Page 98 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

“Dammit,” he snarled. “I hope to hell I can exhaust you or I’ll be facing my brothers with a grim truth tonight, one they won’t forgive me for. C’mon, girl. You want to fight me? Then fight!”

This was what I was made for, I felt, as I jerked into action. I was fast where he was slow, although he was so much more powerful, where I was comparably weaker. We moved like lightning, around and around the room, until the sweat came freely, until I was straining with every fibre of my being to hold him off. Block, block, parry, stab! I felt my swords, my limbs, slicing through the air, and watched as his did, too. When he let out a gleeful roar, I wanted to join him, to howl until my throat bled, to be like this forever. I felt like I was made of quicksilver, running, dodging, slashing, blocking, the lot of it making up a savage song that thrummed within me…

Until I hit a discordant note.

His axe slammed into my arm, the now exhausted muscles spasming so painfully I couldn’t even cry out, as my grip abruptly loosened and the first sword fell to the ground. When I went to snatch it back, he swept in, driving me away with breathtakingly powerful blows, and I now knew just how painful they’d be if they connected. Fear finally seemed to trickle in and, rather than help me to move faster, it made me fumble, twist awkwardly. And then I copped another slice along my forearm. I yelped out a protest, but apparently I’d wakened a beast. Axe’s eyes burned bright blue as he came and kept on coming, not seeming to register my pain.

It was then that I saw in Axe a mirror image of what I had become earlier today. Blinded by the fever inside me, I’d no longer felt pain, exhaustion, all the natural limits that defined humanity, existing instead, for a short moment, like some kind of tiny battle god. I could fight forever, it felt, tackle any enemy.

Until I couldn’t.

And now I wasn’t fighting. I was desperately trying to ward off the tornado that was Axe, barely managing to squeeze out a request for us to stop, but he didn’t. Just like I had been, he was maddened by his success, the fever growing with every swipe of his axe, until he knocked my final sword away. I watched it go clattering across the floor with a hopeless look and then faced the man down.

I wasn’t the tall, fearless warrior anymore, I was just Darcy. Darcy, whose limbs ached with what I’d put them through today, every muscle shaking with the effort. My stomach was more than hollow because I hadn’t bothered to eat, my mouth dry as the desert. I was weak, so weak, and tired beyond belief and it was that which had me sinking down onto my knees.

I didn’t want to surrender. Something in my spirit baulked at the very idea of it, but I just couldn’t keep going. I had been a bushfire raging out of control, but now I was just a slender little candle, the flames burning on each end sputtering out. I bent my head, unable to hold it up anymore and that’s when I felt it. Just a whoosh of air against the nape of my neck, leading me to expect it to be followed by a crushing blow, but when only the very edge of his axe kissed the skin, I let out a sigh that seemed to deflate me entirely.

When his axe clattered to the ground, when he scooped me up, that’s when I finally came back to myself. I knew again that I was Darcy, woman, warg, wolf, student of Nordred, Granian refugee, and Axe’s mate. I flung my arms around his shoulders and then sobbed because my mind had literally no other means to process what had just happened.

“The fever’s broken,” he said in the gentlest of tones, sweeping his hand up and down my back. “Damn them for pushing you that hard. Damn them for letting you push yourself that far. It’s dangerous, Darcy. The two-souled were notorious for their ability to shift in and out of a berserk state at will, making us deadly fighters, but that all went when Queen Rieka died. If we catch true battle fever, we don’t come back: we stay merciless killing machines until such time as someone puts us down.”

His grip on me tightened then and I needed that bone-deep sensory feedback so very much. I collapsed into him, not able to do a single thing more.

“And what do you do when you break the battle fever?” I croaked out.

“You get drunk enough to forget it all,” he replied, then pressed a kiss to my neck. “It seems to help settle you, until you have to start up all over again.”

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