Page 167 of The Werewolf’s Wrong Mate

Ronan stepped back. “Fifteen minutes before Ian is released. The others ten minutes after him.”

“Assuming everyone follows rules.”

No one answered.

That was comforting in the way a coffin probably had excellent shade.

Sava touched my arm. “Live first.”

I stepped through the south gate and it closed behind me. For a moment, the course was silent, then the horn sounded.

I ran.

Not well.

Not beautifully.

Not like a woman in a movie with perfect legs and a destiny budget.

I ran like a thirty-eight-year-old human with a healing bite, a bad shoulder, and an increasingly personal relationship with terror. My shoes hit dirt, stone, and grass. My breath went loud in my ears. Every step pulled at the bandage, and pain lit beneath it hot enough to make the trees blur.

But I ran.

The first lane curved between hedges taller than my head. Lanterns burned along the boundary walls, too far apart to help. Shadows moved where there should have been nothing moving. The course smelled like wet leaves, salt air, and old stone.

It also smelled like wolves. I knew that now.

Lucky me.

I reached the first split and did what Ian had told me. Not north. North gave distance, but it gave them wind. I turned into the ruins instead, brushing my hand against the left wall, then dragging my sweater along a hedge before doubling back through a broken arch. My chest hurt. My shoulder hurt. My dignity had left sometime around the phrase challenge wolves.

At the dry creek bed, I stopped and leaned one hand against a stone, breathing hard through my nose. Moss glistened along the right bank. I avoided it, stepping instead onto the pale rocks in the center.

A horn sounded behind me.

Too soon.

My foot slipped on a creek stone, and I caught myself against the wall hard enough to jar my bitten shoulder. Pain flashed white behind my eyes. For one breath, my brain refused the sound because the rules had been repeated too many times to be wrong. Fifteen minutes before Ian. Ten after that before the challengers.

Another horn answered from the east. Then another.

Three calls. Not one. The challenge wolves had been released.

Early.

The course went quiet in the wrong way, not silent exactly, but listening. The insects stopped first. Then the birds. Then every small living thing in the hedge and stone seemed to understand something had entered the dark that didn’t belong to sport, law, or proof.

A growl moved through the trees. Low. Wet.

Close.

I ran.

The first wolf came over the creek wall like a nightmare learning gravity. It struck the stone behind me, claws skidding sparks off rock, and the sound was so loud I felt it in my teeth. I turned left because Ian had told me not to run straight when something faster wanted my spine, but the ground dipped where shadow hid moss, and my bad foot slid.

The wolf hit my shoulder from behind. Not enough to take me down the way it wanted. Its claws caught fabric and skin, and heat tore down my upper arm as I slammed into the broken wall. I heard cloth rip. I heard myself make a sound I didn’t recognize. The wolf’s jaws snapped near my ear, so close that hot saliva hit my cheek.

I drove my elbow backward into fur and bone and it snarled. I fell through a gap in the stone and landed hard on my knees.