Chapter 396 Get Me Tiberon. Now.
The audience had given up on training. This was entertainment now.
Elara uncrossed her legs and crossed them the other way, settling in. Hale, beside her, had the expression of a Beta watching a carriage wreck he could have prevented and had chosen to observe instead.
“Should we intervene?” Hale asked.
“We should,” Elara replied. “Are we? No, we are not.”
Aegon’s tongue found Aurelia’s ear again. The lick was long, deliberate, and carried the energy of a wolf who had decided that grooming his mate in a military arena was a hill worth dying on and had packed provisions for the siege.
Dex: He is going to charge.
Aegon: Let him.
Xeon charged.
The impact sounded like two boulders colliding at speed. Aegon saw it coming and braced, lowering his center of gravity a half second before contact, but Xeon’s momentum carried both of them sideways across the arena floor in a skidding tangle of black fur, black teeth, and extremely personal grievances.
Aurelia, suddenly free, stood in the center of the arena with nobody holding her for the first time in five minutes. She lay down and watched with her tail curled around her paws.
Aegon rolled and got his footing first. His snarl ripped across the arena with enough force to make three Shadowclaw warriors take a step backwards.
The two wolves slammed into each other again. Teeth met shoulder. Claws met ribs.
Captain Thane looked at Captain Calder. Calder looked at Thane. Both men wore the expressions of professionals whose training curriculum had been replaced by a testosterone custody battle between gods.
Aurelia stood up, walked three paces to the left, and lay down in a different spot.
Both Alpha wolves froze mid-charge, heads snapping toward her, because their mate had moved and the new position meant the entire territorial calculation had to be recalibrated from scratch.
She put her head on her paws and closed her eyes.
Aurelia’s nap lasted four seconds. Aegon’s paw found her first, dragging her against his side. Xeon’s snarl shook the arena walls. The charge resumed.
They collided over her sleeping body, and Aurelia scrambled out from under four hundred pounds of jealous wolf. A glowing tennis ball caught between two wrecking balls. She bolted to the far end of the arena and pressed herself against the wall, ears flat, legs trembling.
Aegon caught Xeon’s scruff and threw him sideways. Xeon hit the ground, rolled, and was back on his feet before the dust settled. He lunged low, teeth finding Aegon’s front leg, and the yelp that came out of Dex’s wolf was loud enough to echo off the rafters.
Xeon released the leg and went for the throat. Aegon twisted, caught Xeon’s ear, and the two of them spiraled across the arena in a violent, snarling knot that knocked over a weapons rack, scattered a row of training dummies, and sent Captain Thane diving behind a stone column.
Captain Calder had already retreated to the stands. Professional survival instinct. Both Betas and the Beta Luna were right behind him.
Aurelia pressed herself flatter against the wall. Her glow was dimming, which Maelor noticed immediately and which confirmed that the wolf was stressed and the stress was affecting the cloak’s stability and the training session had achieved the precise opposite of its intended purpose.
Hyran watched a training dummy’s head roll past his feet. He looked at the cracked stone. The scattered weapons. The two wolves locked jaw-to-jaw in the center of the destruction.
“Get me Tiberon. Now.”
✦✦✦
King Tiberon Drakenfell arrived at the training arena six minutes later, having portaled from Drakenfell.
He stood at the top of the arena steps and assessed.
Two Alpha wolves, both black, both massive, both bleeding from superficial wounds that were healing in real time, were locked jaw-to-jaw in the center of a destroyed training floor. Cracked stone. Scattered weapons. A headless training dummy. Twelve Shadowclaw warriors pressed against the back wall of the stands like cornered prey. Three Master Mages in various states of professional indignation. His Beta and a Beta Luna standing in the front row with the posture of people who had been watching a building burn and had decided the building was going to burn regardless.
And his son was one of the wolves.
Tiberon inhaled through his nose. Held it. Released it through his teeth.
He raised a Crown Prince with access to the finest military training, the sharpest tutors, and the most disciplined command structure on the continent, and the result was a wolf brawling in a foreign arena over grooming rights.
His eyes moved past the fight.
He saw the white wolf.
Tiberon stopped.
He looked again, because what he was seeing required a second look, and Tiberon Drakenfell was a man who required second looks for almost nothing. The wolf was pressed against the far wall of the arena, ears flat, legs trembling, glowing white with a luminance that pulsed faintly with each breath.
She was small and clearly terrified.
Captain Calder appeared at his side. The captain had pieced together the situation faster than most.
“She can’t shift on her own, Your Majesty. Dexmon had to issue an Alpha command to initiate the shift. If we can get her back in human form and remove both Alphas from the arena, we can resume training.”
Tiberon had already deduced the first part. Serena needed to shift back, and the two wolves currently using each other as chew toys needed to be separated before the arena lost additional structural integrity.
The second part was new.
An Alpha command to initiate the shift. The silver poisoning had taken that from her, and the gap between what Serena was capable of and what Serena’s body would allow was wider than Tiberon had estimated.
It made sense. She was clearly sensitive about her wolf, and the sensitivity had a source, and the source was mechanical, and the mechanical failure was treatable with training, which was the entire purpose of the session currently being demolished by his heir.