Two hundred military careers were about to be hanging by a thread in the next thirty seconds because the Crown Princess’s wolf was about to engage in the most absurd fucking display of combat anyone had ever witnessed.

Nothing could have prepared them for this shit.

It started when Thor’s wolf sat down. Raised a paw. And smacked Aurelia across the face with it.

Hard enough to make her stumble. Her front legs shuffled sideways, her balance catching up to the impact a half-second late, her golden eyes going wide with the specific shock of a wolf who had invented a game and just discovered the game hit back.

Two goddamn Alpha Kings, the most powerful wolves on the continent, were standing on a sideline vibrating with suppressed fury because a soldier’s wolf had slapped their mate across the face during a drill they couldn’t interrupt. Both men were fighting their wolves who were clawing at the surface with everything they had.

The fighting was visible. Embarrassingly visible. Dex’s shoulders were shaking. His hands were fists. His eyes were solid gold and the gold was flickering with the rapid, strobing intensity of a wolf slamming against a door his human was holding shut. Fin was worse. His neck tendons were standing out like bridge cables, his entire body rigid, his face locked into an expression that could only be described as violently constipated.

They looked, collectively, like two men trying to hold in sneezes that could level buildings.

A warrior standing three feet to Dexmon’s left took one very quiet, very deliberate step to his right. The soldier beside that soldier saw the step and took his own. A third followed. Within four seconds, a radius of empty space had formed around both Alphas, a buffer zone created by men whose survival instincts were sharper than their loyalty to their positions and whose positions were relocatable and whose lives were less so.

On Fin’s side, Captain Thane, who had traveled with him through the portal, took two full steps backwards without turning around. He had seen this enough times to know the warning signs.

Meanwhile, Aurelia’s paw was already back up.

She hit Thor again. Same paw. Same catlike swat. Same energy. Right across the snout. The hit said “I started this and I am continuing this and the rules of this game are mine.”

Thor’s wolf recoiled. His ears went flat. His expression cycled through offense, confusion, and something approaching indignation, the face of a wolf whose feelings had been hurt twice in thirty seconds by the same paw and whose feelings were now forming a union to protest working conditions.

A soldier in the front row leaned toward the man beside him. “What the fuck are we watching?”

“I have absolutely no idea.”

“Is this the drill?”

“I think this is something else entirely.”

“Should we be concerned?”

“I think we should be quiet and let it play out.”

Thor hit her back. Same paw. Same force. Same bewildered energy of a wolf who had his feelings hurt and now this was personal.

Aurelia hit him again.

Thor hit her again.

Aurelia hit him. Faster this time.

Thor hit her. Matched the speed.

Thor’s wolf was now fully committed to a game whose rules had been invented by a wolf who didn’t know wolf rules, and the commitment was producing a spectacle that no commanding officer could have predicted.

Back and forth. Paw to face, paw to face, two wolves sitting in the center of a military training field in front of two hundred soldiers and two Alpha Kings and the Crown Prince of Drakenfell trading open-pawed slaps like cats in a kitchen fighting over a piece of fish.

The fact Thor’s wolf was hitting her back with equal ferocity was beyond anyone’s guess. The fact Tiberon Drakenfell was allowing it was also unknown. The rhythm was steady, almost musical, repeating at a tempo that had nothing to do with combat.

Aurelia:The broken wolf is slow.

The thought existed only inside her head because Serena was not there. But the thought was there, and the thought was confident, and the confidence was the confidence of a wolf who had decided she was winning a game she had invented and the scoring was hers and the score was in her favor.

One soldier made the exact face of a man swallowing a live grenade and pretending it was candy. Two privates locked eyes and both looked away so fast it looked like a synchronized flinch. Most had red faces.

Laughing would be disrespectful. Disrespectful to the princess. Disrespectful to both Alpha Kings. Disrespectful to the King of Drakenfell, who was standing fifteen feet away watching his daughter-in-law’s wolf invent a combat technique that didn’t exist and whose face was doing something that nobody on this field had the security clearance to interpret.

Three rows down, a junior officer had turned completely around and was facing the castle wall because facing the field meant watching and watching meant laughing and laughing meant Halvek would have him running laps until his boots dissolved.

The entire Draken Forces was dying. Silently. Collectively. Two hundred soldiers witnessing the least conventional combat drill in Drakenfell’s military history and swallowing their reactions like men swallowing poison because the poison was hilarious and the hilarious was lethal.

Finally one of them broke and whispered, “This is the greatest goddamn thing I have ever seen in my career.”

The man next to him nodded. “If I die tomorrow, I die having watched a princess’s wolf slap Thor Crushturn in the face six times. I am at fucking peace.”

Halvek raised the whistle to his lips.

Before the sound could leave the metal, Aurelia moved.

She launched. Zero warning, zero telegraph, zero preamble.

One second she was mid-swat and the next second she was airborne, her small white body leaving the ground in a burst of speed that caught Thor’s wolf flatfooted because Thor’s wolf had been mid-slap and his weight was on the wrong paw and his balance was committed to a game that had just changed sports entirely.

She hit him center mass.