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“I already told you that you don’t have a blood claim.”
“So it’s okay for you to challenge the Alpha, but not for anyone else? That doesn’t seem fair. So nobody is allowed to challenge you until you have a child? I don’t think that’s the way that the pack should be run. It should be run by the strongest and most capable wolf, and you have shown that this is not you any longer. Or are you a coward and going to hide behind a technicality to prevent this challenge from taking place?”
It was a clever move by Ewan. Now, if Brandon remained true to the rules people would see him as a coward, and there would always be an element of doubt in people’s minds about his strength as a ruler. One thing a leader needed was the trust and confidence of his people. If that was ever damaged then his authority would crumble, so he would have no choice but to accept Ewan’s challenge. Everyone else knew this too, including Brandon. Ewan wore a smug smile on his face and arched an eyebrow.
“Fine,” Brandon said, and just like that there was going to be a challenge for the leadership of the pack.
*
“What are we going to do if Ewan wins?” Cassius asked. I sensed the anxiety in his voice. I felt it in my blood too. It was as though thousands of tiny spiders were crawling within me, waiting to spill out in my tears and in my blood. Just when I thought we had found a sanctuary it was almost being taken away from us, and I could not do anything to stop it.
“I have no idea. I’m starting to wonder if we should just flee now, while everyone’s attention is on the battle. If the wrong person wins…”
“Can’t you make sure that the right one does?”
“You mean interfere?”
“You or your father.”
“For someone who knows so much about wolves there is a lot you need to learn about our ways. The whole point of the challenge is that it’s one Alpha against one challenger. The fight is to decide the strongest. If anyone interferes then by default the person they are trying to help clearly isn’t strong enough to win the fight by themselves. They would immediately be declared the loser. Nobody can interfere.”
“Well, Brandon seems to be able to handle himself in a fight.”
“But that doesn’t mean he’s guaranteed to win. If he doesn’t then we know what Ewan is going to do with us. The best we can hope for is that he tries to run us away.”
“And the worst?”
I looked at him grimly. “He’ll throw us on the pyre with Brandon.”
Cassius face paled. He pursed his lips and tried to make a lighthearted comment. “I suppose we’ll have to trust in Brandon then.”
“That’s all we can do now.”
I felt it slipping away from me, my hold on life. For a while there I had been under the impression that I actually had control. I thought that I was holding the reins and steering myself towards a destiny that was of my own choosing, but I was quickly beginning to realize that I was actually just tumbling down a river in a barrel, being pushed and twisted and pulled in every direction by the choppy waters. Control was an illusion. Things just happened, and we had to react as best we can. It did not matter that our love was true. It did not matter that all Cassius and I wanted was to live alone in a small paradise we had made for ourselves. Other villains had other agendas and they were always trying to interfere. First Amara had returned from nowhere and pushed us out of the castle, and now Ewan was trying to do the same, trying to blame us for the ill portents that were appearing on the horizon. Or was this just a good excuse to make a play for power? It might well be the case that Ewan had always had this desire in his heart and was just waiting for an opportune moment, but either way the result was the same.
Now I had to cheer for Brandon as my champion, the man who had once broken my heart. My mind turned to the past, when I had been younger and more naïve.
*
I watched with pride as Brandon won the contest of strength. It was not a fight exactly, more like a wrestling bout where the boys tried to throw each other to the ground. I knew that Brandon was going to win, yet seeing it was to see strength personified. My young heart swelled. He was still a boy, yet in this moment it was easy to see the man he would become. At the time I thought I was going to be the woman who stood by his side as well. As he celebrated his victory people swarmed around him, eager to be close to him so that his greatness would reflect onto them. I rushed up as well, trying to make myself seen and heard, but I was lost in the crowd. For a moment his gaze fell upon me and I thought he was going to reach through the throng of bodies, pulling me towards him. Instead he turned away and pretended that I was not there at all. He ran off with the rest of them, and I was left alone.
*
The memory was a short one, but just as bitter as it had always been. It was just after I was supposed to get my wolf, when people were starting to notice that I was still without one, and the doubts became louder and stronger. It was then that I first realized my future was not going to be as I pictured it, but how many futures could one person have? How many could be discarded before you started to run out of them? The possibilities seemed to be dwindling, but I was not ready to leave the pack yet. I was not going to turn tail and flee and become a coward.
Besides, I had a feeling that even if we left we would be chased by Ewan. As long as we were alive we were a danger to them. Unless they could show our bodies to Amara they would still be at risk of her thinking they were harboring us, so they needed to be able to prove that they had disposed of her enemies. What they did not realize was that Amara wouldn’t care either way. She would not make a bargain with them, and she would not spare them. In fact she might well be even more annoyed that they had taken the delight of killing us from her. I had seen a hunger in her eyes that was fueled by madness. There could be no reasoning with her, and I wondered if this was an effect of the long life she had lived. Cassius had been on the verge of growing mad when I first met him. He had been searching for a companion to save him from insanity. Was Amara the same? I thought it was impossible to live a long life without suffering from some of these effects, and I was glad that I had not taken up Cassius’ offer of becoming immortal with him.
Although, if I had then we might well have been able to defeat Amara in the castle and would not have had to worry about this. It was never possible to predict what was going to happen though. All you could do was what you thought was best for yourself in the moment, and as much as I liked the idea of spending every single moment of existence with Cassius, I knew that part of the beauty of life was that it had to end. I did not want us to both dwindle into obscurity, fading out like the pale light of a dying world. I wanted our love to burn, to remind us to cherish every moment because otherwise we might end up taking it for granted.
I wondered if Brandon felt the same thing about Naomi. He can’t have expected anyone to challenge his authority, not at this moment, not when there was so much danger. And yet it had happened, someone was trying to wrest the pack from him and he was going to have to fight for it.
The whole pack had gathered. Dad and Cassius were beside me. People kept whispering around us. Even those who did not have a problem with Brandon’s decision to allow us refuge in the pack were still going to have something to say about it. None of this would have happened without our arrival, there was no escaping that fact. I tried to ignore them as best I could. Thankfully it wasn’t hard because the fight was imminent, and it demanded our attention.
Brandon strode forward just as he had always done in his youth, bare chested and brash, eager to try and intimidate his opponent. I didn’t think that Ewan was the type to be easily intimidated though. He moved like a serpent, shifting from side to side with a dark look in his eyes. He flexed his hands into fists and his gaze never left Brandon. Naomi watched on, clasping her hands together, a worried expression on her face. I could say many things about her, but it was clear that she loved Brandon and must have been worried about this.
The pack formed a circle around the fighters. Brandon and Ewan stood in the middle of the village, the future of the pack on the line. Our future was on the line as well.
“Let’s get this over with,” Brandon said, and moved towards Ewan.
