Chapter 82: Living Through A Live Demonstration

The challenger’s quarters turn out to be little more than a bare stone room off the side of the arena, a single torch guttering in one corner, a rack of mismatched, well-used armor along the far wall and a low bench where Lucien has already discarded three failed attempts at a proper fit.

Distant crowd noise seeps in through the walls, growing steadily louder as the arena fills.

Lucien stands in the middle of it, trying on one piece of armor after another while Serenith floats nearby, offering a steady stream of terrible, sarcastic suggestions on how he might still talk his way out of this.

“You could try crying,” she says. “Wolves respect tears. Probably.”

“I actually might.”

“Or piss in your pants!” Serenith barks, laughing. “Nobody fights a man that pissed his pants.”

“I’m so glad you’re enjoying this,” Lucien mutters, wrestling with a breastplate that clearly wasn’t built with anything resembling his proportions in mind. He groans. “None of this even fits me. It’s all made for wolf-kin.”

She bursts into laughter the moment he turns around, folded awkwardly into a chestplate two sizes too broad in the shoulders and entirely too tight everywhere else, looking thoroughly miserable about it.

“This is useless,” he says, peeling it back off and letting it clatter to the floor. “I’m just going to do what I always do.”

“You can’t talk your way out of this one,” Serenith says. “Wolves only speak in bloodshed.”

“Maybe not,” Lucien says, rolling one shoulder experimentally, testing the muscle underneath. “But I’ll figure something out.” He flexes, considering his own arm. “Would really help if I actually knew how the Beast Mother’s blessing worked, though. She was extremely vague about the specifics.”

Serenith drifts closer and sniffs at the air around him, wafting it toward her own nose with one hand like she’s appraising a particularly fine vintage.

“Shadow magic,” she says, eyes narrowing in concentration. “Forest magic. Illusion magic. Some kind of bio-matter manipulation.” She sniffs again, head tilting. “And unless I’m mistaken, there’s transformation magic woven through it too.”

Lucien stares at her, genuinely impressed.

“You can actually tell all that just by smelling me?”

“When you’ve been around as long as I have,” she says, “you pick up a few things.”

“How old are you, exactly?”

“It’s rude to ask a lady that.” Serenith scoffs, chin lifting sharply.

“My apologies.” Lucien chuckles, hands raised. “Whatever your age, you look amazing, always.”

“Focus!” she snaps, twisting at her jaw to try and force back her blushing.

He crosses to a small opening cut into the wall and peers through it. The sound of a crowd pours in immediately.

A wide sandy ring beyond, packed tight on every side with wolf-kin, mugs already sloshing, coin already changing hands in a dozen overlapping bets, someone near the front loudly offering absurd odds against Lucien lasting a full minute, the whole crowd humming with the restless energy of an event nobody wants to miss.

A horn blows, and a door swings open in the wall beside him.

“Guess it’s time to get down to business.” Lucien exhales.

He grabs two daggers off a weapons rack since nothing else fits, and there’s no time left to argue with the armor anymore. He walks out into the ring shirtless, unarmored, wearing nothing but a sturdy pair of business-casual trousers, his boots, and a blade in each hand.

He steps into the center as the crowd roars around him, a wall of sound pressing in from every direction at once.

Up in a raised balcony draped with banners bearing the tribe’s crest, the chief watches him enter the ring, sneering, eyes bright with open bloodlust, both mates seated close behind him, watching with matching expressions of cool, appraising interest.

The chief vaults over the low wall of the balcony and lands hard in an explosion of sand, and the crowd erupts in chants of praise. The chief raises one fist, pumping the crowd higher, then drops it sharply, and the whole arena sucks in a single collective breath and falls dead silent.

“Lady Kamiko has brought us someone special,” the chief announces, voice booming out across the ring. “Blessed by the Beast Mother herself!”

The crowd oohs, murmuring appreciatively.

“A pity, then,” the chief continues, “that one apparently gifted by our own goddess would come to the lands of the Shadowfang tribe, and challenge your chief.”

The crowd gasps.

“He even coveted my mates!” the chief adds, pointing up toward the balcony. Every head in the crowd snaps toward the two women there for exactly one second before averting just as fast, a ripple of nervous silence following. Somewhere in the stands, a man smacks his own son across the back of the head for staring a second too long.

“I was hoping,” the chief says, turning back to Lucien, “that our guest might give us all a small demonstration. Of exactly what the Beast Mother saw fit to gift him.” He grins, fangs bared. “But it seems he has something better in mind, to become the first man in five years brave enough to challenge me directly.”

“Well, that’s not entirely—” Lucien tries to explain, but is promptly cut off.

“I WELCOME THE CHALLENGE!” The Chief roars.

The chief draws two curved blades from a sheath across his back.

“You’re not the only one who carries a blessing from the Beast Mother.” he growls.

As he speaks, his dark fur begins to shift, rippling like something caught in a wind that isn’t there, flickering and flaking away in slow, deliberate waves until it turns molten, liquid, running like fire down the length of both arms and legs.

Lucien’s eyes go wide.

“Okay, that looks genuinely incredible.” He gushes. “What is that?”

“The Blood of the Hunt,” the chief says. “Our gift. Power, speed, perception, all of it pushed to its limit. The peak hunting form.”

Lucien glances down at his own hand, tries to summon anything at all. A spark, a flicker, some hint of power, and gets absolutely nothing for the effort.

“I’m struggling a bit to figure mine out, if I’m honest.” He groans. “Any advice?”

“Only advice that matters in this ring.” The chief laughs, low and dangerous as his eyes gleam. “Survive.”

“Right,” Lucien says, solemn. “I’ll take that to heart.”

“Ready?”

Lucien nods reluctantly.

The chief closes the distance in an instant, closer to a blur than a body, liquid fur streaming behind him, nothing but a smear of metal and motion cutting across the sand, and Lucien barely gets a blade up in time to catch the first strike as something deep inside him ignites without warning and simply takes over, faster than conscious thought could ever hope to manage on its own.

His whole body reacts before his mind can catch up. Muscle thickening along his forearm, joints locking rigid to absorb the shock, bone density surging in the half-second before impact and fading away again just as fast the moment the danger passes.

The blow still sends him skidding backward hard into the sand, boots carving twin trenches along his path, dust rising in a thin cloud around the point of impact, his arm still ringing from the shock of it clean up into his shoulder. The crowd roars its approval, entirely unbothered by whose blood might end up on the sand tonight.

The chief throws his head back and howls, delighted.

“I won’t allow someone weak to carry the Beast Mother’s gift!” He points one curved blade at Lucien, grinning wide. “You’d better give me a good fight. Her reputation depends on it!”

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