Page 23 of The Alpha's Arranged Mate

Not that he’d given up hope entirely, he kept reminding himself as the days crept by. He was going to fight with absolutely everything in him against his brother—he wasn’t going to go down without doing as much damage as he could. With any luck, he’d leave Darion with a scar or two to remember him by, at the very least. But he’d be kidding himself if he didn’t admit that the most likely outcome of the battle would be his death at Darion’s hand. He found a curious, icy comfort in the knowledge that it would be his own brother who finally took him out of this world. Perhaps it had been fate all along. Perhaps the reason they’d never gotten on, even as children, was that some part of them had both known that it was all building up to this.

There were blessedly few preparations to be made for this particular ritual, in the end, which was pleasing news. Late on the night before the duel was scheduled, he wandered the halls of his yacht, quietly saying his goodbyes. Would this strange peace he’d felt all week desert him tomorrow, he wondered? Would the reality of the violence he was sailing towards shake him out of this curious state of peace? He supposed he was about to find out. He shut the lights off in every room, one by one, then stood for a long time on the deck, watching the stars. His staff were already ashore—like every other wolf on Kurivon, they had a right to attend the duel. It had been strange to say goodbye to them, and he found himself wishing he’d taken the time to get closer with them all.

Finally, with a faint smile, he shifted. Thinking of Lyrie—and when hadn’t he been thinking of Lyrie over the last few months, honestly?—he took a running leap from the deck of his yacht, and splashed down into the ocean water below. It was surprisingly cold and bracing, even through his thick pelt, and he felt pleasantly exhilarated when he reached the shore and shook himself dry on the beach. Only a few hours until dawn. How was he going to spend his last hours alive, he wondered? It wasn’t too late to run. He could swim back out to the yacht, pilot it away himself, find some distant corner of the world to hole up in until all this blew over…

But he’d never see Lyrie again. And the truth was that he’d rather die than live a day without her by his side. She was his soulmate. That was the major realization he’d come to over the last few days, almost insultingly obvious in hindsight, bitterly, achingly true nonetheless. If only he’d figured it out earlier. If only… but what was the use in that kind of thinking now? All he could do was be grateful he’d met her at all, that he’d known the joy it was to hold her in his arms. And all he could do was hope, maybe a little selfishly, that he’d see her one more time before the duel.

With that in mind, he spent the last hours before dawn wandering the pathways of Kurivon, the dirt paths that would someday be the settlement’s streets. The damage done by the demons had long since been repaired, he noticed, and yet more progress had been made on construction. By year’s end they’d have a few dozen cottages ready to be moved into. He felt an odd pang of grief that he wouldn’t be there to see the second phase of construction get started, or to watch families move into the finished cottages here. He could picture it now, wolf pups gamboling on the lawn, happy soulmate pairs watching the future of Kurivon grow… he turned away, feeling hot tears unexpectedly stinging his eyes. Enough. He didn’t need to spend his last sunrise tormenting himself with a life he’d never have.

He was at the training ring when the sky began to lighten, and he wasn’t the only one. Demonstrating a strangely touching deference, the spectators had all gathered some distance down the beach, as if determined to give the duel participants their privacy in the leadup to the fight. He tried not to look as though he was staring at the crowd, searching for that distinctive red hair, for the woman who always stood like she was about to march into battle. Darion was there already, of course. He’d never beaten his brother anywhere. It was clear from the way he was needlessly polishing the blade of his sword that he wasn’t interested in talking to Reeve. That might have hurt his feelings once, but right now he only felt numb. What was there to say, after all, that hadn’t been covered in the issuing of a challenge to fight to the death?

It made a certain kind of poetic sense to see his old teacher marching regally across the sand as the sun finally crested the horizon. Trinn was wearing a striking set of ceremonial robes that Reeve couldn’t remember seeing before, dark fabric embroidered with crimson runes. The garment looked old, and sacred, and very difficult to repair, and Reeve briefly entertained himself with the idea of scuffing mud onto it just to see how the old wolf would react. But the vivid grief in his old teacher’s eyes put an abrupt stop to any kind of whimsy, and he remembered that he wasn’t the only one who was grieving a loss here.

