Chapter 28 Alden
ALDEN
The pack howl rises as one voice and breaks on the cold air.
Gideon and I circle each other.
In wolf form he's substantial—gray-brown coat, heavy through the chest, twenty years of enforcer conditioning showing in the way he moves. Low, controlled, weight distributed evenly, chin tucked to protect the throat.
He's done this before, not a challenge fight, but enough field work to know the mechanics. I know his habits. He knows mine. We've sparred at training dozens of times over the years, and the thing about sparring an opponent long enough is that you learn their tells and they learn yours.
He favors the right side. He telegraphs his lunges by dropping his left shoulder first. When he wants to end something quickly, he goes for the flank.
I keep my left side toward the outer ring and wait.
He moves first—fast, direct, a hard angle toward my left flank where the rogue tore through several days ago. The wound is closed but not healed, and he knows it, because Gideon makes it his business to know everything about the pack's vulnerabilities, including mine.
I pivot hard right and take the impact on my shoulder instead, his teeth grazing muscle without finding the injury. I wheel on him before he resets and drives my jaws toward his throat.
He drops his chin in time. My teeth find the side of his neck instead, closing hard, and for a second, we're locked together, both of us pulling in opposite directions. He twists free with a sound that's more frustration than pain and puts six feet between us.
Blood on his neck. First draw.
He circles left. I track him.
"You're slower than you were," he says.
The words are human—he's speaking through the partial shift, the way older wolves can, holding language while the body stays wolf. It's a skill that takes decades to develop.
"You're older than you were," I say through my partial shift. "Adjust."
He charges again, this time from the right, going wide and looping back inward to catch me mid-turn.
I let him commit to the angle, and take the collision chest-to-chest. The force staggers us both, claws tearing through the dirt as we separate. He leaves a gash along my right shoulder. I open his left flank.
We bleed on the ritual stone together, and the pack watching us makes no sound.
The next exchange is faster—he feints high and drives low, I counter with a body check that puts him back two yards, he recovers and catches my back leg with his jaws.
Not the hamstring, not the joint, but enough to slow the step.
I shake him off and feel the sharp pull of it with every stride for the next thirty seconds.
He notices. He goes after the same leg.
I let him close the distance like I'm favoring it, then pivot at the last moment and drive my skull into the side of his head.
The crack reverberates through the ring.
He staggers sideways, legs crossing under him, and shakes his head twice.
The gash over his left eye opens—a split from the impact—and blood runs freely into the fur below.
"Yield," I say.
He looks at me from across the ring. "No!" he snarls.
We come together again.
He's adapting—the left-shoulder tell is gone now, the lunges coming from still starts that are harder to read.
He catches me across the muzzle with a raking blow that turns my head and rings my ears, and in the half-second where my vision grays slightly, he goes for the flank wound.
His teeth find old injury, and the pain hits clean and hard through my whole left side.
My legs hold.
The wolf in me doesn't register pain the way the human does.
I twist and bring my full weight down on Gideon's back, driving his forelegs into the stone.
He goes down briefly, back arching to throw me, and we grapple across the ground in a tangle of claws and straining muscle.
His jaws find my neck and he pulls, not enough to pierce deep, but enough to feel it.
I get my legs under me and stand out of his grip by brute force.
We're both breathing hard now. The rhythm of the fight has changed—heavier, more deliberate, less quick-fire exchange and more sustained pressure. He's holding ground rather than attacking.
I think about the hunters on the forest roads. I think about the syndicate, the land acquisition orders, years of preparation that ends with pack wolves in steel-jaw traps and Cassidy tied to a chair in a hunting cabin.
I think about what Gideon's version of a pack looks like, the one he's been building toward—and whether the syndicate's plans for this land leave room for the pack at all, or whether Gideon made a deal that eventually includes handing them wolves on top of acreage.
Total annihilation comes to mind.
I stop holding anything back.
I charge, full force, and Gideon doesn't have time to prepare for the momentum.
He braces, but I hit him lower than he expects, and he goes airborne for a moment before the stone arch catches him.
He hits it with his side, scrambles upright, and his back left leg doesn't take weight the same way it did a minute ago.
He favors it, but tries not to show it.
"You've already lost ground," I say. "It ends here or it ends worse."
His head drops slightly—not submission. He's reassessing.
"The pack needs this to end," I say. "Whatever happens to you tonight, I'm still cleaning up the mess you made. Let it be over."
He looks at me across the ring. The gash over his eye has matted the fur red. His flank is open in two places. His back leg is a liability.
"No," he says again.
He stops watching me.
That's the moment I see it—his eyes shift away from mine and track left, toward the outer ring, where Cassidy is watching the duel.
The movement is too deliberate to be distraction.
It's a decision. His weight shifts forward, hindquarters coiling, and the angle of his body rotates off the center line and toward the outside of the ring.
He's done with me. He's going for her instead.
Pack law prohibits interference during a formal duel, and Brynn will uphold that law even now. She'll record the violation. She won't step in. This is a fight to the death, and the witnesses are precisely that.
I don't wait for him to commit to the charge.
I cover the distance in two strides and hit him from the side with everything I have. The collision is brutal, rattling my ribs, the impact of my shoulder driving into his, the force of it carrying us both across the ring in a grinding slide of claws on stone.
We crash into the far side of the ritual boundary, nowhere near Cassidy, and I plant myself between him and that direction before he gets his legs back under him.
"Stay on this side of the ring," I say, and my voice drops into an in-human growl.
Gideon gets upright. His back leg buckles once before it holds. His breaths are sharp rasps, likely due to a broken rib. He took the collision as badly as I did. The gash over his eye is running freely now, red across the gray of his muzzle, and his flank wound has spread during the grappling.
"This is finished," I say. "Yield."
He charges.
It's slower than before, and I see every element of it—the broken rhythm in his back leg, the way his weight compensates left to favor it, the decision in his eyes that whatever this costs him, he's committed to the conclusion.
I step inside his angle and drive my jaws into the side of his neck—not the kill, not yet, the hold just below it—and I take him to the ground with my full weight on top of him.
He fights. His claws tear down my side and narrowly miss the artery on my neck, short desperate damage from a wolf who has nothing left to offer but refusal. I don't let go. The hold is clean, the pressure controlled, my weight keeping his legs from getting purchase.
The pack rings with cheers. Some for me. Some for Gideon.
He goes still beneath me, but doesn’t submit. For a moment neither of us moves. I can feel his heart pounding through the hold, feel his ribs working hard for each breath. His claws stop moving. His legs stop pushing.
I keep the hold and wait.
"Done?" I say against his neck.
His chest heaves twice. “No!”
With unexpected agility, he rolls onto his back and digs his claws into my belly, pushing me away and breaking my hold. The fight continues.