The North Sees Her
? Roman ?
Nora tightens the last bandage around my ribs, checks the linen beneath it for blood, and keeps one hand against my side while she studies my breathing.
“If the pain changes, you yield,” she says. “Not when it becomes unbearable and not after you lose your footing. The moment it changes.”
“I understand.”
“You’ve understood every warning I’ve given you this week, and you’ve still found ways to make me repeat them.”
I look down at the clean bandage wrapped beneath my shirt. “If I can’t keep my feet, catch my breath, or defend myself, I’ll yield.”
“And you won’t shift because you think it’ll end the fight faster.”
“I won’t shift unless he leaves me no other choice.”
Her fingers press lightly near the edge of the wound, and even that small pressure sends pain beneath my ribs. “Changing won’t erase this. Your wolf will carry the injury differently, but the shift will pull through everything that’s trying to close, and shifting back may be worse.”
“I know what it could cost.”
“I don’t think anyone knows until it happens, but you’re going into the Circle regardless of what I say.” She lowers her hand and reaches for the black coat folded at the end of the bed. “You promised Ivy you’d come back. Remember that before pride starts speaking louder than sense.”
The door opens before I can answer.
Ivy enters with a sealed dispatch beneath one arm, her hair braided away from her face and Northern silver catching at her throat above dark wool and leather.
She looks tired after six days of running patrol routes, supply lines, and frightened villages while I recovered, but she no longer looks like she’s waiting for someone to tell her whether she belongs at the center of those decisions.
Her gaze moves from my face to Nora’s hand near the bandage. “Is it holding?”
“For now,” Nora says. “I’ve told him what happens if it stops.”
Ivy sets the dispatch beside my coat. “Eastmere’s western patrol found no fresh tracks overnight, and the south runners came in before dawn. Nothing moved through the trees.”
“Birch Hollow?”
“The fever hasn’t spread beyond the second house. Evan’s sister ate broth without help this morning, and the healer thinks the medicine is working.”
Some of the tightness beneath my ribs eases. “What about Vance?”
“The blankets reached them before midnight with the grain and lamp oil. Dane stayed until the quartermaster counted every crate in front of him.”
“The North is holding.”
“It is.”
It’s holding because Ivy has held it. Eastmere remains closed, but the western farms are supplied.
Birch Hollow has medicine and time, and Vance has Northern guards outside its doors instead of crown chains.
Patrol captains bring Ivy their reports because she gives them decisions they can carry back to their people, and when someone disagrees, she listens long enough to learn whether they have information she needs.
Nora lifts the coat. “Stand slowly.”
I brace one hand against the mattress and push myself upright. Pain pulls beneath my ribs, hot enough to narrow the room for several breaths, and I remain still until the worst of it passes.
Ivy doesn’t look away.
When I reach for the coat, she takes it from Nora. “Let me.”
I nod, and she settles it over my shoulders before fastening the first clasp.
Her fingers brush the side of my throat, and warmth moves beneath the mark at my wrist.
The unfinished bond doesn’t take the pain or lend me strength, but its presence steadies something that has nothing to do with the wound.
“Come back when it’s over,” she says.
“I will.”
“I don’t need you to prove you can endure more than Jace.”
“I know.”
Her hand remains at my collar. “I need you to remember that winning and surviving have to be the same thing today.”
“They will be.”
She searches my face as though she knows a promise can be sincere and still fail. Then she lowers her hand and steps away.
The outer court is colder than the infirmary. Dawn wind moves across the open stone before the sun has cleared the eastern wall, and frost has been scraped from the Circle’s boundary markers, though a thin white layer still clings to the packed earth.
Wolves fill the benches, walkways, and raised terraces surrounding it. Birch Hollow colors gather near the eastern rail, while Eastmere riders occupy the lower steps in dark winter cloaks. Patrol captains line the far side, and Vance stands beneath its dark-blue banner beside the northern wall.
Aurelian remains among his people. He doesn’t approach Ivy or place himself anywhere that might suggest shared blood gives him authority over her. His hands remain clasped behind his back, and his attention stays on the Circle.
