Maya straightens her spine, rolling her shoulders back as if physically shouldering the weight of what’s coming. Her heartbeat is steady now—still quick, but no longer frantic. Focused. Her eyes meet mine, dark and unflinching.
“Then let’s go,” she says, voice low, measured. She doesn’t sound fearless—she sounds ready.
I nod, and we move.
The air between the trees is cooler now, laced with smoke and the faint, metallic edge of old blood rites. Pine needles crunch beneath our boots. Above us, the moon slips behind a passing cloud, dimming the forest for half a second before flooding it again with cold, silver light.
Maya walks beside me, her steps sure, her chin lifted. She doesn’t ask what will happen when we get there.
She doesn’t have to.
She already knows this is a threshold—and once she crosses it, there’s no going back.
I slow as we reach the edge of the clearing. The stone ring lies ahead of us, lit by torch light and lined with watching eyes.
Tradition surrounds us. Challenge stands ahead. And Maya walks into it without pause. My wolf stirs low, alert. Shift or no shift… she’s ready.
Chapter 13
Maya
The ring is silent when I step inside.
Not empty—no, not even close—but silent. Thirty, maybe forty people, all of them watching me with that same expression: a mix of curiosity, suspicion, and something else that crawls down my spine and nestles in my gut.
Expectation.
They want something from me. Either my defeat or some kind of miracle. Possibly both.
Cassie stands across the circle, looking like she was tailor-made for this moment. Her platinum hair is pulled up tight, not a strand out of place; her black training clothes hug every sharp angle of her body, her boots already dusted with pine ash. She looks calm. Controlled. Like she’s been winning this fight in her head long before I even knew it was happening.
Then she moves.
Cassie steps forward, crossing the ring with the kind of deadly poise that makes the watching crowd lean in. She stops in front of Bolton, just close enough to be intimate—public intimacy sharpened into a blade.
“This is on you,” she says, voice clear, steady, pitched just loud enough for everyone to hear. “You know that, right?”
Bolton doesn’t flinch. His jaw tightens, but he says nothing at first.
Cassie lifts her chin. “We didn’t have to do this. You could’ve ended it before it started.”
He doesn’t take the bait. “Ended what?”
“The challenge,” she says, voice flat. “This whole mess. All you had to do was acknowledge what everyone already expected. Choose me. As Luna.” She lets the words settle into the crowd like a stone dropped into still water. “If you had, none of this would be necessary.”
Murmurs ripple along the edge of the clearing.
Bolton’s silence stretches for a beat, then two. And when he speaks, it’s loud enough for the whole ring to hear.
“It wouldn’t matter if you won this challenge or a hundred more,” he says, voice even. “I would never take you as my Luna.”
Cassie’s eyes flash.
“Why?” she demands, but the edge in her voice falters for a fraction of a second. “Because she smells like mystery? Because she looks at you like you’re the only real thing in the world?” Her breath catches almost imperceptibly. “Because she doesn’t even know what she is—and you’d still choose her over someone who’s trained, who’s bled for this pack?” Her voice lowers, just enough that only a few close in the circle hear the tremor behind it. “I’ve done everything right. I've followed every rule. Been strong when no one else was. And it still wasn’t enough for you.”
That last sentence hangs in the air like smoke—bitter, lingering.
Cassie breathes in sharply, jaw tightening, eyes flicking away for the briefest second before snapping back to Bolton’s. “So tell me, Bolton. What did she do that I didn’t?”
