Page 10

LIVIA

Suddenly, the open field disappeared around me, replaced by the crowded arena. Nobody spoke a single word, their expressions mirroring my surprised one. I looked at the crowd, then down at Elijah’s dead body at my feet.

“Livia from the Whitecrown Pack wins!” the announcer shouted over the tablet.

Yet still, nobody moved.

How did a girl who couldn’t shift defeat a wolf who had the powers of an alpha? What had happened? Why had my vision turned red like that? And that heat? What was that? It didn’t feel like the usual heat I had, because my fated mate hadn’t marked me yet.

It didn’t make sense. I didn’t understand it.

I… I…

Another quiet moment passed before the arena erupted in a stunned applause, even some cheers too. I stumbled back, swaying from dizziness. That strange power had flowed right through my body, leaving just as quickly.

Blood trickled down my side, tingling against my bare skin. I clutched my thigh, each breath like a stab through the ribs. I opened and closed my mouth a handful of times. There was a body on the ground.

A body that I had killed.

Soon, it would stink like a corpse. It was a corpse.

I swallowed again and again and again, my vision focused on the wolf.

The wolf I had just killed.

“Livia!” Caelan shouted my name from the left.

My breathing quickened, reality finally setting in. What was going on? How had I done that? I had just killed a wolf. My hands shook uncontrollably. I… really, I didn’t mean… I’d thought that he would…

Someone scooped me off the ground and into their arms. I glanced up to see Caelan fast-walking to the exit of the arena, toward the gates where the last victor had disappeared less than ten minutes ago.

“Put me down,” I said, my head lolling against his shoulder. “Please, put me down. I won. I just won.”

“We need to get out of here,” he said.

“But I won. I killed him.”

So many emotions flooded through my system, I didn’t know which one I truly felt. Was it pride? Was it anguish? I had killed a man, but one who had been trying to kill me. Still, I had never killed anyone before today.

None of this made any sense. What had just happened to me?

That had never happened to any of my packmates, not even when they shifted for the first time. They didn’t see red. They couldn’t shatter every bone in someone’s spine just by stabbing them in the neck.

The blood continued to tingle on my body, and as we exited the arena completely, I saw the corpse of that woman from the holding chamber.

She’d told me that she wasn’t competing, but she was…

dead and lying at the arena’s exit, her body thin.

Too thin. As if she was just skin and bones and nothing else.

“I can walk away myself,” I said, shoving his shoulder. “I just won.”

“I told you to stay with me,” he snapped, stepping through the gate and rushing toward the borders of the property. “You were supposed to be at the wedding, but instead you were off killing the only son of an enemy alpha. Now everyone is going to be after us.”

My stomach twisted. He was right, but I…

“But I survived. Aren’t you happy that I survived? And you didn’t protect me this time.”

“Livia, you have no fucking idea the war you just caused.”

“These were official games. The Whispering Pines Pack has no reason to–”

“Yes, they do,” he said, running straight for the woods.

We weren’t going back to the wedding. Nor to our rooms. Nor to the crowd.

No, he was taking me home.

“I didn’t even need my wolf. You always say that I need my wolf to protect me, but I don’t. I can be strong for you, for our pack, for my dad, for myself. Everyone will finally respect me for this.”

I didn’t even know what I was saying anymore, but the words were flying out of my mouth. I was trying to reason with him, and myself, about why this was a good thing. But I had just killed someone.

Killed them!

“Is that why you don’t mate with me?” I continued on, because it was easier than saying that I had killed someone aloud. “Because I don’t have a wolf? Do you want somebody to stand beside you in wolf form too, so you can run with them? Is that why you?—”

The wind whipped through my hair.

“Listen to me,” he growled, heading onto a path that hadn’t brought us here. “Whether you shifted or not, you won. But at what cost? They’re going to be after you now. Everyone is going to be after you. You killed the son of an alpha. I don’t think you understand that.”

“And if he had won,” I said, “he would’ve killed the mate of an alpha.”

A long silence dragged on between us as the greenery began bending in all shapes and sizes, the vines growing thicker and more hairy. The scent of woods turned into a dense scent of rain and smog.

“We need to get out of here right now,” he said, instead of addressing the issue at hand. “If the Whispering Pines Pack finds us out here alone, they will kill us. We need to return home as quickly as possible without them tracking us.”

“Why would they kill me? It’s a game! This is what’s supposed to happen!”

“They’ll kill you because they don’t play fair. Don’t you fucking understand?”

“Well, don’t you think–”

Before I could finish my sentence, several rogues suddenly leapt out from behind the trees, and we were surrounded on all sides.