Page 82 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 34

Nothing I’d learned before was going to help me, I realised as I stepped forward. Malia let out a battle shriek, then came at me with lightning-fast swipes of her claws. I dodged one blow, then another, surprised to find I was moving as fast as she was. Titters went up around the crowd as I kept on dodging, but that was drowned out by the frantic throb of my heart. No one I’d ever sparred with at the keep had claws or fangs to fight with, so all the usual techniques didn’t apply. As I tore across the thick carpet, keeping out of the girl’s reach, I tried to work out a strategy, adapt what I knew.

“You realise you actually need to fight Malia, human,” Queen Aurora said in an arch tone.

I did. I just needed to work out how.

Then in response to the queen, Malia redoubled her efforts, raking her claws across my forearm, the hot prickle of blood coming quickly afterwards. And pain, that strange kind of white-hot pain that was slow to develop. I knew I was hurt, my hand slapping over the cuts and I instantly regretted that. My flesh was torn like my shirt, ragged and slippery under my fingers making me yank them away.

“First blood!” came the cry from a section of the court, my eyes flicking to take them in for a second as Malia stood there, basking in the adulation. She was such a strange figure, with her pretty dress and her blood-soaked hands.

“Darcy!” Dane snapped. “You need to…”

His words, everyone’s words, fell away as did the sounds of the court. There was only the thud of my heart, the drip of my blood and this: Nordred stared at me and when he caught my attention, he nodded slowly. My focus jerked back to my opponent and that’s when I knew what to do.

My brain became cool, cold, analysing her fighting style and seeing the weakness. She threw her whole arm into every swipe of her claws, which in boxing terms was called a haymaker. The blow used huge amounts of momentum and with someone who didn’t know how to fight, they could be devastating.

But I did.

She stopped her showboating, a slow smile spreading across her face, her fangs flashing now, but I didn’t care. I had no reaction, no response to make. As she took another swipe at me, riding the high of her success, I was up and under her guard and punching my own claws into her sides. The shorter, sharper strike from the shoulder wasn’t as powerful, yet my claws slid into her flesh like butter before I yanked them free. Her attack faltered, her mouth falling open, a horrible scream filling the air and that’s when I realised something most unfortunate. As Malia’s knees wobbled, her hands going to her wounds, blood blossoming on the very pretty fabric of her dress, it was clear.

Malia had never been really hurt before.

I catalogued the shock on her face, heard the censorious cries of her family urging her to keep her guard up, to fight on, but right now she wasn’t hearing any of that. This wasn’t a girl that had been beaten over and over until scars formed a ladder down her back. This wasn’t a girl who’d taken a punch to the nose, to the cheek, to the chin and everywhere else I’d copped them training with Nordred. Someone had taught her to fight, but they’d never taught her to take a hit.

I didn’t really want to be the one to perform that lesson, but as I stared up at the queen, I knew she wouldn’t allow either of us to walk away from this until it was done.

So the only thing to do was to get it done as quickly as possible.

Malia bared her teeth at me, her eyes flashing bright blue, but her hands were still on her wounds, right as I added to them. A sharp downward slash across her arm had her scream ratcheting higher, but then whatever lurked within her, it sprang into action, not ready to go down. Fur prickled across her face, the muscles beginning to jump as she let out a god-awful snarl.

I danced then, out of reach of her wild, swinging claws and then back in as she fought to recover, stumbling from overreaching, to deal my own much more precise blows. I went for places of maximum hurt, but where my strikes were unlikely to leave permanent damage. The soft places, the vulnerable places. But even though I knew Malia was hurting, she wouldn’t back down.

I pulled my claws with ease, then punched her in the face, hearing her nose crack, thinking that might be enough to dissuade her. The sheer fucking agony of it was enough to stop most people, but apparently not the two-souled. Her scream, her roar, reverberated through the hall as her hands clapped over her face and that’s when I realised my mistake.

I’d trained to fight other humans, never to fight anything else. But Malia was two-souled and right now, her wolf’s back was against the wall, and I was the one pushing her there. So it was going to push back. I just stood there, hearing people’s shouts, so many voices screaming at me, at Malia to do something. This was some kind of archaic blood sport taking place in Strelae’s throne room. Malia shredded her dress as the woman disappeared, and her wolf emerged.

Bigger than a timber wolf, and stronger, more powerful, the big grey beast dropped its head down and snarled at me. Blood stained its fur, but only a little, the shift obviously having healed all of my hard work. An inherently human need rose inside me – a need to run – but with it came an equally powerful yet alien one.

Something loosened within me: my rattling heart, my rapid breaths creating a savage song for me to dance to. I watched the wolf’s haunches bunch, knowing it was preparing itself to leap and at that moment I saw how this could go.

Under the pretence of being at the mercy of her beast’s nature, she’d rip out my throat before everyone, leaving my blood to soak into the rich red carpet as it gushed out of me. She would be Dane’s mate and I would be meat, and it was that thought that pushed my own change.

I wasn’t going down like that; I knew that for sure.

I hadn’t survived the beatings I’d taken, hadn’t fought my way free of everything that had weighed me down in Grania, just to be killed by a spoilt Strelan noblewoman who was herself being manipulated by a vengeful queen. That will, that need, to survive, to walk away from this place, was a match tossed on the tinder stored inside me and at that moment, it flared to life.

My body had already partially shifted before, claws on my fingers, fangs in my mouth, but this went far further than that. My breath came fast, hard, everything feeling like it burned as wolf-Malia shrunk then, or I grew. Fur prickled across my skin everywhere, the bones in my face aching before they shifted too. When I held out my arms, ready to attack, they were heavy with a kind of muscle I’d never possessed before. If I needed a term to describe what I was, I got it.

“She can maintain a half-form.”

Queen Aurora looked gratifyingly pale just then, perched on her husband’s throne like a pet. She stared at me, mouth open, but she wasn’t the immediate threat. Malia was. Because the wolf/girl was still facing a very present danger and if she didn’t try to defend herself, then neither would survive. So she snarled at me and then leapt into the air with every ounce of muscle she had.

My body moved without thinking, my massive, clawed hands shooting out and catching the wolf by the throat. It still scrabbled, snapped, tried to get at me with everything it had until I began to squeeze. Then finally, the snarls turned to yelps, then hoarse whimpers, then nothing at all.

“Let her go!” the queen barked at me, and I felt the push of it, her will, trying to get me to do what she ordered, but I brushed that off without a thought. The wolf was struggling to get away now, its claws, paws, scratching at my hands to make me release her. “The fight is until one person is incapacitated, not to the death!”

When her pleas didn’t work, the queen turned to the crowd gathered.

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