The Shadow Alpha

Chapter 30: Challenger

Chapter 30: Challenger

Holly

It seems the air has been sucked from the space around us. The silence feels deafening. I hear a slight ringing in my ears as I work to comprehend what I just heard.

River is the first to react, standing up and out of his chair indignantly.

"Kyra, this is beyond absurd!" he says with outrage. "How dare you do this, tonight of all nights! Have you no shame?" he shakes his head with disgust, and I feel a slight swell of reassurance to see him so furious.

"I have every right to enact this if I so choose! It is pack law." She emphasizes, her gaze now fiery, the innocent façade now gone. "Holly has not earned the right to lead us, and while others may go along with it, I will not." She crosses her arms over her chest, lifting her chin.

"Holly is Alpha River's destined mate—therefore, the destined Luna of our pack." Vivian says this with a clear tone of obvious factuality. "While you may think she needs to earn such a right, you are mistaken—she had this right bestowed upon her the moment she and River met."

I feel a sense of gratitude at Vivian's defence, wondering what I did to earn such favour with her.

Kyra rolls her eyes and I set my jaw at the sight. The longer she stands here the more I fight the urge to jump across this table and rip her pretty dress to shreds.

"Bestowed upon or not, I am still within my rights to enact pack law and challenge her. Am I not?" she raises her sculpted eyebrows, and an audible growl sounds from beside me—River.

"Well that—" Vivian begins but I interject before she can finish.

"I accept." I say, and this causes another beat of silence to pass amongst everyone.

Kyra's eyes light up with what I know is genuine, true, excitement. And I know my own are blazing with a fire that I plan to burn her with, and badly.

"What?" River hisses from beside me, his anger now directed away from Kyra and now to me.

"I will accept Kyra's challenge. We will fight, and the victor will be named Luna." I say simply.

Kyra smiles a smile that looks more like a lioness encircling its prey. What Kyra doesn't realize is that this prey she has chosen is in fact more a predator than the lioness herself. She only need to find out.

Before I can say or do anything else, River has hauled me up out of my seat, his hand encasing my wrist with a steel grip. He drags me away from the table, into the treeline, into the dark, away from everyone.

Curious gazes follow after us; I can feel them burning into my back as we retreat further. When River finally comes to a stop, he whirls around on me faster than I would've believed possible.

"What the fuck do you think you're doing Holly?" he asks with incredulity, his brown eyes now anything but warm and welcoming. Instead they are alight with the same black flames I have seen before, the flames that could engulf and incinerate anyone stupid enough to challenge him.

Good thing I am plenty stupid. And fireproof...When it comes to him, anyway.

"I am accepting her challenge. If she wants so badly to prove herself, then by all means, she can go right ahead. I will gladly give her the chance to fall on her own sword of jealousy and delusion, if she thinks she has any right to being Luna," I pause and feel my chest tighten. "Or any right to being with you." I finish.