The two of them lined up obediently in the places that had been carefully marked at either end of the training ring with some sort of liquid dye that permeated not just the surface, but seemed to have seeped deeply into the sand. The places were perhaps fifty feet away from each other, and Trinn was standing at the midpoint, murmuring something to himself as he marked the place with the staff in his hand. Reeve watched, curious despite himself. He’d known the old man was a blademaster, but he was only now realizing that that title carried a little magic with it. With his blessing performed, the old man straightened his back and summoned the brothers to the middle of the battlefield.

“The Blood Rite of Unity,” he intoned without preamble. “A rite of last resort. A day of mourning for us all, that no less drastic means could succeed in burying the strife between you. It hurts us especially deeply to see such enmity between brothers. I trained you both myself, and I loved you like sons.”

Reeve had been avoiding Darion’s gaze, but at that he couldn’t help the instinct that sent his eyes flicking up to find Darion’s. Just for a second, he saw his own surprise mirrored in his brother’s face—then both of them looked away again immediately. He’d never heard Trinn so much as speak his name without rolling his eyes. To hear the old man say he loved him like a son felt like he’d walked into some bizarre fever dream. The whole week had felt like that, if he was honest. The last three months, ever since he’d agreed to marry a woman he’d never met, a woman he’d learned too late was his soulmate. Trinn was speaking the ancient words of a blessing now, and he let his eyes slide towards the crowd that was slowly approaching the battlefield, wondering if she was among them. She wasn’t. But he knew that this Blood Rite was to duels what marathons were to a hundred-yard dash. Unless he really dropped his guard early, it would be a long time before he was close to dropping. Surely she’d be here—if not for him, then for Darion.

Unless she didn’t want to see him, he thought, feeling a cold fist tighten around his heart. Unless she’d decided that it would be better not to look upon his face again.

“It’s time,” Trinn said now, his voice heavier and sadder than Reeve had ever heard it. “At the bell, you may begin. When the bell sounds again, you will return to your resting place and take your other form—and so on, until the hollow crown of victory rests on the head of the survivor.”

“Massive downer, but alright,” he murmured under his breath. Disrespectful, maybe, but he didn’t much fancy spending his last hours alive being polite. He heard Darion catch his breath, and for a heartbeat he thought he’d heard his brother almost laugh. Surely not, he told himself as he returned to his so-called resting place. His imminent death must have been making him imagine things.

As the issuer of the challenge, Darion had chosen the form in which they’d start the battle. Whether that offered any strategic advantage at all, Reeve couldn’t decide—from what he’d learned of Blood Rites like this one, they generally went on for dozens of rounds, sometimes hundreds, and whether or not you’d started with teeth and claws or fists didn’t really seem like it made much of a difference. Darion had chosen to begin wolf-shaped, though, and Reeve felt the familiar buzz of magic move through him before his paws thudded softly into the sand. Would he be on two legs or four when he died, he wondered? He probably wouldn’t be on his feet at all, now he thought about it.

The bell rang out across the sand. Reeve shot one last glance towards the ring of spectators, searching in vain for the tall, ferocious woman with the thick red hair. She wasn’t here. Nothing left for it, then, but to meet his brother in the middle of this battlefield and see which one of them was going to die first. Watching his brother prowl to meet him from the other side of the battlefield was like looking in a mirror. They’d always had a closer resemblance in their wolf shapes than they ever had in their human ones. Two great, shaggy black wolves… maybe if the final blow was struck in these bodies, the spectators would struggle to figure out who the winner was. That would be theatrical, wouldn’t it?

