Amara had become a second mama to me, so I called her Amama for a while as a young child and it was what Oslo called her now.
When she pulled back, she was crying. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d cried.
“Alright that’s enough, you’ll soften her too much,” Dorian told his wife with a smile and I grinned.
After leaving their hut, I opened the summons again and read it for the tenth time.
To: Mud Flat pack
The royal wolven advisors who serve King Axil are requesting your most dominant female wolven, Zara Swiftwater, to appear at Death Mountain in two weeks’ time to enter the Queen Trials.
Winner takes the throne.
Please send your response via courier immediately. A dominant replacement may be sent.
Name of contestant or replacement:
Alpha approval:
I stepped inside our house and retrieved a quill and ink from my father’s old desk.
Cyrus was silent as he watched me write Zara Swiftwater in the contestant’s name spot and then yes under Alpha approval. I handed it to him.
“Dorian and Morgan will help train me as well,” I told him.
He looked impressed at that, and through our pack link I could feel his excitement mixed with apprehension over his little sister entering the trials. As a wolven packmate, there were times when you didn’t even need to speak, one could sense the others’ thoughts or emotions as if they were your own. And because he was my brother our bond was especially close. As a pack, we could all speak to each other mentally in wolf form but as humans there were just wisps of feelings floating by that you had to intuit.
Cyrus walked over to the storage locker we kept by the couch that had all of my training equipment inside. Flinging it open, he looked at me. “I’ll get this to a courier. You get ready, we start right away.”
Right away?
“We have two weeks,” I pled. Training with my brother was no small feat, he took the task very seriously.
“We should have started six months ago,” he growled, and left the room.
I peered over at my little brother, who was watching me from the couch, and tipped my chin high, hoping to look strong and unafraid. When his bottom lip quivered as he tried to hold in his tears, I sighed. He was so much like my mother, always wearing his heart and emotions out in the open. I was more like my father, physically strong, mentally tough and slightly emotionally dead inside. It’s just who I was and how I operated. It was a survival technique.
“Listen, kiddo,” I told him. “This is the way to bring honor to our family name and to the pack. I will not disappoint us.”
Oslo frowned, tucking his knees up to his chest. “I don’t care about honor. I just don’t want you to get hurt.”
I knew in that moment I’d babied him too much and that he was far too soft to survive even midpack. He’d be a submissive like our mother and be relegated to menial tasks within our village, and that saddened me. But maybe that’s what he wanted. A life free of hunting and fighting and all the things that got my blood pumping. He was twelve now and this was when your wolf really settled into who they were. A dominant or submissive.
Walking over, I ruffled his hair. “Well regardless, I’ll make everyone proud anyway.”
It was either that, or a body bag. I wasn’t a quitter. I would bend the knee only if it were broken from my leg.
TWO
Two weeks had passed and I’d nearly died a dozen times, especially last week on the night of the full moon when my wolf never left her furry form and wouldn’t let me transform to human. It felt like Dorian, Morgan and my brother were actively trying to kill me. I was due to leave for Death Mountain in a few moments and my brother wanted one last lesson with me.
“But I’ve already changed.” I motioned to my clean leather trousers and pristine bearin fur coat. Freshly killed last season.
My elder brother glared at me. “You’re too clean. Arrive with blood and dirt on your clothes and it shows how hard you’ve been working. Make the other women fear you.”
He had a fair point. What made my brother the lead trainer for the alpha was this, the mental games he taught people to play in order to win fights.
Get in their head and twist things to distract them or blow them off their game. His advice came back to me.
I sighed and pulled off my fur coat, showing the small strip of fabric over my breasts. As shifters, we went in and out of our wolf form so often it was easier to just tie a strip of cloth over things than to keep ripping expensive tunics.
The members of my village gathered round us, pounding the ground in encouragement.
I grinned: they’d been really supportive of me lately and it meant everything to me to have them standing behind my bid to be winner of the Queen Trials.
I waited for Morgan or Lola to enter the circle and spar with me, but it didn’t happen. Instead, the circle opened up and Dorian himself stepped inside, tunic-less and wearing a loin cloth.
Oh Hades.
I’d fought men in our pack before. Small disputes, or for training purposes, but … never a sparring match with the alpha.
I swallowed hard.
He held my gaze as he entered the circle and instead of protesting or asking what was going on, I cracked my knuckles, preparing for the fight. The pack went wild with howls, even in their human form, and stamped on the ground in excitement.
To my knowledge, the alpha had never sparred with a woman. Probably for fear of killing her.
I could sense my brother’s feelings without him having to even speak. We shared a pack link after all.
Dorian was bigger than me, and stronger. So I needed to use my smaller size and speed as an advantage.
The Queen Trials would be a mixture of human fighting, wolf fighting and weapons rounds. I didn’t know the details, but I needed to be ready on all fronts.
“Rules?” I asked my alpha as we circled each other. I didn’t want to hurt him and have him reprimand me in front of everyone and I also didn’t want him to come at me hard if we were just demonstrating technique.
“None,” he declared and then launched at me.
A yelp of surprise left my throat but my brother had taught me well. I instinctively dropped to my knees and threw my arm out, connecting my fist with the alpha’s groin. He grunted and fell forward, down to my level, and I took him to the ground easily. Yanking his ankle with one hard tug, he fell flat on his stomach. The pack screamed and howled in excitement.
Jumping on Dorian’s back, I put one arm around his throat and then tried to use my legs to pin his massive arms down, but it did no good. He stood, with me on his back, and then we were falling backwards. He body slammed me, landing his entire weight on top of me, and the air left my lungs in a rush. I couldn’t breathe, my arms going limp as he rolled off me and spun. His fists slammed into my face, stomach, and throat; a barrage assault that was so fast I couldn’t get my bearings.
“Use what you have!” my brother snapped.
I felt the dirt beneath my fingers and grabbed a handful, throwing it into the alpha’s face. He coughed and sputtered which gave me the chance to catch my breath and roll out from under him.
Time to wolf out. It was the only way I would have a chance. Changing to my wolf form left me vulnerable during the shifting process but he was blinded by dirt for the next several seconds, so it was now or never.