We are here,” Edward said. “I have challenged Tobias Rogan, Anax of the United States, for rank. This fight shall be fair, with no interference of any kind, and the results shall be binding. Anax, have you any objections to proceeding with the fight?”
The question wasn’t part of the usual protocol, and I sensed fear beneath it. He objected to proceeding. He knew he wasn’t likely to survive, and like many of us, he had a strong sense of self-preservation. I had to wonder what Davis had held over him to get him to agree to challenge me.
I would probably never know the answer, and I didn’t feel like asking.
“I have no objections, Arkhon. As you say, the fight shall be fair and the results binding, with no interference by anyone present or not present.” I threw that last bit in because if Davis was actually orchestrating things, I wanted to make sure he didn’t try anything.
Not that my words would prevent it, but the compulsion with which I backed the words might.
“Anax, it is your right to choose the monitor for the fight.” Edward was stumbling over his words again.
Varying from the usual phrasing tended to do that, but in his case, I suspected nerves had as much to do with it as anything.
After a second, though, he got back on track with the correct words. “Who will give the signal?”