It wasn’t easy, but with Owen here for me, I found composure about two seconds before I would have given up and dived off the stage into hiding. I even managed to raise a hand and wave for the audience, for whatever little it meant.
As I swept the crowd, I caught sight of Dad near the front. Al and Sylvia flanked him and behind him, glowering with arms crossed, was Carter’s dad. I looked away and shut them all out.
“Ladies.” Sheridan gestured to the ground below the stage. “Please take your places below.”
Regan gave me a little nod and walked to the stairs.
She shifted into her wolf form before she reached the ground. It was a smooth, rapid transition, and it cued renewed shouts of her name. Her wolf was tall and proud. Somehow, the flowers remained tangled in the ruff of hair around her face. It should have looked silly, but it didn’t. She was beautiful and proud.
I shifted, too, just a moment later. My feet stretched into paws and I jerked at the last second, mostly out of nervousness. I hoped no one noticed as four paws landed on the hard dirt and I made my way to the center where grass softened my footfalls.
“As it has long been tradition for our pack, the contest for the position of alpha must begin with a demonstration of strength. Only the strong may dominate our pack.” Sheridan addressed the crowd, but I knew her words were mostly for my benefit. “Only the powerful can lead. It is on strong backs and mighty muscles that our future is forged, and so our alpha must be the strongest of them all!”
Cheers. Screams.
I was so glad that wolves couldn’t make facial expressions, because it meant nobody could tell that I was just about to throw up from nerves. I glanced sideways and found Owen, stoic and staring—unmoved by the reaction from the crowd. It helped calm me, but I forced myself to look away. The last thing I needed was Bevin standing up and yelling that I was making wolf-eyes at the enemy.
Sheridan went on, “In our first stage, the Test of Strength, Regan and Charlotte must demonstrate who is stronger by pushing each of these objects as far as possible in one shove. Ladies…”
I stared at Sheridan a second longer, waiting for the rest of her instructions. But she turned away, gesturing for us to move into position. Was that really it? I had been expecting a fight with a bear or something, but we just had to push some junk around?
On one hand, it kinda seemed too easy. But on the other hand, Regan had been training her entire life for exactly this kind of thing. I stole a glance and found that she wasn’t watching me. She was already in position, entirely focused on the task at hand.
Regan lowered her head and ran at the first boulder. She turned at the last second, and her shoulder connected with it. A crack split the air, like she was a stone herself.
The boulder rolled a few feet before stopping.
She looked at me expectantly. My turn.
I took a deep breath, drinking in the smells of the watching werewolves and vampires, and huffed it out again. I lowered my head, closed my eyes, and flung myself into the boulder with all of my strength. The shock of the impact jolted through my spine.
It rolled—and stopped within inches of hers.
Were the cheers a little less enthusiastic than before? I couldn’t tell over the ringing in my ears. I raised my triumphant eyes to Owen’s and found him smiling. He was the only smiling face among the vampires. They were all glassy-eyed and cold. His mother all but bared her teeth at me, and I shivered at the thought of having her as an in-law.
But the competition didn’t end with the boulder. For the next hour, we pushed bigger rocks, hefty logs, and even those junker cars around until my muscles burned and I couldn’t tell who was winning. My only comfort was that it seemed to exhaust Regan, too. Sheridan must have had the two of us push dozens of objects, some already set up and some brought out at various intervals by pack members.
It felt ridiculous. What kind of competition was this?
But Regan kept going, so I did too.
Eventually, Sheridan stopped us, and I tried not to flop to the ground. My tongue lolled out the side of my mouth. There was a collective pause and the crowd shifted as a man I remembered as Judas Prescott from the council meetings walked over and passed Sheridan an envelope. My muscles tightened as she tore it open and read the results.
“The winner of the first phase is—Charlotte!”
Shock and then excitement erupted through me, momentarily burning away the fatigue. I couldn’t believe it—I’d won. But my moment of glory was soon destroyed as Sheridan’s words sunk in. First phase?
The audience applauded politely as several pack members moved into the arena to clear it out. I sat on my haunches by the open doorway, watching with worry as the empty ground was repopulated with logs.
Regan shifted back to swig from her bottle of water. I didn’t dare do the same. It was harder to tell how scared and exhausted I was as a wolf.
It also gave me plenty of opportunity to study her expression. She wasn’t scared or worried. Her focus was laser-sharp, and losing the first phase had only sharpened it further. She analyzed the logs, scanned the crowd, and glanced at me. I saw her redouble her determination. Regan was just getting started, while I think I might have blown all my energy pushing rusted-out cars.
“A pack is not only led with brawn. It must shatter obstacles and crush its enemies. The second phase begins!” Sheridan announced. Her words echoed through the arena over the sudden and total silence in the stands. Pack members shot each other questioning looks. I could practically hear the question aloud: If we weren’t at war with the vampires anymore, then who were these enemies she spoke of?
Far back at the edge of the stands, near a break in the wooden walls, my attention caught on movement. I blinked and zeroed in using my wolf’s sight to make it out from so far away. A flash of pale skin caught my eye as an arm and then a hardened cheek slipped through the break in the wooden beams. Vampire—my hackles rose instinctually even as my mind still worked to identify the creature. But there was no mistaking my wolf’s intuition.
My gaze swung over to where Owen still sat with his family underneath the tent that had been set up to keep the sunlight off them. I counted faces quickly, but the same group was still present. No one was missing. I glanced back in time to see a pair of red eyes flash as they glared at me and then disappeared into the forest. I knew those eyes—they were the same ones I’d spotted in the forest the day Regan and I had hunted together. With everything else going on, I’d almost forgotten about him. But now I realized, whoever it was hadn’t forgotten about me. Someone was watching me. My wolf’s lips pulled back, baring my teeth at the spot I’d last seen the man. But my body’s internal warning system had quieted and I knew without looking that the man had gone.