Page 2 of The Wolf King

But there is something cruel in the angles of his face, and the way his dark eyes keep running up and down my body. I have been around monsters my whole life, and I can recognize the one that lurks beneath his pale skin.

I think I would prefer someone who looked like a monster to one who was adept at hiding it.

One of the Wolves tears out the other’s throat. He grins, and crimson spills down his chin. Nausea rises within me but Lord Sebastian merely smiles and claps as though he is watching a theatrical performance.

“Good show, good show.” He clicks his fingers at a couple of stewards. “Escort him to the kennels and clean this up. Then bring the next ones in.”

The stewards balk at the task at hand, but lead the bloody wolf away as the Great Hall echoes with noise. People exchange coin, make new bets, and refill their cups.

I can’t stop looking at the body though.

It’s so still. It looks so heavy. It makes my body feel heavy, too. Perhaps he was a monster. Perhaps he had a wolf beneath his skin that came out when the moon was full. Right now, he just looks like a man. A dead man. A man who will never run through those howling mountains again.

Two stewards cross the hall, grab his arms, and drag him across the stone floor as though he is a piece of meat.

I take a sip of water to steady my trembling hands. At my side, Lord Sebastian and my father enter into a conversation about army numbers on the northern border.

I’m putting my beaker back down on the table when silence falls. It is followed by an excited murmur as two more males—two more Wolves—enter the ring.

My attention is first taken by the one in front. He is young. Too young for this kind of violence, wolf or not. He must be sixteen at most—four years my junior. His coppery hair sticks up in tufts as if he’s been frantically running his hands through it. There is fear and sadness etched into his expression, yet his jaw is set. It’s as if he knows there is no hope and has resigned himself to his fate. Something in that expression feels familiar. It fills me with anger that I don’t dare to summon for my own situation.

When I turn my gaze to his opponent, I see why he knows that hope is lost.

“It took five men to bring the big one in,” Lord Sebastian tells my father. “He killed three of them. He doesn’t talk much, but we think he’s one of the alphas—possibly from the Highfell Clan. Quite a specimen, isn’t he?”

The larger male is the epitome of the wild and rugged mountains where he must have come from. He is tall, with a strong jawline, and his muscular body looks like it is carved from rock. His unkempt hair is dirty-blond, almost the color of straw, and it’s shorn closely to his head at the sides in a style I have never seen in the south. He stands, still and expressionless, and the crowd howls and screeches like the wind around him.

“Indeed.” My father runs a hand over his neat white beard. “And what was he doing this far south?”

“Who knows with these creatures.”

The alpha looks at me. And those eyes... they’re the dark green of the forest, and they brim with hatred. No one has looked at me like that before. My mouth dries as we stare at one another.

And yet, my soul stirs.

“It won’t be much of a fight,” my father says, as if he is discussing the weather, not the fates of two living beings.

“No.” Sebastian smiles cruelly. “We thought we’d break him in tonight. We have something a little more exciting planned for him at the celebrations tomorrow night.”

The alpha stares at me, his jawline hard. He is still as stone, but there is violence in his eyes. I will myself to be that statue again, to be that vessel for my soul, and I look right back at him even though my heartbeat skitters.

“Well,” says Sebastian, clicking his fingers at the Wolves in manner that could be deemed brave or foolish if it weren’t for the armed guards standing around the ring. “Begin.”

A muscle feathers in the alpha’s jaw.

Nausea rises in me as the young man’s face drains of color. He’s going to die, and everyone—he, the alpha, the crowd—knows it. He doesn’t break eye contact with the man who towers before him.

He is brave, then.

Courage, I will him, remembering that my mother said the same to me once.Have courage, little one.

The alpha’s big fist clenches at his side. It could be my imagination, but I think the younger opponent dips his head—as if in submission.

A growl vibrates in the alpha’s throat, and in it I feel the ripple of hatred and rage that he is about to unleash. It claims me too. Hatred so thick and bitter I can taste it. Hatred at this towering giant for what he is about to do.

He roars—loud and wild—a war cry that ricochets off the stone walls of the hall.

The fight is over in minutes. It is bloody, and violent, and I hear the crack of bone at some point, along with howls of pain from the younger man. The alpha holds him down on the ground, a hand curled around his neck.

---