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She leveled me with a glare. “You have a penchant for causing trouble.”
“That’s for entertainment.” I waved her off. “This is not my doing. One of them is about to die. And Mathis made sure to take away the woman’s wolf.”
Ysabeau snapped her head in my direction. “He can’t kill her. Are you?—”
I held my hand up. “Watch and wait, Ysa.”
“Until when?” she asked through clenched teeth. “She doesn’t stand a chance against Markus. All he needs to do is shift. Mathis is setting her up to fail. It’s not allowed.”
I turned to her slightly. “Let our dear friend dig his own hole. He has the shovel.”
It was her turn to look at me with a pinched expression. Ysabeau was a stickler for rules. She lived by them, expected others to, and would put anyone in their place if they didn’t follow the laws.
She mumbled her displeasure at my decision to linger for a while instead of stepping in immediately.
Mathis’s voice cut through our hushed conversation as he commanded the circle to widen. “Fight. Here and now.”
Dannika looked at her wolf, dropping to her knees, and rubbed her behind the ears. Forehead to forehead, they touched, and she pointed to her sister. Nova reluctantly retreated, flicking her tail in protest as she went to stand by Adora.
I couldn’t help how captivated I was by this shifter, or whatever she was. Not that I cared whether Markus lived or died, but I very much wanted to see her win.
Dannika tilted her head to the side, cracking her neck, circling Markus. “C’mon. Let’s get this over with.”
Markus shook his head. “Don’t do this, Danni.”
She narrowed her eyes at him. “It’s ‘Dannika’ to you.”
“Fine. Dannika.” He shook his head, following her lead and circling around her. “We can?—”
“Stop talking, Markus. I reject you. Just shift and get this over with. I won’t condemn myself to a life as your mate. Not after everything you’ve done. I know who you are. You know who I am. You should’ve just rejected me.” Dannika’s eyes flicked to Markus’s legs, likely looking for a weak spot.
He scoffed. “You don’t know me. Not even a little bit. But we can change that.”
“Are you fucking kidding me right now?” She stopped, cocking an eyebrow and looking at him in disbelief. She shook it off. “This isn’t what either of us ever wanted. It’s not what’s good for your future, either,” she said, her eyes darting to Mathis and then back to Markus. “Listen to reason, Markus. Please. Reject me. We can break this bond and you can find a second-chance mate. They exist.”
“No,” he answered through gritted teeth.
She groaned in annoyance, running toward him and dropping to her knees in a slide as she whizzed by him.
Markus let out a scream and dropped to the ground in a partial shift, his claws gouging the wooden floor in a resounding screech. It took a suspended moment for all of us to realize she’d pulled out a blade—from where, I didn’t know—and sliced the side of his leg as she’d passed him.
Jumping to her feet, she turned to face him. Dannika flipped the knife in her hand, holding the steel side, readying a throw.
Blood dripped from his hind leg, and he struggled to maintain his grip on his human form. “I don’t want to hurt you,” he said, straddling a line between pleading and threatening.
“Guess you should have thought about that before. That you can even ask me to consider you as a mate is despicable after everything you’ve done.”
“I was mean because I gravitated toward you. Can’t you see it now? Fate knew. Look at you: You’re fucking gorgeous. You’re strong. You don’t let anything get to you. But I was the Alpha heir, and you were untouchable?—”
“Are you seriously giving me that sorry excuse? You threw rocks at me when we were kids because you liked me? You pushed me down the stairs when I was ten because you thought I was pretty? You broke my nose during the group hike when I was fourteen because you wanted to date me?” She shook her head, spitting at his feet. “I wasn’t untouchable. I was an easy target for you to take out your frustrations on. Fuck you and your excuses!” She put the knife between her teeth and met him head-on.
“Come on. It’s not like you were totally innocent here, Danni. You’ve thrown some punches over the years too?—”
He tried to grab for her, but she twisted and dropped to one knee. She jerked her head, slashing his thigh, making him twitch. Using the distraction, she picked up his ankle and got to her feet. He reached for her, and she grabbed his shirt. With a single sweep of her leg, she threw him to the floor.
He hit the ground with a loud smack, followed by an oomph.
Dannika dropped her knee on his stomach, her eyes hard. She maneuvered her other foot up to pin his free hand to the ground, then opened her jaw. The knife fell and she caught it easily, lowering the blade to his throat.
