Chapter 7 #2
The meeting is in the lodge's main room.
Conrad. Reaper. Hex. Cole. Luca. Damon. Six men around the big oak table.
Jo and I are the only women present and we sit at the end of the table because we are not officers and we know our protocol, but Conrad has called us specifically and he says so when we walk in.
"Sit," he says. "This is going to involve both of you."
We sit.
The scroll is on the table.
Conrad reads it out loud. The Asheville Iron pack — by way of their alpha, a man named Garrett Hollis, age thirty-six, eastern circuit record of forty-one and three — is issuing a formal dominance challenge to the Bone Hollow Sinners.
The challenge is for territorial rights to a strip of land along the Tennessee-North Carolina border that has been contested between the packs for six years.
The challenge protocol is single combat, alpha versus alpha, full wolf form, fought in the Hollow Pit on a date of the Sinners' choosing within thirty days.
The Sinners' champion of record is Damon Serrano.
The challenge is to Damon Serrano specifically.
Conrad finishes reading.
The room is silent.
I look at Damon.
He has not moved. He is sitting at Conrad's right. His hands are flat on the table. His face is — not blank, exactly. Set. The fighter's face he uses in the booth when he is calling a difficult bout and does not want anyone to read his cards.
He says, "I'll take it."
I open my mouth.
Conrad raises a hand. "Wait."
Conrad turns to Jo. "Medical opinion."
Jo does not hesitate. "Lethal. The C4 will not survive a dominance fight.
Garrett Hollis is forty-one and three because he is a clean technical fighter who targets the neck.
He will target the neck. He will not even mean it as a kill shot.
The first strike to the back of the neck ends Damon's life.
Medical recommendation: refuse the challenge. "
"Refusing means losing the territory."
"Refusing means losing the territory. Accepting means losing Damon. I am the medical voice in this room. I am telling you which loss I can live with and which I cannot."
Conrad nods. He turns to Damon.
"You said you'll take it."
"I'll take it."
"Damon —"
"Conrad. Look at me. I am the name on the record.
I am the Sinners' champion. The challenge is to me.
If I refuse, the entire eastern corridor knows the Sinners refused a challenge because their champion can't fight, and we lose more than the territory.
We lose the pit. We lose every challenge after this one.
Every pack with a grievance comes here and demands that I either fight or step aside, and the Sinners spend the next ten years sliding.
I will not let that happen. I'll fight."
I stand up.
Every head in the room turns.
"No," I say.
The silence is long enough to be its own event.
Conrad looks at me. "Petra."
"No. I am not in this room as the woman who is sleeping with Damon Serrano.
I am in this room as the medical lead of the Bone Hollow Sinners' trauma wing, in agreement with Jo, in formal medical capacity.
The C4 is not survivable. Damon, you can volunteer for whatever you want, but as the medical lead I am telling this table that if you step into the pit for that fight, I will not be the medic on the floor for it, because I will not preside over your death. "
"Petra —"
"I am not finished." I am not raising my voice.
I do not need to raise my voice. The room is listening to me and I know it.
"I am also telling you that I will, if I have to, sedate you with a dart from the pit-side station before the bout starts.
I have the access. I have the dose. I am telling you in front of witnesses that I will do it.
So that you know I am not bluffing, and so that you understand the options before you keep going. "
The room is still listening.
Damon looks at me.
He looks at me for a long second.
And then he laughs.
It is a real laugh. It cracks across the room.
It is, I realize after a beat, the second time I have ever heard him laugh — the first was the night in the medical suite, after the finals — and the laugh is the laugh of a man who has just been told something he needed to be told and who is choosing to take it as the gift it is.
"You would sedate me."
"Yes."
"From the pit-side station."
"Yes."
"At thirty meters, with the dart gun, while the bout is starting."
"At ten meters, before the bout starts, with the syringe in my hand and a security wolf at my back to make sure you don't try to stop me."
"You have thought about this."
"I have thought about it for fifteen seconds and that was enough."
He shakes his head slowly. He is smiling — small, real, the smile he gives me in the mornings when I bring him coffee and pretend I am not bringing him coffee. He looks at Conrad.
"Conrad."
"Yeah."
"She means it."
"I know she means it. That is why I made her sit in on the meeting."
"You knew."
"I suspected. Now I know."
Conrad turns to the rest of the room.
"All right," he says. "If we are not fighting Damon, what are we doing."
The room thinks.
I sit back down. I look at Damon. Damon looks at the table. He is doing the thing he does, which is run a fight in his head — turning it over, looking at it from different angles, looking at it the way he watches bouts from the booth. The whole room watches him think. After two minutes, he says:
"We train a replacement. We coach the bout from the corner. I will pick the fighter, I will train him, and I will run his bout."
"Who," Conrad says.
"Spite."
Reaper makes a sound.
"Spite is unstable."
"Spite is angry. There is a difference."
"Damon. Spite has had three formal disciplinary actions in the last year."
"I know. He has also been begging for a sanctioned fight for two years and the Sinners have not given him one because we have been afraid he would embarrass us.
He will not embarrass us. He is the most aggressive wolf in this compound.
He has eighty pounds on Garrett Hollis. He is undisciplined, but I can fix that.
Give me three weeks. I will give you a fighter who will end Garrett Hollis in two rounds. "
Conrad looks at him.
"You're sure."
"I'm sure."
"Petra. Medical sign-off on Spite as a candidate."
I think.
Spite. The angriest wolf on the compound.
I have not worked on him personally but I have read his file because I have read every Sinner's file in my first three weeks here.
He is twenty-eight, six-three, two-forty in human form, deep red wolf in shifted form, a former pit fighter on the southern circuit who was patched into the Sinners after he beat his pack alpha half to death for hitting his sister.
His cortisol baseline is elevated but not unstable.
His shift-cycle is regular. He has the constitution to take damage and the kind of mind that, with the right channel, would make a champion.
He has been wasted on three years of brawls in parking lots because no one has bothered to train him.
"Cleared," I say.
"Done," Conrad says. "Damon. You have three weeks. Build me a fighter."
The meeting ends.
The room files out.
Damon and I are last. He waits for me at the lodge door.
He does not say anything. He just looks at me.
The look is not a thank-you. The look is a recognition.
You stopped me from killing myself. I see that you stopped me.
I am going to carry the fact that you stopped me, and I am going to do the thing you opened up the room for me to do, and I am going to do it well.
I nod.
He nods.
We walk back to his cabin in the cold October afternoon.
He has, I am beginning to understand, found the fight that fits inside the box.
The fight is not in the pit. The fight is in the corner.
The fight is in the mind that watches and the voice that calls and the strategy that wins, and Damon Serrano has all of it.
He is going to coach Spite. He is going to take a feral, angry, undirected young wolf and turn him into a champion.
And he is going to do it because I called him out on his own death and gave him the option to do something better.
I think:
I have been a medic for eleven years and I have saved a lot of fighters. I have never saved one in this particular way before. By making him sit down. By making him think.
I think:
This is also medicine.
We get to his cabin.
He opens the door. He lets me in. He closes it. He turns and he puts his hands on either side of my face and he kisses my forehead.
"Thank you," he says.
"For what."
"For not letting me die."
"Don't make a habit of needing me for that."
"I won't."
"You better not."
He laughs again.
That is three times now.
I am keeping count.