“Absolutely,” I said, with a confidence that I didn’t feel.
“Let the battle begin!” Ragnar shouted, his voice booming through the air.
Kray crouched low, and leaped through the air in a blur of motion. Max dodged him easily, and Kray landed on the ground behind him. Kray whirled in confusion. Max could have jumped on his back, could have taken him from behind, but he didn’t.
Kray lunged again, and Max moved so fast I couldn’t even see what he was doing. I saw Kray go flying, saw a spray of blood arc in the air…but Kray wasn’t dead. He wasn’t even that badly hurt. Max had simply wounded him.
Kray crouched down, blood gushing from his shoulder. From where I was sitting, I could see that his eyes were wild and panicked. This wasn’t going at all how he’d expected.
Max launched himself at Kray, his massive body flying through the air, and knocked Kray off his feet. Kray landed with a loud thud, his legs flailing. Max fell back, towering over Kray. Kray scrambled back up to his feet and backed up, shaking his head as if he’d been stunned.
Max still didn’t go in for the kill. He could easily have charged forward and ripped Kray’s throat out, but he didn’t. He stood with his shoulders hunched up around his ears, growling, bloody saliva dripping from his fangs. He was toying with Kray like a cat toys with a mouse.
The crowd murmured among themselves, clearly confused. Why wasn’t Max taking out his opponent? He was obviously the stronger wolf.
Max began to stalk forward towards Kray, slowly, and Kray turned human. He scrambled to his feet, blood pouring from his shoulder, and swung around to face the Elders, his face wild, eyes huge with panic.
“He’s cheating!” Kray screamed, his voice high and shaking. He didn’t sound Alpha at all at that moment, and the crowd picked up on it. The murmur in the crowd grew louder, even as the Wardens tried to shush them. This was the mighty Kray?
Max turned human, and stood with his arms folded, raking Kray with a look of contempt.
Ragnar rose to his feet. “You disgrace yourself and your pack!” he shouted. “There is no cheating! You issued the challenge – return to your animal form and accept your fate!”
“No, he’s bewitched! He must be! There’s no way he could beat me!” Kray’s voice was a pleading wail. I saw his brother glowering at him with murder in his eyes. Kray was humiliating everyone in their pack with his pathetic performance.
“He has accused me of cheating! He has slandered the good name of the Timber Valley Pack! I demand an immediate test for magic and drugs,” Max shouted. “I demand a three person panel of Shamans to restore my good name.”
Kray’s spun to cry out to the Elders, his face contorted, wild with fear. “Felix is the Shaman who will do the testing!”
“Have you been reading up on the Covenant?” Max demanded. “I have. I’ve studied it very, very carefully. When a Shifter is accused of cheating in a death match, it is within his right to demand a three person panel to test both participants. I accuse you of cheating, Kray, not just in this match, but in every match that you’ve won, and I accuse Felix of faking the results because you were blackmailing him.”
This had been Max’s plan all along, and it was a brilliant but risky one. He wanted to take out not just Kray, but Felix. Felix had cleared Kray for the fight. Felix and Kray both expected that the match would end quickly, with Max dead. Nobody ever expected Kray to be re-tested.
Kray had panicked during the fight when he realized that Max was stronger than him, and he thought that the only way that Max could beat him was by cheating, by enhancing himself with magic – he didn’t realize that his own formula had been tampered with. By blurting out his accusation against Max, he’d spelled his own doom.
Now that three other Shamans would be testing both Max and Kray, Felix was screwed. Kray would test positive for illegal magic. It would be obvious that Felix had thrown the fight.
The crowd gasped aloud. Members of the Renker family leaped to their feet, and several of them tried to rush across the field to get to Max. The Timber Valley pack leaped to their feet as well, standing in readiness to defend their Alpha if necessary. Insults were shouted, screams of rage rent the air. The Wardens tackled and subdued them.
I couldn’t help but notice that there was a sizable member of the Iron Claw pack who weren’t related to the Renkers, and who weren’t leaping to their feet or shouting in Kray’s defense. Now that Kray’s weakness had been exposed, he no longer had the rest of the pack following him out of sheer terror.
Ragnar and the other Elders quickly began scanning through the massive, leather bound copy of the Covenant that they brought with them to every public occasion. It was a rare and obscure clause, and nobody had invoked it within recent memory, but it was there. Ragnar looked up from the book, and nodded his agreement.