Page 20 of Reformed Wolf

Darting around him suddenly, I leaped up onto his back and wrapped an arm around his throat from behind, hoping to choke him. His neck, however, corded with muscle and sinew, was like squeezing a metal lamppost.

And he fucking laughed! I realized my mistake right about when he grabbed me by the ankle and yanked.

“Oh, shit,” I yelped as he dragged me off his back and slammed me face down into the floor at his feet, forcing the air from my lungs. Dazed, he punched one of those meaty fists into my kidney before I had a chance to roll away. Gods, I was going to be pissing blood for a week.

Pressing up from all fours, groaning, I staggered a step back before spitting bloody phlegm onto the mat. First blood. Andreas grinned and nodded. “Game on,” he said.

Fuck, here we go. We both shucked our shorts and shifted.

This was bad. Very, very bad. Because Andreas might’ve been a lumbering brute as a man, but as a gorilla, he was far more limber. His center of balance was stable as he rocked onto his knuckles. And if I thought things couldn’t get worse, he hooked his fingers in the cage and swung up the wall, before leaping through the air toward me. We barely had time to react as he came slamming down onto the mat, missing us by mere inches as my wolf sidestepped.

We shook our head, our concentration slipping. With my stronger senses triggered, all I could scent was Dylan. He was close, much closer than the stage at the back of the room. He must’ve decided to get a better view of the fight, but now, all I could think of was him.

Focus! I barked at my wolf. If we lose this match, we lose our mate. Game over.

At my urging, my wolf snapped at the gorilla’s hand as he reached for us, nipping his fingers, and he pulled back with a low grunt. The problem, though, was that we weren’t used to fighting against an opponent with four dexterous limbs… Distracted as we were by his hands, we never noticed his foot until it closed around our paw and yanked. Just like that, the mat, the cage, the crowd, it all spun around us as we were dragged up and into Andreas’s arms, upside down. Blood rushed to our head as he crushed us against his torso with bruising force. We kicked with our back legs, and he squeezed, our hips and lower back popping.

From this angle, we were staring at Andreas’s knees as a black halo began to close in on our vision. Distantly I could hear Dylan shouting for me, sobbing. “Tristan! You have to fight! I need you!”

Our blinks getting heavy, our vision zeroed in on Andreas’s thick thigh. Did we have one more bite left in us? Damn right we did!

Forcing our muzzle forward, we sank our teeth into the heavy fur, searching out the throbbing pulse we knew would be there. Deeper, deeper still… and sure enough, as we found the femoral artery, blood gushed past our muzzle.

Andreas let out a shocked bellow before his grip loosened. We hit the mat hard, landing in a heap. True to his word, nothing was broken, but it took a few seconds for the feeling to return to our lower limbs. When we finally stood on shaky legs, we saw Andreas lying in a growing puddle of his blood, his eyelids fluttering closed.

I quickly took my skin back and darted over to him, putting pressure on the wound. “I’ve got you, buddy,” I whispered. I could hear someone fumbling with the lock, trying to get the gate open.

A doctor was soon there, taking over for me, but I stayed by the large gorilla’s side until I was sure his shifter healing had kicked in, his chest rising with his slow breath. When I finally stepped out of the cage, Dylan was there. “Tristan!” He threw himself into my arms, and I barely had time to catch him.

“Are you all right?” he asked, his voice by my ear, breathy and frantic, and it made my entire body erupt in goosebumps.

“I’m fine,” I confirmed, relishing the feel of him pressed against me. My body reacted without consent, adrenaline still surging through my veins. My cock thickened, regardless of having no clothes to hide it and being in a room full of witnesses.

Dylan angled his hips in tighter, which didn’t help the situation. There was no doubt he felt it. “Thank you for saving Andreas.”

“Of course. There was no need to kill him,” I said, reluctantly putting him back on his feet. “My pack growing up taught me that all life is sacred. Andreas might have been a rival, but he is not my enemy. It’s an important distinction.” I did my best to talk my body down, but I quickly grabbed my jeans off the ground and pulled them up, zipping carefully over my semi. I smiled slyly when Dylan’s eyes dipped down to watch, his cheeks turning a beautiful shade of pink.

An older man approached, with the same complexion and features as Andreas. “Thank you,” he said, his voice warm and rich, bearing a slight accent. “My son, he is everything to me. You fought honorably.”

A growl cut us off, and we both turned to find Azar, his eyes shining green and gold, too beautiful for a creature so obviously dark. “The match was not over. He didn’t win!”

Dylan was quick to jump to my defense. “Of course he won! Andreas couldn’t continue that fight. He would’ve bled out,” he snapped, but when Azar turned his sneer on him, I guided my mate behind me.

Andreas’s father moved to stand shoulder to shoulder with me, blocking Azar. “The wolf won. It is decided.”

Azar bared his sharpened teeth and hissed, before making his way past us to the gate. He prowled outside the cage, nostrils flaring, as he waited for a few men to sop up the blood. The cleanup lasted longer than our match had.

“You should go back to sit with your dad,” I whispered to Dylan, eyeing where Mr. Caruso sat on his throne, fingers steepled as he surveyed the events with an impassive gaze.

“No,” he said defiantly. “My father may demand you go through with this fucking competition, but I refuse to play along.” He slipped his hand into mine, interlacing our fingers. “We don’t know how much time we have on this earth, and I won’t waste a single second I have with you, no matter what anyone else thinks.”

For one perfect second, there were just the two of us. Nothing else mattered. He brought his other hand up to my chest, still bare, and the heat of his touch made me close my eyes and breathe him in. Nothing felt impossible. Dylan made me strong, made me brave. “Dylan, I—”

Movement drew our attention back to the cage, and it was almost shocking to realize that reality was not the warm embrace of my mate. It was cold and it was brutal. Azar darted into the cage as soon as it was clear, while his competitor, the hyena shifter, Merlin, was more cautious. Again, the gate was closed and locked, and a cold slither of dread seeped in.

This was going to be bad, I just knew it. The tension in the crowd pressed in from all sides. They seemed reluctant to cheer for this match-up, as if they, too, knew.

If I’d blinked, I would’ve missed it. One second Azar was glaring at me through the metal links of the cage, his lip peeled back from his razor-sharp fangs, and the next, he’d slashed his claws straight across Merlin’s neck. Blood sprayed out, painting Azar’s face and chest.

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