The North Sees Her #2
Jace tries to pull free, but his weight is already too far over his front foot. His boot lands in the churned mud near the western marker, and his balance breaks beneath him. I turn with the force he has given me, sending his knee into the packed earth hard enough to scatter frost.
He twists and tries to drag me down with him. I let him pull me close, hook my leg behind his, and take him the rest of the way.
The impact jars my ribs, and pain flashes white behind my eyes as Jace reaches for my throat.
I catch his hand before his fingers close around it. For several breaths, we’re both on the ground with the cold rising through our clothes, but fury has made him careless.
He tries to roll me toward the wounded side, and I shift before he can complete it. I trap his wrist against the frozen earth and bring my weight across his shoulders, holding him there while the pressure burns through my ribs.
“Get off me.”
“No.”
He bucks hard enough to send another wave of pain through my side, but I keep the hold. Every wolf in the court is watching to see whether I’ll break him simply because I can.
Jace finally goes still, though his breath remains rough beneath me. “Do it, then. Show them what you are.”
I look down at him and understand what he wants. If I hurt him badly enough, he can turn the blood into proof that I’m no different from the men who taught him authority was only violence with a title attached.
“The North doesn’t need another Alpha who mistakes fear for loyalty.”
His expression changes. It isn’t shame or regret, but the first clear understanding that I’m not going to give him the ending he planned.
“Yield,” Rowan says from the boundary.
Jace’s jaw locks.
“Yield,” Rowan says again.
For several seconds, the only sound in the court is the wind moving over the stone. Then the fight leaves Jace’s body, though the hatred in his face remains.
“I yield.”
The words are quiet, but Rowan hears them, and so does every wolf close enough to matter.
I release Jace’s wrist and rise carefully. The ground tilts beneath my boots, and Nora takes one step toward the Circle before I lift my hand.
I’m still standing.
Jace remains on one knee without looking at me as Rowan enters the boundary.
“Jace Maddox has yielded before witness,” he says. “The challenge is ended.”
The bell rings again.
Its sound moves across the court with the force of final judgment.
I turn toward Ivy. Her gaze drops immediately to the dark stain spreading beneath my coat, and worry strikes through the unfinished bond, broad and sharp but without words.
Behind me, bone cracks.
Someone shouts my name.
I turn as Jace’s body breaks into the shift.
His shirt tears across his shoulders, his hands strike the ground as claws force through his fingers, and black fur spreads over lengthening limbs. The change is fast and uncontrolled, driven through him before the guards can reach the boundary.
He lunges before the shift is complete.
The challenge is over, and my back was turned when he attacks.
I move, but I’m too slow to avoid him entirely. His half-shifted shoulder crashes into my wounded side, and pain bursts through me so violently that the court disappears behind white light.
I hit the ground hard.
Jace completes the change above me, his weight coming down across my chest as his jaws snap close to my throat. His teeth strike the stone beside my head.
I drive my forearm beneath his neck and shove, but he has the greater weight now, and blood spreads beneath my coat as his claws tear through the front of it.
“Roman!”
Ivy’s voice reaches me from beyond the Circle.
Jace tears free of my grip and lunges for my throat again. I catch the side of his muzzle with one hand, but my strength is already failing, and his teeth turn toward my face.
Nora’s warning cuts through the pain. The shift will tear through everything that has begun to heal, and changing back may be worse.
Jace wrenches his head free.
There’s no room left for caution.
I let my wolf come.
The change rips through me, pulling bone and muscle around a wound that was never ready to carry it. My ribs shift beneath torn flesh, and pain crashes through both forms so hard that my first breath as a wolf comes out as a broken snarl.
Jace hesitates.
That moment is enough.
I slam into him before he can recover, and we roll across the frost with claws tearing through the packed ground. His teeth catch the fur over my shoulder, while mine close against the muscle beneath his neck, not deeply enough to kill but hard enough to force him sideways.
He twists and rakes his claws across my injured side. Pain burns through me, and my wolf answers with fury as I drive Jace into the nearest boundary marker.
The impact runs through his body. He snaps at my face, and I pull back before his teeth close over my eye. He comes after me again, wild and fast, but he’s no longer fighting an injured man he expected to humiliate.
He’s fighting the Alpha he attacked after surrendering.
We collide in the center of the Circle. His claws score my chest, and I catch the side of his throat before throwing him down. Frost scatters beneath his body, but he rolls before I can pin him and launches himself at me again.
His weight strikes mine, and for several breaths there is only fur, blood, and the sound of teeth closing too near bone.
The guards hold at the boundary because entering between two fighting wolves would only give Jace another target. Rowan shouts an order I can’t make out through the blood pounding in my ears.
Jace drives me toward the western marker. My left foreleg buckles when pain tears through my side, and he sees the weakness before I can correct it.
He lunges for my throat.
I drop beneath him instead. His body passes over mine, and I turn hard, ignoring the way the movement opens something deeper beneath my ribs. My jaws close around the back of his neck, and I use the force of his attack the same way I used it while we were human.
Jace hits the ground.
I come down over him with one forepaw pinning his shoulder and my weight trapping his body. My teeth settle against the side of his throat where a single hard bite will end everything.
He freezes beneath me.
His pulse beats against my tongue.
My wolf wants to close his jaws because Jace yielded, accepted the Circle’s protection, and attacked when my back was turned. The law would allow his death now. No wolf watching could call it murder, and no guard would be able to reach us before it was done.
Jace growls beneath me, and my teeth press deeper.
Blood touches my tongue.
Ivy says my name again.