Chapter 11

Chapter 11

ELENA

For a moment, I couldn't hear the howling.

I couldn't hear anything at all except that voice in my head. Soft. Smooth. Almost gentle.

Leave no one alive. Especially the girl.

Silas.

Kade's beta. Kade's oldest friend. The man who smiled at me at the gate and told me nobody would hurt me here. The man who sat at Kade's right hand at every meal.

He burned my village. He killed my mother.

And he had just walked away into the crowd like nothing happened.

I turned my head and searched the faces around the ring. I found him easily. He was standing near the front, his arms folded, his bandaged hand tucked under his elbow. When he saw me looking, he smiled and gave me a small nod.

I wanted to scream his name. I wanted to point at him and tell the whole pack what he was.

But who would believe me? A human girl who couldn't even remember the last few days of her own life. A human girl who ran away on her first morning. They would laugh. And Silas would smile his kind smile and say I was confused. Scared. Out of my mind with grief.

I looked for Kade. He was standing on the other side of the ring, just outside the stones. His face was hard, his eyes fixed on me. Through the bond, I could feel how worried he was. It sat in my chest like a stone.

I had to tell him. But first I had to live.

"Human!"

Vera's voice snapped me back.

She was standing in the middle of the ring now. She had taken off her boots, and her bare feet were planted in the dirt. She wore only a thin shirt and trousers, and in her right hand she held a long hunting knife. The blade flashed silver in the moonlight.

"Are you going to stand there all night?" she called. "Or are you going to come and die?"

The pack laughed.

My legs were shaking. I made myself walk forward, one step, then another, until I was inside the circle of stones.

Garrett, the old elder with the gray beard, stepped up onto a flat rock at the edge of the ring. He raised his hand. The howling stopped.

"By the old law," he said, his voice rough and loud, "a challenge has been called. Vera of the Blackthorn pack against the human, Elena. The fight ends when one cannot fight on. The moon is watching."

He dropped his hand.

Vera didn't rush at me. She just walked. Slowly. Around and around me in a wide circle, like a cat around a mouse. She was smiling.

I turned with her, keeping my eyes on her knife. I held Silas's dagger in front of me the way Kade had taught me. My palm was sweating around the handle.

Patience, I told myself. Let her come to you.

"Look at her," Vera said loudly, to the crowd. "She's shaking like a leaf."

More laughter.

Then she moved.

She was so fast I didn't even see it. One second she was three steps away. The next, her shoulder hit my chest, and I was flying backward. I landed hard on my back in the dirt. All the air rushed out of me.

The crowd roared.

I rolled over, coughing, and pushed myself up onto my knees. Vera was already walking away, arms raised, soaking in the cheers.

"Get up," she said without looking back. "I'm not done."

I got up.

She knocked me down again. This time it was a kick to the back of my knees. I fell forward onto my hands, and the dirt scraped my palms raw.

I got up.

She knocked me down again. A slap across the face so hard my ears rang. I tasted blood.

I got up.

It went on and on. She didn't use her knife. She didn't need to. She was playing with me. Every time I stood, she found a new way to put me back in the dirt, and every time, the pack laughed louder. My lip was split. My knees were bleeding. My whole body screamed with pain.

And through the bond, I could feel Kade. Every hit I took, he took too. I could feel his anger building, hot and wild, like a storm about to break. He wanted to jump into the ring. I could feel how hard he was holding himself back.

Don't, I thought. Please don't. If he broke the law, the pack would turn on him. Silas would make sure of it.

I got up again. Slower this time. My legs barely held me.

Vera tilted her head and looked at me. For a second, something like surprise crossed her face.

"You're stubborn," she said. "I'll give you that."

"So I've been told," I said through my bloody lip.

Some of the pack laughed at that. Not at me this time. With me.

Vera heard it too. Her face went hard. The smile vanished.

"Enough," she said. "I'm bored."

She came at me for real this time.

I tried to do what Kade had taught me. I tried to step to the side. I tried to lift my blade. But I was too slow. Too tired. Too human.

Her knife went into my side.

It went in under my ribs, in almost the same place as the wolfsbane blade in the cellar. She drove it so hard I felt the tip burst out through my back. She was so close I could feel her breath on my face.

I didn't scream. I couldn't. The pain was too big for screaming.