Chapter 24: Emberclaw Offered. Thunderfang Tripled.

"Come now, Lucian."

Nova’s blood ran cold because she recognized that voice immediately. It was one of the men in the cigar room. He had been in the far corner who had spoken last, the one who’d said let her get rejected first.

He hadn’t touched her. But he had been there and watched all of it from his chair with a drink in his hand and a mask on his face, and his voice had been the one that sent her back to the elevator.

Curiosity won and Nova stole a glance.

Maverick Emberclaw, Alpha of the Emberclaw pack, stood from his seat with the ease of a man unfolding from a lounge chair at a resort. He was brother to the Emberclaw Princess, who had just walked through that tunnel with a standing ovation.

Nova blinked. Here she was thinking those cigar-room saints were just your everyday tax-bracket-with-a-god-complex, garden-variety. Incorrect. This one was a literal king.

"That offer I made earlier. Let her go and I’ll double it."

Every jaw in the arena dropped. Nova’s cheeks heated immediately.

Young, single, magazine face. That usually meant the "wreck me, Daddy" queue started at dawn. Why was Alpha Emberclaw bidding on her at all?

Then another voice cut across the arena.

"Whatever Emberclaw is offering, I’ll triple it."

The arena gasped in unison that would have been subtitled ’oh fuck’ if the jumbotron was still rolling.

Nova turned her head slowly. The voice was familiar. The Thunderfang who helped her earlier. He had said only a few words to her total. He was standing.

Starborne looked at the elders with the magnanimous expression of a man who was about to be generous and wanted everyone to see it.

"Fine." He spread his hands. "I am a reasonable man. But my centerpiece is missing the Underground. Give me a twenty-four-hour extension before lottery assignment. It is only right that I am given additional time to properly facilitate the transaction."

The irony was edible and lethal. Illegal market. Universally known. Starborne just asked the government to reschedule around it.

The elders did not blink. The crime had become customer service.

"Granted. A twenty-four-hour extension is reasonable and within our discretionary authority. Registration 7709 is cleared to attempt the Moonfire Run. If she fails to arrive at the Ancestral Grounds before dawn or if sacred flame does not respond to her blood, then she is eliminated and returned to Starborne custody."

Twenty miles.

Nova almost laughed. She didn’t. But Alpha Starborne was correct that this would be difficult for someone without a wolf. Slaves did not simply go running in the woods and silver was not doing her any favors.

The slaves parted for her.

The front row stepped forward in unison, silent, military. The gap opened the same way it had opened when she’d arrived late, a corridor of women who had decided without words or signals that she was walking through.

Nova blinked a few times. Her boots felt bolted to the sand.

She stepped forward, slightly dazed.

THUM.

One thousand fists war-drummed against one thousand chests and the sound ate every other noise in the arena. They held the salute as she crossed the sand towards the tunnel, fists pressed to sternums, heads forward, faces blank, giving her the only sendoff they were allowed to give and refusing to make it small.

A slow clap started. Then it spread until every person left in the arena was giving her a standing ovation as she walked to the tunnel.

She was stunned. There was no hiding it. The mask she’d been wearing all day had finally cracked. Her eyes were burning and her chin was doing the thing it did before it betrayed her and her boots were carrying her forward because the rest of her had forgotten how voluntary movement worked.

She was almost at the tunnel entrance when a woman broke from the formation.

Not a slave. A warrior’s daughter or a captain’s, based on the insignia on her shoulder. One of the twenty-four hundred who hadn’t made the cut. One who had every right to hate Nova for taking a spot that the system was never supposed to give her.

The woman ran forward with purpose in her stride. She pressed an elastic hair tie into Nova’s hand.

Nova looked down at it. Looked up at the woman. Her throat closed so tight that the two words she managed barely qualified as sound.

"Thank you."

The woman gave a single nod. No speech. No explanation. No grand gesture designed for a jumbotron. Just a girl who didn’t make it handing a girl who did the most practical gift she could think of, because twenty miles of forest with loose hair was a problem and this woman had solved it without being asked.

Nova’s fingers closed around the hair tie before she made her way into the tunnel.

What she was about to attempt was insane. Almost as insane as her attempt at punching a hole in a concrete wall that repelled silver, which, for the record, she had done with a straight face and zero hesitation and still thought about when she needed a reason to question her own judgment.

And yet.

She pulled her hair back and wrapped the tie around it twice. The ponytail was tight and high.

Every wolf had gone ahead. The Moonfire Run was for females only, no escorts, no pack support, no outside help of any kind.

The forest swallowed the sounds of four-legged sprinting within the first three minutes, and by the time Nova reached the trailhead, the woods were silent.

She didn’t have a map. She didn’t have a wolf. She didn’t have wolf night vision or a plan or a prayer that qualified as realistic. All she had was a dirt trail cutting through trees older than the Mandate and a pair of gym shoes that were never designed for anything longer than a locker room floor.

Every problem had a solution.

She just needed to find this one before dawn.