That first round of combat was almost all wary circling, in the end. Strangely enough, Reeve had always found it easier to read Darion in his wolf form than in his human one. Something about the way every twitch of his muscles shifted his fur a certain way, telegraphing his movements ahead of time—he feinted a few times, but Reeve danced easily out of the way, trying not to listen to the gasps of the crowd, or to let the irritation get to him. What, had they really thought it would be over that quickly? That Darion would just seize his throat ten seconds into the first round and leave him there to bleed out? He got a few feints of his own in before the bell rang, and he padded back to his resting place with his tongue lolling between his teeth and a new determination burning in him. If Darion was going to kill him in front of everyone on the island, he was damn well going to make him work up a sweat first.

They both strode back into the middle of the battlefield on two legs, weapons drawn. He recognized his brother’s sword immediately—an enormous, unwieldy two-hander he’d had since they were kids, heavy as sin. Reeve was a little surprised to see it, if he was honest. They’d both always been too small to wield it effectively, determined as Darion had been to build the strength he needed to grow into it. It had been Trinn who’d eventually talked him into giving up on the weapon, hadn’t it? Reeve didn’t dare risk a glance at the old blademaster, keeping a wary eye on Darion as he circled him. His own blade couldn’t have been any less like Darion’s if he’d tried. It was a shortsword with a thin, impossibly light blade and a pommel that had been crafted for speed and efficiency. Given the grueling nature of the fight, it had seemed obvious to Reeve to bring a light weapon. But there was Darion, already grunting with effort when he brought his sword around in a clumsy swing at Reeve. He dodged it without parrying, danced out of the way of his brother’s follow-up strike, realized as he dropped back into his fighting stance that he’d ignored an opening that could have won him first blood. His brother had noticed it too, judging by the scowl on his face.

“I’ll not be insulted,” he growled, his voice low. “If I see you hold back for pity again…”

“What, Darion?” Reeve felt the unbelievable urge to laugh rising up in his chest. “Go on, finish the sentence. What exactly do you have left to threaten me with?”

“I’ll draw out your death,” Darion snarled, but Reeve could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Curious. Trinn was giving them a sour-faced look from where he stood by the ceremonial bell, and Reeve struck a few more times at Darion as if in apology for chatting. Darion swatted the blows away like they were nothing, his jaw tense. Reeve couldn’t believe it. He’d spent his whole life running away from his brother, his pack, his past… and now here he was, reverting to his smart-aleck adolescence, still trying to win his old teacher’s approval by hitting his brother with a sword. He was grateful to hear the bell toll, because the sound covered up the wheeze of laughter he couldn’t quite suppress as he hastened back to his resting area.

Resting area, he thought a few rounds later. That was a rather nasty little name for it, wasn’t it? There were exactly three minutes between rounds for each combatant to withdraw and regroup, and three minutes, he knew now, was absolutely worthless when it came to actually getting meaningful rest. Rather than helping him out, the breaks seemed to be actually making things more difficult. Every time he felt like he was settling into the rhythm of the duel, that bell would toll again, breaking his focus and sending him back to sit in the sand for just long enough to feel the increasingly unpleasant heat of the sun beating down on him. At first, he’d welcomed the warmth of the sun in the chill of the morning. But as the overnight cool faded, he realized that the suffocating heat of the island was going to become a significant problem.

But Darion had spent more of his life in the cool, temperate forests of Halforst than Reeve, who’d had a decade of New York summers. He tried to remember what it had felt like in mid-July when the mercury soared and the city’s towering buildings seemed to trap and press the heat in even closer. Darion had already taken off his shirt and was fighting in nothing but shorts—Reeve kept his long-sleeved linen shirt on, though he unbuttoned it to the middle of his chest. What Darion didn’t know was that sun protection was an important part of the game, too. Neither combatant would be provided with water during the battle, which meant dehydration was as important an enemy to watch as Darion’s impractically large sword.

Wolf, human. Wolf, human. Reeve had long since lost track of how many rounds they’d fought when he strode wearily back out into the middle of the battlefield with his sword swinging nonchalantly from his hand. Darion’s hair was lank with sweat and he was already red with more than just exertion, scorched by the sun’s rays. Reeve tested his defenses a few times, noticing with a sudden rush of adrenalin that he was a little off-balance, a little dizzy. He even stumbled a little, one foot sliding in the sand, his body turning to catch his great weight. Reeve hastened to press the advantage.

