Chapter 12

Chapter 12

ELENA

Across the ring, someone else did.

I heard the gasp ripple through the whole pack. I turned my head, slowly, and I saw him.

Kade had dropped to his knees in the dirt outside the stones. His hand was pressed against his side. Blood was spreading across his shirt, dark and fast, in the exact same place as mine. His face was white. His gold eyes were locked on me.

The whole pack was staring at him. Their alpha. On his knees. Bleeding for a human girl.

Nobody was laughing anymore.

Vera pulled her knife out of me. I stumbled but didn't fall. I don't know how. Somehow, through the bond, I could feel something flowing into me. Warm and strong. Holding me together. Holding me up.

Kade's strength. He was giving me everything he had.

Vera looked over at Kade, then back at me. Her lips curled.

"You see that?" she whispered, leaning close to my face. "That's what you are to him. A weakness. A chain around his neck." She lifted her knife again and laid the flat of the blade against my cheek. "When I kill you, I'll be doing him a favor. I'll be setting him free."

She was so pleased with herself. So sure. She wasn't even looking at my hands.

She got careless.

Just like he said she would.

I dropped low and swung Silas's dagger behind her, as hard as I could, and slashed across the back of her leg, just above the heel.

Vera screamed.

Her leg folded under her like a broken branch. She crashed down onto the dirt. She tried to get up, but her foot wouldn't hold her. She fell again, clutching her ankle, blood pouring between her fingers.

The pack went dead silent.

I stood over her. My side was pouring blood. My whole body was shaking. But I was standing, and she wasn't.

I knelt down, slowly, and pressed the tip of the dagger against her throat.

Vera looked up at me. For the first time, I saw fear in her green eyes.

"Do it," she spat. "Go on. That's the law. Finish it."

I looked down at her. At the fear in her face. At the pulse beating fast in her neck, right under my blade.

I thought about my village. About little Sam from the bakery. About my mother. About twenty-three graves in the field behind the church.

I thought about the voice in the fire. Leave no one alive.

That was what monsters did.

I pulled the blade away from her throat.

"No," I said.

Vera stared at me. The whole pack stared at me.

"I'm not a murderer," I said. My voice was quiet, but in the silence, it carried all the way to the trees. "I've seen enough people die. I won't add one more."

I stood up and dropped the dagger into the dirt beside her.

For a long moment, nobody moved.

Then Garrett stepped forward on his rock. He looked down at Vera lying in the dirt. He looked at me. Then he looked across the ring at Kade, still on his knees, still bleeding.

"She cannot fight on," Garrett said slowly, pointing at Vera. He sounded like the words tasted strange in his mouth. "The challenge is ended. By the old law, the human is the winner."

A murmur went through the pack. Then someone near the back started to clap. Then another. Then more. Not everyone. But enough.

I didn't care. I only cared about one thing.

I turned toward Kade.

He was getting to his feet. Slowly. His hand was still pressed to his side. But he was looking at me, and there was something in his face I had never seen before. Pride. And something softer that made my chest ache.

I started walking toward him. One step. Two. My vision was going gray at the edges. I just had to reach him. I just had to tell him about Silas. That was all that mattered now.

Three steps.

I heard it before I saw it.

Behind me, a crack. A wet, awful snapping sound, like bones breaking. Then a low, deep growl that shook the ground under my feet.

The crowd screamed.

Across the ring, Kade's face changed. The pride vanished. His eyes went wide with horror, fixed on something behind me.

"ELENA!"

I turned my head.

Vera was gone. In her place stood a huge pale brown wolf, her lips pulled back from long white teeth, her green eyes wild with rage. Her back leg was still bleeding. She didn't care.

She was already in the air.

Leaping straight for my back.