Grant watches from beneath the raised canopy with two crown guards behind him. He hasn’t brought a writ because he believes the old law will give him everything paper hasn’t managed to take.
Jace waits inside the boundary.
He has stripped off his coat and gloves, and the black shirt stretched across his shoulders makes it clear he has spent the last seven days preparing for a physical contest while I spent them learning how long I could stand before the room began to tilt.
My wolf pushes closer beneath my skin when Jace looks at the wound.
I hold him back.
Rowan stands beside the center stone with the black law book in his hands.
Ivy takes her place outside the Circle beside Nora, not behind me and not far enough away for anyone to pretend she has been removed from the judgment.
Holt stands several paces beyond them with two Northern guards and the evidence case secured beneath his arm.
The crowd quiets when Rowan raises his head.
“Jace Maddox has called a lawful challenge against Roman Maddox’s right to lead the North,” he says. “The challenge concerns leadership alone.”
His gaze moves across the benches before settling on Jace.
“No title belonging to Luna Maddox is subject to this contest. Her body, bond, household, authority, and future remain outside your reach. No Alpha standing here will name her as leverage, prize, consequence, or claim.”
Jace’s expression hardens, but he gives no answer.
“There will be no blades, command pressure, or interference from either pack. Death isn’t required, and the challenge ends the moment either Alpha yields.”
Rowan turns toward me. “Do you understand?”
“I do.”
He asks Jace the same question, and Jace answers without looking away from me.
“Fight cleanly,” Rowan says. “Let the North see what it came to judge.”
He steps beyond the boundary, and the bell rings.
Jace moves before the sound has finished carrying.
His first strike comes high and fast. I block it with my forearm, but he has already shifted his weight for the next blow, and his knuckles drive toward my ribs. I turn enough that the hit doesn’t land cleanly, though pain still tears beneath the bandage and spreads hot through my side.
A reaction moves through the benches, and Jace hears it.
He has always listened to a crowd. When we were younger, he turned every spar into a performance and fought harder the moment anyone watching began to believe he had taken control.
He drives me backward across the packed ground, catching my shoulder with his own before aiming a kick at my knee. I move my weight at the last second, and his heel clips the outside of my leg instead of taking it out from under me.
“You should’ve stayed in the infirmary,” he says as he circles.
I don’t answer because he wants anger, and more than that, he wants me to forget the wound and give him something violent enough to make the court question whether my restraint has ever been anything more than a performance.
His next strike catches my jaw. My head snaps to the side, and blood rises sharp at the back of my throat.
Jace closes the distance before I’ve fully turned back. He’s stronger and faster than he was when we were younger, but he’s fighting the injury more than he’s fighting me. Every feint leads toward my left side, and every movement is meant to force me to protect it.
I give ground, though not because I’m losing.
The western edge of the Circle has been churned into dark mud beneath the frost, and Jace has spent the opening minutes watching my ribs more closely than his own footing.
Each time he presses me in that direction, he plants himself deeper in the worst ground.
“You can’t lead the North from a chair.”
He reaches toward the wound again. I catch his wrist, but he twists free before I can turn the hold against him.
“You let Vance bring its banner onto Northern stone, then handed your command to a woman who didn’t know her own blood a week ago.”
Anger rises through me, first in my hands and then beneath my skin as my wolf pushes forward.
I remember Ivy at Eastmere while smoke crossed the road and frightened wolves shouted around the medicine wagon trapped between flame and stone. She stood where everyone could see her, not because she wasn’t afraid, but because the people behind her needed someone who wouldn’t run.
I remember her at the map table, changing patrol routes when a captain gave her better information instead of treating disagreement as disobedience. I remember her in the outer court, standing between crown guards and Vance because no one else had the right to decide whether those wolves were taken.
Jace believes leadership means making everyone else afraid to move. Ivy gives people enough ground beneath them to act.
He comes toward me again expecting rage, and I let him take the space.
His shoulder drives toward my chest while his right hand rises for my ribs, and he throws his full weight behind the strike because he thinks pain has made me too slow to stop him.
I turn before it lands.
His fist passes close enough that I feel the air move against my coat. I catch his wrist, lock my other hand behind his elbow, and let his momentum carry him forward.