He had to bend over almost double to be close to my eye level. “Take the shot, lass,” he said. The contrast between the gentleness in his voice and he way the hairs on his arms stood up allowed me to find my voice.
“Screw that! I’m done being a Council plaything. If she wants him so bad, she can have him.”
He looked at me then with depthless black eyes ringed in beaten copper. “I know,” he said. “It’s an insult to even think she could be a challenge for you.”
My mouth opened but nothing came out. “You might be a little slip of a girl but there is a lioness stalking in that soul. Don’t run away. Nephilim might not mate, but Malachi was raised inside the walls of the Reserve just as much as Max. Behind every alpha is a woman who keeps him in check. I wouldn’t be where I am without Yolanda. He might be Malachi Pendragon, but he needs you.”
“We need you,” Griff’s rough voice spoke from my right. He’d snuck up on us but Durin allowed it. “If Tiberius gets what he wants, his Nephilim will run roughshod over those of us who cannot wield magic.”
“Why don’t we just end them here and now,” I suggested. Durin chuckled, but his smile and the expression on Griff’s face pleaded with me.
“Goddammit,” I said.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Tiberius said. “Even if Malachi weren’t to bond with Chanelle, we can’t have this girl anywhere near a Council member. Do you forget what she is? Her blood belongs to Lucifer. My people have seen the future, and in it, she will lead his legion against us. She should be locked up inside the Dominion prison at the very least.”
Green light flared around Kai at the suggestion. “Try it and see how long you’re still breathing,” he said.
“While I agree the girl is a problem,” Victoria said, “so are some of the policies your species would have the rest of us accept.”
“We are Nephilim,” Tiberius said. “Our place is above you.”
I thought Durin was going to burst a capillary.
“Then we are back to where we started,” Megan said. “Malachi refuses to be subjected to the pact. It’s either civil war or a contest in an Academy ritual. I vote for the latter.”
So did most of the other Council leaders.
I was not at all impressed. “Umm,” I hissed at Jacqueline. “Are we all forgetting that I’m human?”
“They didn’t say you have to win,” Matilda piped up. “Just that you have to beat her.” Judging by the look on Matilda’s face, beating up Chanelle was a desirable prospect.
I couldn’t reconcile any of it. “You don’t have to do this,” Kai told me. “I’ll find another way.”
The flash of rage in his eyes said his solution was a massacre of his own. My shoulders deflated. “Fine.”
The nymphs were summoned. They decided that to make it fair to the other contestants, a prize that involved a Council pardon or favour was in order. It meant that if somebody else won, they could ask for anything they wanted from the Council. As long as I beat Chanelle, the blood vow would be rescinded. If I won the whole games, I would have something to hold over the Council’s head. It wasn’t that bad a wager.
When the contract was signed, the nymphs stole it away to their hiding place in the Grove. And that’s how I ended up becoming a contestant in the Unity Games.
8
The look on Sophie and Diana’s faces when I told them I’d be competing in the games was priceless. We had just arrived back at the Academy and were putting our things away. “I...what...” Sophie kept stammering. “But you’re so low on the House points ladder. Do you have any idea how dangerous these games are?”
I pretended nonchalance. Basil had shown me a bunch of old games on the MirrorNet. Sufficed to say, I was suitably terrified. Students actually died in these things. They were literally thrown to the wolves to see if they were worthy of joining the elite guards.
“Yeah, I have a fair enough idea.”
Sophie sat down hard on her bed. “This is just wrong,” she said.
“And yet it’s happening.”
“But why?” Diana groaned. She needn’t have looked me up and down so disparagingly.
I explained it to them.
“That’s ridiculous!” Sophie said. “What does winning these games have to do with anything? How does that prove you’re better than Chanelle?”
I winced at the sound of her name. Sophie was too incensed to care. Diana paced in a circle, muttering to herself. Finally, she came to a halt. “I suppose in terms of suitability, if you can prove you’re not just a puny human maybe some of the Nephilim will change their mind about you being a terrible bondmate. Michael’s line is impressed by strength, after all. Raphael’s line was destroyed because they couldn’t fight.”
Diana blew out a breath from where she was leaning on Sophie’s wooden chest at the base of her bed. “You can’t catch a break, can you?”
“Thanks for pointing out the obvious.”
She scratched at the skin just below her left eye. After a moment, she coughed. “Speaking of the obvious, have you thought about how you’re going to handle seeing Chanelle every day?”
I stared at her. All of my brain cells seized. “Beg your pardon?”
Diana looked at Sophie for a second before she turned her attention back to me. “Way to hold out, Soph.” Sophie tucked her legs underneath her and hunkered down.
I tried to