He should have known better than to imagine his brother would have actually let himself stumble.

By the time he was close enough to strike, he’d realized his mistake—but it was already too late. With an impossible, terrible speed, Darion’s sword was whipping around, the odd off-center stance he’d assumed resolving into a formidable brace position for a strike. With an inarticulate shriek that was part fear and part fury, Reeve acted on pure instinct, hurling himself further into Darion’s reach so that the blade would strike him with more blunt force but less slashing power. It hit his ribs hard enough to knock the wind out of him, but he’d avoided the bloody laceration that had been Darion’s goal. He covered his ungainly retreat with a flurry of quick jabs with his blade that Darion knocked aside easily, pressing his spare hand to his ribs as he went. To his immense relief, the blow hadn’t broken them—but he heard Trinn’s voice echoing across the sand as he announced that first blood had been spilled.

Darion was looking straight at him, sword in hand, breathing hard. Reeve grimaced at the blood on his hand, but the wound was shallower than it would have been if Darion had struck him where he’d intended. That hated bell rang, and Reeve headed for his station again, exaggerating his wincing as he clutched at his ribs. Stupid, to let himself get hurt—the least he could do was try to use the wound to lull Darion into a false sense of security. Not that his mind games had ever worked on his brother. The man fought like a machine… merciless, inevitable, technically perfect. Going up against him was like trying to push back against a steamroller. Sooner or later, you’d slip and be crushed.

Get it together, Reeve, he told himself, tightening his jaw. Every sparring match he’d ever lost against Darion, he’d panicked first. He couldn’t let himself panic. Not this early in the game. Sure, Darion had first blood, but it was nothing but a big bruise—the bleeding had already stopped. There was plenty of time to turn this around. And so he set down his sword and turned back to the fight on four legs, growling low and deep in his throat.

Midday came and went. The sun was merciless as it beat down upon them, and even Trinn was looking a little worse for wear—though Reeve knew the old man would drop dead right there on the battlefield before he called to be relieved. One way or the other, the blademaster was going to see this whole fight through. The spectators, on the other hand, didn’t seem quite so dedicated. After the first few rounds of fighting, their rounds of applause had grown quieter and quieter—and soon, they’d stopped making any kind of response whatsoever. The grim, somber silence that had fallen over the beach seemed a lot more appropriate, somehow. Wolves joined and left the crowd fairly regularly, but none of them seemed to want to stay for long. Why would they? There was nothing glorious about what was happening here.

Reeve evened the score a few rounds after first blood had been drawn, managing to deliver a savage bite to Reeve’s foreleg. It translated to a deep wound on his forearm in his two-legged form—not a bad effort, considering that the wolf’swound was always less severe than its equivalent on the two-legged form. Not long afterwards, Darion scored a couple of lucky hits on Reeve, adding two more blossoms of blood to the back of his increasingly bedraggled-looking linen shirt. Both of them were much the worse for wear for the heat, with even the stoic Darion swaying a little on two legs if he stood still for too long. But the bell kept sending them back and forth across the sand, and Reeve’s focus was beginning to shrink to an ominously narrow tunnel that featured only the hated face of his brother.

He still checked the crowd every time the bell rang, though. Still scanned the solemn watching faces, looking for her flash of dark red hair. Still felt the same pang of awful grief every time he realized she wasn’t there. Had his brother ordered her not to attend? She was part of his pack again, he’d be within his rights to boss her around. Part of him wanted to ask Darion during one of their two-legged bouts. Maybe he would, if things got dire… it might throw him off balance, give Reeve an advantage he could exploit. Of course, it was just as likely that he’d be the one who was knocked out of his rhythm. And he couldn’t afford to give Darion a single clear shot at him, not with the amount of power he carried with that ridiculously oversized sword.

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