The Pit

They shoved Bastian into the pit before I could even stand. The crowd roared. And I felt the first blow land in my own ribs.

An enforcer with a scar splitting his chin dragged me up a set of stone steps to a wooden ledge that overlooked the fighting pit. The chamber was underground, carved into the bedrock beneath the council hall, and the walls sweated with old moisture. Torches lined the perimeter, and the smoke made everything hazy and orange. Wolves crowded the ledge, pack members I recognized and some I didn't, all of them shouting and stomping their boots on the stone.

I grabbed the railing with both hands. Below, the pit was a circle of packed dirt and bloodstains. Bastian stood in the center, his wrists still raw from the silver chains, his shoulder wrapped in a hasty bandage that was already spotting red. He wore no shirt. The scars on his back caught the torchlight like twisted silver ropes.

"Place your bets," a beta man with a missing front tooth shouted, and the crowd surged around me. "The rogue against Halden's boy, Gregor. Three rounds or until surrender."

Gregor climbed into the pit from the far side. He was young, maybe twenty, and built like a bull. His shoulders were thick as hams, and his fists looked like they could crack stone. He cracked his neck and grinned at the crowd. The pack loved Gregor. Gregor won fights.

The horn blew.

Gregor charged. Bastian sidestepped, but his left leg dragged, slow and heavy from the silver burns along his thigh. Gregor's fist caught Bastian across the jaw, and I felt the impact in my own skull. My head snapped back. My teeth clacked together. The bond screamed with shared pain, and I doubled over the railing, gasping.

"What's wrong with him?" someone behind me muttered.

"Probably still sick from whatever the rogue did to him."

I couldn't answer. Couldn't explain. Gregor landed another blow to Bastian's ribs, and my own ribs seized. I tasted copper. Bastian staggered, and through the bond I felt exhaustion dragging at him, the weight of blood loss and silver and a claiming that had drained him almost as much as it had drained me.

The crowd roared. Gregor raised his fists and turned in a slow circle, playing to his audience. Bastian was on one knee in the dirt, blood dripping from his mouth.

I couldn't let him lose. I couldn't let him die in this pit for their entertainment.

I closed my eyes and reached for the bond. It was still new, still raw, a thread of light stretched between my chest and his. I didn't know what I was doing. No one had taught me how bonds worked. But my wolf, the white thing that had finally broken free in the cave, stirred and pushed.

I gathered everything I had left. The scraps of strength. The warmth of the claiming mark. The desperate, furious refusal to watch him fall. And I pushed it through the bond toward Bastian.

His head snapped up.

His gold eyes found me in the crowd, and something passed between us. Not words. A feeling. Warmth flooding into his limbs, chasing away the silver burn and the exhaustion.

Gregor turned back, still grinning. "Ready for more, rogue?"

Bastian rose. He moved faster than before, and his fist connected with Gregor's jaw before the beta could finish blinking. Gregor went down hard. Bastian didn't stop. He drove forward, and every blow I felt through the bond was his strength now, not his pain. Gregor tried to get up, and Bastian kicked his legs out from under him. Gregor hit the dirt face first.

"I yield," Gregor shouted, his voice muffled. "I yield."

The horn blew. The crowd went silent, then exploded into noise. Some cheers. Some boos. Coins changed hands. Bastian stood in the center of the pit, chest heaving, and he didn't look at the crowd. He looked at me.

My legs gave out. I slid down the railing and sat on the cold stone, my whole body shaking. The strength I had sent him was gone. My reserves were empty. But he was alive.

The crowd thinned. The torches burned lower. An enforcer let me down the steps to the holding cage at the edge of the pit, and I grabbed the iron bars with both hands. Bastian sat on the other side, his back against the stone wall, his bruised jaw dark and swollen.

I reached through the bars and touched his face. My fingers brushed the edge of the bruise, and Bastian's eyes closed. He leaned into my palm like it was the only warm thing in the world. The bond hummed, and I felt his exhaustion and his relief tangled together.

"You shouldn't have done that," he muttered, and his voice was gravel and weariness. "Sending strength. It leaves you empty."

"I didn't know what else to do." My thumb traced the line of his cheekbone. "You were losing."

"I was letting him tire himself out. That's how you fight someone bigger." He opened his eyes, and the gold in them was duller than before. "You don't need to bleed for me, little wolf. I can survive the hits. That's what I do."

Bastian's hand came up and covered mine. His palm was rough and hot, and his fingers wrapped around my knuckles like he was trying to memorize the shape of them.

"Next time," he said, "let me take the hits. Promise me."

I didn't promise. I couldn't. And he knew it.

A horn blast tore through the chamber.

Every head turned. The few remaining wolves on the ledge scrambled to their feet. A messenger strode into the pit from the main entrance, flanked by two guards in unfamiliar colors—dark green with a grey tree stitched on their chests. Ironwood Pack.

The messenger was a tall alpha woman with a braid of red hair and a scar that split her eyebrow. She stopped at the edge of the pit and raised her voice to the emptying chamber.

"Ironwood challenges Silver Hollow to trial by combat." Her voice rang off the stone walls. "Our beta champion has already defeated three of your fighters. If no one else will face him, you forfeit the northern hunting grounds by decree of the Inter-Pack Council."

Silence crashed down. The wolves on the ledge looked at each other. Maren Holt stood near the entrance, her arms crossed, her scarred face unreadable. Three fighters already beaten. I looked around at the blood on the pit floor, at Gregor limping toward the exit, at the turned backs and shaking heads.

No one was stepping forward.

I didn't know why I stood. My legs were empty. My body was a hollow shell. But my legs moved, and my hand left Bastian's, and I heard myself speak before I knew what the words would be.

"I'll fight."