Chapter Forty— The Hunt Trial

Chapter Forty— The Hunt Trial
The council room hung heavy with smoke and iron that night. Torches burned low, their flames licking across walls of stone carved with the weight of our history—scars of wars, triumphs, deceptions. I stood beside Lucien at the front of the long table, the weight of wolves' eyes pressing down upon me more crushing than any iron shackle.

Roran sat facing me, arms crossed across his massive chest, his face twisted into an imitation of subservience. He'd been waiting for this, and the spark in his eyes guaranteed that he'd rehearsed it to perfection.

"The pack is uneasy," Roran declared, his voice resounding through the hall like the crack of a whip. "Doubt is more likely to grow than loyalty, and uncertainty spreads like rot. We cannot have weakness within our Luna. Tradition demands evidence."

A murmuration swept the council. Some nodded, others frowned.

Lucien's gaze cut across the table, sharp enough to freeze the air. "Our Luna has already proved herself. She judged Roran, and the pack accepts. That is proof enough."

Roran’s smile was deadly, and he smiled. "Judgment is words. Wolves revere teeth and blood. There is a reason our ancestors required trial by hunt when the fitness of a leader was challenged."

My stomach tightened. Trial by stalk. I had heard whispers of it, an ancient tradition spoken of in awe but not reverence. A trial not of law, but of existence. One wolf against nature—and occasionally, against others waiting for it.

"It hasn't been called in decades," one elder complained.

"Because no Luna's claim has ever been this weak," Roran replied silkily.

The words struck like claws ripping flesh. My blood raged, but I gritted my jaw. To rise, to show him my fangs here, would give him all he wanted.

I lifted my chin instead. "And what would this trial demand of me?"

His eyes were glinting with sadistic pleasure. "The hunt. In the morning, you will be released into the woods. You will have nothing whatsoever but your power, your cleverness, and your determination to live. At evening, you must come back with proof of your kill."

"And if I don't?"

He leaned back in his chair, spreading his arms wide. "Then the pack will know."

The unseen truth hung so heavily upon me: if I didn't do it, I'd be marked as unsuitable, Luna just a name.

Lucien shifted alongside me, but before he could speak, I went on. My heart pounding, my mouth dry, yet my voice firm. "Then I will hunt."

The room held its breath. Roran's grin stretched further, as if already victorious from my agreement.

But in my terror, something colder stirred. He had expected to wait. He had not expected so prompt an answer to his question.

Dawn broke hard and cold.

The forest stretched out before me, a black expanse of pines and ridges hidden in fog. I stood alone at the border, unarmed, save for the pack that followed me as witness. Roran was one of them, arms crossed, eyes looking at me with the patience of a hunter.

Lucien stood alone, his expression a mystery. I glanced at him once, searching for anything—direction, encouragement, warning. But he gave me nothing. Not a nod, not a head shake. Just silence.

You sink or swim on your own, his silence suggested.

The horn blew.

I ran.

The forest overtook me. Thorns shredded my arms, roots tried to ensnare me stumbling, dirt and wild musk thick in the air. My lungs burned as I pushed on, every sense on high alert, each sound magnified. Out there, my quarry waited somewhere, and beyond that, the edge of survival.

I slowed, steadying my heartbeat. Panic would suit Roran. Precision would serve me.

The conditions were easy: back before sundown with evidence of a kill. But nowhere had Garron explained what that kill should be. He wanted me to charge blindly after the biggest animal, to demonstrate through strength. That was his standard.

Mine was not.

I knelt low, fingers flat on the damp earth. Tracks crossed here—hare, deer, fox. Too small, too straightforward. The pack would not revere a rabbit's hide. My eyes went up to claw marks on the tree trunk, the bark stripped deep. A boar, maybe. Hazardous, but not out of reach.

I crept quietly, all my senses alert, until the forest itself seemed to breathe along with me.

Hours went by. Sweat ran down my back, aching thighs, but at last I spotted it: a stag, enormous and majestic, its antlers as wide as a crown. It fed in a clearing, unaware of me.

My breast tightened. To kill it with bare fists was beyond hope. But I was not unprepared. Nature was my weapon.

I skirted around it, keeping downwind, looking for what I required. There—it was a branch, fat and jagged at the break where it had splintered. Rough, but functional. I drew closer to it slowly, each step planned, until the stag's head jolted up, ears flapping. 

It fled.

I chased it, lungs on fire, heart thudding. The chase crashed through thorn and gloom, until the stag stumbled on a ridge, slid over crumbled stone. At that moment, I struck.

The branch drove deep into its side, the beast threshing, bellowing in pain and rage. I clung to it, turning the splinter deeper, my body bending to the beast's untamed power. The world contracted to blood and breath, until at last the stag thrashed and fell.

I knelt on the ground, trembling, my hands slick with blood. My chest heaved, my body protesting with fatigue—but I had done it.

I had killed.

With shaking hands, I severed one of the stag's antlers, heavy and sharp, proof of the hunt. I wrapped it around my belt, the bulk pulling at me as if to remind me the cost it had been. 

The sun was going down when I returned on horseback to the edge of the forest.

The pack did not move, a restless tide of body and breath. Roran stood before them, his lips already curled in sneer as if he had expected me to fall. But as I emerged, drenched in blood and stumbling, the antler held high, the mob ceased its noise.

I raised it high. "The hunt is done."

A shout arose from the young ones, their throats raw with joy. The women clapped, relief and pride written on their faces. Even some of the elders nodded, muttering assent.

But Roran grinned only broader.

"Well done, Luna," he growled, his voice thick with ironic respect. "You have killed. You have proved yourself."

And then his grin snapped cold, cutting the moment like a knife. "But look at them.".

The pack's grin faltered, confusion spreading.

Roran threw his arms wide. "Half roar for you. Half whisper still. Do you not see? The trial was never about the kill. It was about the pack."

I stood frozen, my chest still heaving and falling.

His eyes locked onto me, burning with cruel triumph. "And what you have proven is not your strength. It is our division."

The silence that followed hung as heavy as any roar.

And as darkness closed in around us, I saw the reality: this had never been about antler or stag, about blood on the ground. Roran had been hungry for spectacle, not for victory.

And he had gotten exactly what he had wanted.