Page 103 of Before the Bond
“But that doesn’t mean I’m going to let you hurt the ones I love,” I said.
Maykhel stepped forward. “Then you know what must be done,” he said. “We’ll let the world and the fates decide. Let it choose who gets to live with what they’ve done.”
The last sentence made me think about myself.
How I let my own guilt, my own circumstances blind me to the things that should have been obvious from the start.
The trust my pack had for me. The love Olivia chose to give me, and was always willing to give me.
I was not going to let it cloud me anymore.
I now had a future I wanted to pursue. I would be damned if I let Maykhel take it.
The two of us circled one another, each raising our hands in an oath, as we called forth an ancient rite.
“This is the battle between alphas,” Maykhel said firmly. “Bound by the trees, the earth, and the blood of all witnessing it.”
“By the moon,” I continued. “By the shadows.”
I realized now this was Maykhel’s plan from the start. He needed this to be a duel.
But a formal duel between alphas was something that every other pack, no matter how contrived the circumstances leading up to it, would have no choice but to respect.
“Two wolves,” Maykhel continued. “One victor to claim the territory present.”
“I accept the outcomes,” I finished. “Whatever the fates decide.”
Maykhel lowered his hand first. His smile hardened. His glowing eyes devoid of any true internal light.
“Whatever the fates decide,” he said.
Maykhel leapt into the air, his body turning into a liquid shadow as he pounced.
I shifted in an instant, the bond surging through me faster than it ever had.
We clashed. He went for my neck. I veered. Drove him back.
Blood streaked across the grass, shining crimson, as I scratched his face.
He growled.
Maykhel was not a careless fighter, and the years hadn't cost him anything in that regard. He shifted the moment he accepted the challenge — not the jerking, effortful shift of a younger wolf still getting used to what he was, but the smooth, unhesitating change of a man who had done it ten thousand times and stopped counting.
Large, grey-pelted, and built the way alphas were built, he had every ability to take me down had I stayed weakened.
He came fast and low from the left.
I shifted hard and met him.
The second collision drove both of us sideways through the grass. His teeth found my shoulder and clamped down on it.
The bite was deliberate, not frenzied. He was testing depth before he went in for the kill. I didn't give it to him.
I turned inside the grip. I drove my weight down and to the right, forced him to choose: bite or balance. He held the bite. Wrong choice.
I drove him sideways into the grass with enough force that the impact shook through my own skeleton, and he released, and we separated, and both of us recalibrated in the two seconds of space between first contact and second.
He recovered faster than I expected. No hesitation in the reset, no sign of the shoulder impact registering as more than information.
