Page 48 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

The crowd bayed its appreciation as Axe moved around the ring, shadow boxing, throwing out punches to warm his muscles and limber him up, as Jauncy just eyed him balefully.

“Time to lay your bets, gentlemen,” the man who’d ended the last fight said, pulling out a small pad of paper and holding out a hat brimming with money. “How much can I put you down to back Prince Axe?”

“Here you go,” Weyland said, dropping several gold coins into the hat, Dane and Gael doing the same. The man wrote them out a little slip each and Weyland growled at what was written there.

“Two to one?” he said.

“Odds are in your brother’s favour,” the man replied mildly before turning to me. “We haven’t forgotten what he did last time. Had some fellas out of service for days. He’s a big fucker and strong with it. Now, lass, you want to bet on your man, or what?”

“Be careful how you address our mate,” Dane said in a low, tense tone.

“Mate?” The man’s eyebrows shot up to his hairline. “My apologies, Your—”

“Darcy,” I said. “Just Darcy and…” I undid the pouch the Gael had given me, thinking the whole thing silly, but in my mind’s eye I could see the priests sermonising on worship days, sparing men in their pontifications but condemning women who gambled away the food money, so I sorted through the coins. Trouble was, they were all of Strelan mint, not Granian.

“This one,” Dane said, plucking a coin and tossing it in the hat. “It’s the same as a Granian ducat.”

Which was enough to feed several poor families for a week, a fact that made me wince as it joined the others. Regardless, my slip was written in some incomprehensible hand and then handed over before he moved on again.

“So how does this work?” I asked. “Betting is strictly a male-only thing in Grania.”

“Leads to licentiousness,” Gael agreed dryly, and then, to my shock, shot me a wink.

“Well, then we need to bet every—” Weyland started to say, before his focus shifted to me.

“Betting is when you take an educated guess on who will win the fight,” Dane interjected. “You put your money against it and depending on what the odds are, you get a certain amount back if your man wins. Two to one is about as bad as it gets. It means that Harris there”—he nodded to the man with the hat—“he thinks that Axe will win too, so he’s giving us pretty bad odds to try and dissuade us from betting on him.”

“But he won’t. Axe has too much anger, fear and frustration to work out.” Weyland’s voice was low and dark. “We all do.” He dared a sidelong look at me, but not for long, as the two fighters were introduced to the crowd by the man with the hat. “Seeing you like that… Knowing that we were drugged…”

I stared as all three growled, but they kept their eyes trained on the fight about to take place.

“I’d say ‘keep the fight clean’,” the man with the hat said, then he just shook his head, “but I don’t think there’s much hope.” Growls coming from the men next to me were replicated by the combatants. Fur rippled over the other fighter’s face, but he seemed to be suppressing his warg form for now. “Alright, let's get this done!”

Axe was startlingly fast, jerking his fist up and driving it into the other man’s face before he even had a chance to blink, sending him reeling back, to the sound of the crowd’s roar. I didn’t know how to respond at first; the hits were so brutal. Axe was on the other man as he was still reeling, slamming his fists into the soldier’s ribs and chest. But wargen were trained as warriors, and Axe’s opponent finally seemed to find his feet, ducking out the way of the blows and then striking back with his own, landing some punishing body shots.

That’s when my fingers wrapped around the ropes. They tightened with every hit Axe took and every one he landed. But as red marks began to flower across Axe’s skin, something strange happened. I made a noise I’d never heard myself use before, starting deep down in my gut, curling there, wrapping tighter and tighter before it forced its way up.

Dane stared as I growled, honestly growled, and then a small smile crept over his lips. His hand covered mine as it clasped the rope. Somehow that hot grip helped keep me where I was, anchoring me in ways I hadn’t experienced since I’d woken up that morning and I almost shook my head at the incongruity that this feeling came as I was watching two men brutalise each other.

Despite the ferocity, there was a strange kind of balletic grace to the savagery they indulged in. They were making a mess of each other’s bodies, noses and eyebrows beginning to leak blood, Axe’s opponent spitting a mouthful of blood on the canvas of the ring before launching himself back at Axe. I was starting to map the precise steps they took. These were well practised, lethally delivered blows designed to take down the opponent, and, just as I had when I’d watched the knights train when I was younger, I longed to be able to move my body with that kind of precision.

“So, who are you, love?”

My teeth bared at the stranger who appeared at my shoulder and my snarl only got broader when I saw several men had approached me. My wargen instantly mobilised, swarming around me, forming a tight ring at my back.

“You dare speak to our mate?” Dane said in a clipped tone that tolerated no nonsense. “Who the hell are you? Give me your name.”

“No need,” he said with a sly grin, looking across the ring.

Axe had lost his focus, his eyes on us and not his adversary, and the other man capitalised on the distraction in a way that made me think this was all deliberate. I didn’t care about whatever machinations were underway. I saw the other man deliver a punishing uppercut right into Axe’s unprotected jaw as I screamed his name.

My blood pumped furiously in my ears as I grabbed hold of the top rope of the ring. My chest felt a little tight as I swung myself over, but I didn’t let that stop me. Axe had already gone sailing back, landing like a dead man on the canvas, the sodden jolt of such a massive, muscular body feeling like a physical slap to my face. The other competitor was showboating now, playing up to the crowd, egging them on and allowing their reaction to go to his head as he turned back to my mate. Then, as his foot drew back to kick Axe, I let a breath out.

My claws came with my breath, I remembered that, but this time it was more than just claws. My teeth ached, right up until I reached Axe’s side and, as I dropped down, I snarled, snarled like a beast, flashing a mouthful of fangs at the other boxer. He stepped back, his mouth falling open, his eyes widening, but then the jeers from the crowd broke through whatever spell he was under and he reapplied his dismissive sneer.

But it wasn’t this anonymous man my heart beat frantically for. To my surprise, it was Axe. I looked down at him as I crouched by his side, the stillness unnatural in the big man, my hands shaking as I went to touch him and … do what? I didn’t know, but something told me I had to try something. That same hot feeling came rushing out as I touched his shoulder, but rather than light a fire inside me, it started to do the opposite in Axe as he began to stir slightly.

“Come to do a man’s work, have you, love?” the fighter said with a twisted smile.

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