Tonight, he needed to take out Broderick.
Two refs stood between the two combatants. They thumped their fists, one over the other, and yelled, “Fight.”
The refs scattered, and Ellison went for Broderick. Broderick sidestepped, whirled, and shifted at the same time. Mistake. Broderick landed in Ellison’s furred arms, Ellison rising into his half-Shifter beast.
Broderick squirmed away, lithe and strong as his wolf. Ellison followed, the pain in his ribs slowing him down, his Collar going off. Broderick took advantage to shift to his half beast and catch Ellison across the torso with his clawed hands.
Ellison danced back, landing on all fours as a wolf. He launched himself upward, latching his teeth into Broderick’s throat.
He found his mouth full of the loose fur as Broderick came down wolf. He snarled and shook, flailing Ellison’s body, but Ellison held on.
Broderick finally twisted all the way around, and Ellison’s teeth slipped. Blood dripped from the wound in Broderick’s neck, the metallic taste winding Ellison into a frenzy.
“No killing!” one of the refs yelled.
Too late. Ellison’s rage was up. Broderick wanted to steal his mate. In the wild, males tried to abduct females all the time, until the formal Challenge and its rules had been set up to protect the scarce females. These days, Challenges didn’t end in the kill, but Ellison wanted it.
He went for Broderick’s throat again. This time, Broderick shifted into his half-wolf beast, catching Ellison, raising him high, and throwing him down.
Ellison landed in a whump of dust, the bruised ribs stabbing him, new wounds opening. His Collar was sparking too, slowing his roll to his feet.
He stood panting, trying to raise his head. Damn Broderick. He needed to go down.
Ellison backed up a few steps, but Broderick charged him. Ellison came up, and the two males met, both wolves now, snarling, biting, clawing.
Broderick chomped on the back of Ellison’s neck, and Ellison rolled away, wanting to groan in pain. He scrambled to get his paws under him, the light of the fires in the abandoned hay barn starting to blur. Broderick was a blur too, the noise around him a hum of confusion.
Something brushed past him, something that smelled sweet and good, and of mate.
“Stop!” he heard Maria shout. “Stop the fight!”
Ellison blinked. The lights were still fuzzy around the edges, but he saw Maria clearly, inside the ring, between him and Broderick. The refs were coming for her, shock on their faces.
A big rule of the fight club was that no one, no one, stopped a fight once it started. The only stopping was when an opponent yielded, or the refs thought one of them too far gone and needed to be contained.
No one watching was allowed to touch the fighters, and certainly not to enter the ring. Especially a human. Especially a human female.
The two refs, big Felines, were heading to grab Maria and drag her out. Ellison put his wolf body between her and them, growling hard.
Outside the ring, Connor said, “Maria, you can’t do that.”
Tiger stepped over the barrier. Ellison noticed no one tried to stop him. “Don’t touch her,” Tiger said clearly.
The refs halted. Broderick shifted into his human form and put his hands on his hips. Goddess, the man stank.
“You can’t stop the Challenge,” Broderick said to Maria. “Or he forfeits.” He grinned at her. “You don’t want that, now do you?”
“He was already hurt before he walked in,” Maria said angrily. “You knew that. You should have put it off.”
“Hey, he picked the time and place.”
Ellison leaned back against Maria, a fine place to be, and she put her arms around his neck. “Do it some other time. You can stop this.”
Ellison’s body decided to shift. He didn’t want to—he felt stronger as wolf—but Maria with her arms around him made him change form back to human male. He ended up with Maria’s arms still around him, pulling him close.
“Hey, love,” he said, his voice barely working. “You’re crazy, you know that?”
“I’m taking you home,” Maria said. “I don’t want to see you hurting anymore.”
Around them, the crowd stopped screaming and booing and moved closer to listen. Shifters could never mind their own business.
“Let me finish this first,” Ellison said, the words rasping. “A mate always answers a Challenge.”
“Doesn’t matter. Even if Broderick wins, I’ll refuse him, and come back to you anyway.”
Some of Ellison’s tension left him, and his breath became less labored. His ribs started to feel better too. The healing touch of the mate. He hadn’t quite believed in such a power before—especially when the mate was human—but he did now.