Chapter 21: This Fist Is Mine

Four princesses paraded across sacred sand with picture-perfect smiles and the crowd worshipped every choreographed step.

Every one of them was waving. Groomed since birth, and you could tell because nobody in that line had ever once looked like they’d lost an argument. Chin. Stride. Jumbotron teeth. The whole package screamed please mate me, Alpha.ℴℴ𝘮

Celeste led the group because of course she did. Maria Emberclaw walked on her left, the Solarbeam princess on her right, and a Dunestorm princess brought up the rear.

Nova hoped, with every functioning cell in her nervous system, that none of the other three outside of Celeste ended up paired with Kai Starborne. She wouldn’t wish that on any woman. Princess. Slave. Elder. Didn’t matter.

The princesses took their positions at the front of the arena and the elder’s voice filled the stadium through the column runes.

"Citizens of Helix. Alphas. Elders. Honored guests. We stand on sacred ground, consecrated by the blood of wolves who gave their lives in the Great War so that our kind might endure. The Moonfire Rite is not a ceremony of celebration. It is a ceremony of survival. Every name called tonight carries the weight of a species that came within a generation of extinction and chose to fight its way back from the edge."

He launched into the history of the Helix Repopulation Mandate. The founding.

Nova was halfway listening. She had heard it before and half of the information that was being spoken was meh, arguably wrong-ish. When the history portion ended, the elder transitioned into final scoring.

"Four categories determine who is invited to the Moonfire Rite. Endurance. Lycanthropic Resonance. Reproductive Viability. Intelligence. Each score is weighted equally. Combined rankings will determine invitation status and Lottery assignment."

The arena lights dimmed. The jumbotron tripled in size as a holographic scoreboard materialized across the center of the stadium, stretching wall to wall.

"Category One. Endurance."

The leaderboard started populating from the bottom. Names and numbers climbed the screen. Omegas first. Then slaves. Then warriors’ daughters. The audience treated the lower rankings like a pregame warmup, half-watching while they talked and drank.

Conversations began dying at the top hundred. By the top fifty, the arena had gone quiet enough to hear boots shifting in sand. Top twenty loaded, portraits blooming in ghost-light next to every name, faces hovering over the numbers like they already knew they were winning.

At the top five, the display changed.

Each name hit the center of the arena floor as a full hologram, thirty feet tall, projected onto the sand like a monument.

5TH PLACE: SERAPHINA SOLARBEAM, 93.2ND PERCENTILE

Standing ovation from the Solarbeam section.

4TH PLACE: ESTELLE DUNESTORM, 94.1ST PERCENTILE

The Dunestorm section erupted. Their princess had cracked the top five and their reaction suggested they hadn’t expected it.

3RD PLACE: MARIA EMBERCLAW, 95.7TH PERCENTILE

The Emberclaw Alpha stood from his seat and the entire section followed. Maria Emberclaw’s holographic portrait smiled down at the arena from thirty feet high and the Emberclaw warriors stomped their boots in approval.

2ND PLACE: CELESTE STARBORNE, 97TH PERCENTILE

The Starborne section went loud. Celeste lifted her chin and accepted the applause like a woman who fully intended to be in first place and was already composing her complaint to management.

1ST PLACE: REGISTRATION #7709, 99.9TH PERCENTILE

No name. No portrait. Just a registration number and a blank square where a face should have been. The same empty box that had been on the jumbotron earlier that day.

Nova didn’t look. She hadn’t been expecting it because Celeste said her father was working on getting the scores struck. Her mind was somewhere between the masked bomber’s instructions and the elevator and the men with cigars and the taste of leather on her tongue. The scoreboard was a problem for a girl who had a future. She was busy surviving the present.

THUM.

One thousand fists hit chests and the sound snapped her out of her thoughts. Every slave on that arena floor. Every woman in both rows. A single synchronized heartbeat that punched through the ambient noise like a bass drum.

It was heard across the stadium. There was no mistaking the sound of it. One thousand heads turned to Nova. Brief. Controlled. A rotation that lasted exactly long enough to be unmistakable and short enough to be deniable. Then every head snapped forward like it had never moved.

It was powerful. It was also dangerous for all of them.

Nova swallowed hard against the lump that climbed her throat.

The salute tipped her off that she was on the scoreboard so she didn’t need to look to know where she landed. But the salute meant more to her than the score. More than any hologram or any leaderboard or any number floating in light above a blank portrait.

Some would be punished.

They did it anyway.

They looked at her like their leader. She was not going to be a coward. They had all gone through too damn much for her to flinch.

Alpha Starborne had once told Kai that hesitation was for cucks and corpses. Make the move. If you fuck it up, at least you’re still the one doing the fucking.

He didn’t know she was listening then. But she was.

Fuck it.

Fist to chest. Hard back at them.

Her fist hit her chest and it was the first decision she had made today that belonged entirely to her. Not the masked bomber’s. Not Celeste’s. Not Kai’s. Not the man who carried her. Not the woman who iced her cheek. This one was hers. This fist. This sound. This answer. The only thing she’d owned all day was this moment and she was not going to waste it.

They deserved to know that their fists had landed. That the sound they’d made had traveled across the sand and through the formation and into the chest of the girl they’d built a corridor for, and it had found her, and it had held her, and she was still standing because of it.