Chapter 144: The Challenge - Callista's POV

I had seen fights. Challenges weren’t exactly rare, and they happened whether you wanted to witness them or not. But watching from the crowd while my mate prepared to fight someone was something I hated.

I had watched him fight for the right to mate with me over a year ago, because other Alpha heirs thought it was wrong. Now, he’s fighting for an entirely different reason.

My hand was pressed flat against my chest as he stripped his shirt off. The bond in my chest told me that every single person in the clearing was tuned intently to this. Riven had noticed, and that information was passing to me without him realizing it.

I desperately didn’t want to know. My heart thudded painfully in my chest as his pants dropped next before being kicked aside where his shirt was.

The challenger, Alric, was doing the same. He was as big as Riven and just as menacing.

The tribunal observer read the formal terms in a voice that carried across the clearing without effort. His voice was flat and almost monotone. I barely heard it, because it was always like this. They always read them as if they had done it thousands of times and were bored with it. All the terms were standard, anyway.

My eyes landed on Riven, who was watching me out of the corner of his eye. I stared back, hoping he understood what I felt for him. I loved him. I had loved him even when I thought I was annoyed with him.

Then, slowly, my gaze drifted to Alric. His eyes were black already as he stared at Riven. They never wavered, slowly sizing him up.

His other half. This just confirmed it. That meant his older brother was the other half of Raze’s demon.

Alric moved, and there was something in the way that he did that reminded me of Riven. It made me deeply uneasy in a way I couldn’t fully think through.

But his eyes, when they found Riven's again across the distance between them, carried something Riven's didn't. He didn't know what he was carrying.

My hand flew to my mouth. “No, he has no idea.”

I could see it clearly from here. There was an absence of recognition. He had been told this was a political challenge, a bond claim dispute, and a matter of a tribunal precedent. This was what he had trained for, positioned for it, and pointed at it by a father who had his own reasons. He hadn’t been told what he harbored.

That was both an advantage and the most dangerous possible variable, because a person who didn't know what was inside them had no practice managing it, and two paired demons in proximity to one of them under control was death waiting to happen.

The tribunal observer stepped back. They moved at the same time.

Riven was faster. That was the first thing. Not by much, but it was enough that I exhaled slightly at the initial exchange. The first contact was so fast I almost missed it. They were testing each other, the way two trained fighters established parameters of what they were dealing with before committing. Riven moved like someone who had spent a year being pushed past every limit he had.

He was desperate to win, and I knew that, but it seemed like Alric knew that too.

Alric was strong too, stronger than what his build suggested, which meant he was going to be formidable and hard to beat.

I felt Riven's demon through the bond simultaneously. He didn’t push too hard at the surface or even try to take over. He was just present and waiting. I knew he recognized what he was against, knowing that the other part of the pair was just across the field, fighting back.

I pressed my hand flat against my sternum without meaning to. Beside me, Raze appeared. I hadn't heard him come up, but he was there, his shoulder almost touching mine, his eyes fixed on his brother in the clearing with a straight expression.

"He's holding it," Raze said quietly. “Don’t worry. He’ll win.”

"I know," I said softly.

"His demon is—"

"I can feel it," I mumbled. "He's holding it."

Raze was quiet. In the clearing, Riven took a hit that made the crowd shift and my stomach lurch. It wasn’t too serious and there wasn’t any blood involved, but it still made me grimace.

Alric was fast, and he was learning Riven’s patterns in real time. The crowd around the clearing was growing more energetic by the minute. Things were about to get interesting, because that energy would rub off on the fighters.

I hated them all briefly and specifically.

Then something changed. I felt it through the bond before I could see it. My eyes widened in panic. There was a shift, subtle and sudden, flaring through his veins. He was about to transform into his wolf.

Voss stumbled, even though Riven hadn’t touched him in the last three seconds. He stumbled from the inside, his hand flying to his chest. I watched his expression change from calculated to confused to something that was neither of those things.

I understood what was happening. His demon had just felt Riven’s.

"Oh no," Raze said very quietly. “This isn’t good.”

"He doesn't know how to manage it," I said, already calculating. "If it pushes through—"

"Riven will see it coming," Raze nodded. "He knows what it looks like. Even if Voss caves, Riven won’t.”

I watched Riven’s posture change. His eyes were going black.

“Raze, I think you’re wrong. He’s slipping.”

Riven took a deliberate step back, trying to put distance between them. He knew he was losing the fight with his demon. Being this close to his other pair was driving him insane.

The tribunal observer was frowning. The crowd had gone slightly quieter, sensing something was wrong.

I reached out, gripping Raze’s arm. “What do we do?”

“There’s nothing we can do,” he whispered. “He has to fight him and—”

His words cut off abruptly. I looked his direction, my gaze narrowing.

“What is it?”

“His brother is here,” he said, barely able to breathe.

“What? How do—”

I watched his red-gold eyes shift black.

“All four of us together…isn’t…good.”

Suddenly, as if my gaze was drawn, it drifted to the right, only to see the Alpha King, who was smiling with a knowing look.

He knew and had planned this.