Page 113 of Junk Magic

Yet I didn’t give that speech.

Instead, I was somehow through the line of wolves protecting the council and into the great man’s face. He looked surprised to see me move that fast, but not half as much as I was. Rein it in, I thought desperately. We don’t have anything left! Fucking rein it in!

I was ignored, maybe because my other half was busy roaring: “Traitor!”

“Be careful what words you throw around, child,” Whirlwind hissed back. “Or they may be your last.”

He wasn’t kidding. Peripheral vision showed me that the wolves who should have been guarding him had finally caught a clue and whirled on me, teeth bared.

But there was one thing that would stop any wolf in his tracks.

“Or yours,” I said. “Fight me! Or I’ll gut you where you stand!”

Things abruptly got very quiet in the nearby area. I could still hear the sounds of battle from above us, the moans and groans of the wounded scattered around and the whistling wind overhead. But mostly, I heard the pounding of my heart, as the enormity of what I’d just done sank in.

I mentally closed my eyes.

This was it, the last thing I would ever do. My wolf was insane and we were both going to be joining the corpses in the sand, any minute now. I had just challenged a council member and I was beyond fucked.

Whirlwind seemed to think so, too.

“Are you mad?” he asked, seemingly more taken aback than frightened. “Has the battle rattled your mind?”

I opened my mouth to say something, anything, that might diffuse this, but again, someone else spoke instead. And unlike me, she was not frightened or confused at all. She’d said exactly what she meant, and was still focused on that very thing.

And fuck the consequences.

“Fight me!”

Whirlwind gave what could only be called a roar and Changed. It was so rapid that I never even saw it. One moment, a huge, older man with enough muscles for an aging prize fighter was standing there, and the next—

Damn, that’s a big wolf, I thought, staring upward.

And it was a long way up, because he was bigger than Sebastian, a hulking, battle scarred, mountain of fur and savagery. His coloring was plain gray, without any interesting markings, but he didn’t need them. And he had the same dark gold eyes as before, because some of the most powerful—and feral—wolves didn’t Change back all the way.

He was a beast in both forms, but this one was about to tear my throat out.

But before he could, a slender, dark-haired man ran up. He didn’t look like he’d make much of a wolf, but if he was who I suspected, he didn’t need to. Farkas of Rand, Whirlwind’s Second, was known for being a shrewd, calculating type who fought with his mind not his brawn. He was young for a Second, being barely thirty-five, yet from what I’d heard, he rarely put a foot wrong.

I’d only seen him once before, at a clan meeting, and we hadn’t spoken. But those watchful, serious eyes were the same, although at the moment, they were pretty panicked. As were the hands that he dared to put on his master.

“Get out of the way,” Whirlwind growled, but his Second stood firm.

“Don’t you see what’s she’s doing?” he asked quickly, and to give the man credit, his voice was steady, at least. “They planned this! They’re trying to bait you—”

“Get out of the way!” And Whirlwind knocked him to the side, in a blow that might have killed a human.

But Farkas wasn’t one, and he was back in an instant and grabbing onto his leader’s massive mane of fur. “Listen to me! She’s a mage—”

“Gutted more than a few of those in my day.”

“That’s what Graywind thought,” I heard myself say. “Right before his blood stained these sands. As yours soon will.”

The bellow that followed that comment echoed around the arena, turning heads, but not enough of them. And not the right ones. His wolves remained on the attack, and had almost finished shredding Jen’s last defenders.

I was out of time.

“Call them off or die!” I said, and in that moment, I meant every word.

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