Page 104 of Before the Bond
He feinted left. For half a second he got behind me. A clean pivot. He misjudged my speed.
Confusion crossed his face.
I was matching him in ways he hadn’t expected. Outmaneuvering him.
He adjusted. He'd come here expecting the wolf on the lawn. The one that stumbled. He was getting something else entirely, and some part of him, the experienced fighter, the alpha who had survived decades of conflict, was already doing the arithmetic.
The numbers weren't working out for him.
I heard Donovan make a sound from the estate doorway.
Without seeing her, I could feel Olivia standing breathless as she and everyone else watched us fight tooth and claw.
Maykhel went for my throat on the third pass.
It was the right move and I'd been waiting for it. He went for the throat. It made sense. It's not recklessness — it's arithmetic. He could not outlast me on the restored bond; he knew that now, a few exchanges in, reading the difference between what I'd been on the lawn and what I was now. The throat was the fastest path to a different outcome, and he was smart enough to take it.
I had everything to lose, but I refused to give it.
I took Maykhel off his feet in a move that covered four yards of ground and drove him into the center of the clearing.
Maykhel on his back. My jaws at his throat. He went still.
The Voss wolves at the perimeter went still.
Everything went still.
The only sounds were my own breathing and the fog moving through the fir at the clearing's edge.
Rain fell hard on us. I could smell it above the blood and the wet grass and the scent of two packs standing at opposite edges of this field.
I held it long enough for them to understand that what happened next was my decision, not Maykhel's.
I stepped back.
I returned to my normal form. The rain stung against my bare wounds and skin.
“The rite is done,” I said, my voice harsher and lower than it had been. “You’ve lost.”
Maykhel pushed himself up. He didn't look at me at first. He looked at the ground.
Finally, he looked up.
"You're letting me live," he said.
It came out flat. Not a question. Not gratitude.
"Yes," I said.
His jaw clenched. "Why..."
I thought about it. It wasn't a short answer, but I gave him the shortest version I had. "Because your pack doesn't need another casualty to hand down. And because I'm not him."
He knew who I meant. My father. The previous alpha. The man who killed Kieran Voss over a territorial dispute that had already been half-settled and hadn't needed blood to finish.
Something moved behind Maykhel's eyes. I wouldn't call it grief — not exactly. Part of it was frustration. And the other part of it was him slowly realizing he would not have his opportunity for revenge.
Maykhel dipped his chin.
