Page 9

LIVIA

Blood filled my mouth. The open field blurred all around me. I stared up at the giant black and brown wolf above me, who had smacked me down with just his paw. My tongue swiped across my split lip, tasting iron.

Howling erupted through the arena from the crowd. Caelan’s voice faintly drifted through my ears, but I couldn’t make out the words he was saying. So I held my hand out in front of me and scrambled to my feet.

I couldn’t die that quickly; I had… I had to prove to everyone that I wasn’t weak.

I had to be faster.

When Elijah lunged at me again, I swiftly stepped out of the way and cut him twice across the back. The silver burned through his flesh, the scent seeping into my nose. He growled and turned around, his wounds healing but healing slowly.

My lungs burned, and I grasped the dagger harder. It had barely been a minute, and I had already almost passed out. I didn’t know how to conserve my energy, not while I was competing, not yet.

Stars danced in my vision. I didn’t care if he was the son of an alpha.

He was our pack’s enemy. I had known that from the moment I saw him, and I went after him anyway. And now I’d really go after him. I’d show him. I’d show everyone. I wasn’t just the weak girl from Whitecrown Pack who couldn’t shift.

My name was Livia, and I could fight monsters.

His claws gleamed wet with blood, and I hadn’t realized that he had caught me in the thigh until my leg gave out and I dropped to the ground. His mouth stretched wide enough that I could see his large canines.

He waited, as if he wanted me to surrender. But if I surrendered, I’d lose.

So I grasped the dagger with both hands and forced myself to stand again, earning another cheer from the crowd. Another low growl rumbled from his throat, and he stalked around me.

“Come on, alpha ,” I said because I couldn’t stop myself. “What are you waiting for?”

What was I doing? Taunting him?! Why’d that have to come out of my mouth?

Lycos, please, don’t let me mess this up.

A single missed step, and Elijah would drag his claws across my throat, open me up, and leave me bleeding in the field. Everyone here would watch me die, including Caelan, and I… I couldn’t let that happen.

When Elijah sprinted toward me, it seemed like it was happening in slow motion. I could see the wind whipping through his fur, the saliva dripping off his snout. Terror built higher and higher and higher inside me.

Once his canines sank into my lower leg, everything sped up. Thunder cracked through the sky. Crimson red filled my vision. Heat flooded through my veins. The wolf’s ears suddenly flattened to his head, and he pulled his teeth out of me.

The blood began foaming in his mouth, but that didn’t stop him from lunging at me again. I ducked under his swing, seized the nape of his neck in my small hand, and sank the silver dagger deep into it.

He howled to Lycos, and I snapped his spine.

A bone cracked, then the one underneath it, then all down his body. I drew my dagger around the front of his throat, listening to the bones break one after the other after the other, shattering in my embrace.

One moment he was thrashing in my arms, and the next he was dead.

Just an empty corpse.

And when my vision cleared, I realized that I had just killed the son of an alpha.