SHATTER

Chapter Eight

The silence was deafening. It was like the wind had stolen the voice of thousands of people right from inside them. All across the arena, women, men, and children elongated their spines and craned their necks so that they wouldn't miss a second of the battle below. One woman would have to face off against thirty-five of the supposed best fighters of each pack. They all inched forward in their seats when the first contender, Griffin, shifted into a rugged and menacing-looking brown wolf.

The brown wolf dug his claws into the ground, uprooting the grass and marking the area. This was so his paws could become accustomed to the ground below him. The wolf's golden gaze pierced the air and landed right on Raine. She could feel it. She could feel the power coming off of this wolf and surrounding her like a warm blanket. The air around her became thick as it was infused with the authority power of a natural-born predator. The power he emitted was supposed to intimidate its prey. While his power display was impressive, it didn't carry nearly as much weight as a wolf that held a rank in a pack. The higher you were in the pack, the denser your power was. It was meant to physically push down your subordinates and cause them to submit. King's power felts like a thousand tons being dropped on your shoulder at one time. You had no other choice than to fall to your knees and get as close to the ground as you could. The only people that could withstand the power release from the King was the prince and herself. But even the prince's knees became weak at the feeling of the King's power. Raine, however, didn't falter. She would cower for no one, not even the King. It was laughable that this wolf thought that he could make her kneel. It would be a cold day in the pits of hell before that happened.

The wolf in front of her stopped ripping up the earth and began to stalk around her slowly. Raine's eyes followed him until he left her peripheral vision. The crowd waited for an attack from either party to commence, but Raine just stood there. Even with a wolf at her back, she didn't move; she didn't even turn her head. The stalking, preying, and even the growling was all the means of a mind game. Raine knew all the tricks of intimidation and scare tactics and had applied them several times on her targets over the years. She didn't get her position by asking for it. Raine had slaughtered men who had the audacity to call themselves Gods. She had broken the knees of people who looked down on her and shattered their pride. Entire troops and gangs of enemies had fallen before her blade.  The scars that ran up and down her backside told the story of her undeniable rage and aggression. A woman she was but weak she was not.

Raine allowed the wolf to close in on her with his circling. She opened her senses up to the elements allowing all scents and sounds to drown her. She could hear the rising heartbeats of the audience. It sounded like thousands of tiny drums beating to their own distinct tune. She could smell the sweat escaping their glands as the sun beat down on them with its unruly rays. The fabric of her pants even felt different as she allowed her fingertips to graze the seams. The wind that had brushed over the tips of leaves and tops of trees had an oaky taste as it slid across Raines' lips. Little to nothing escaped Raine's attention when she opened herself up like this, not even the sound of blades of grass being crushed under the brown wolf's feet behind her.

It had not rained in weeks in this section of the kingdom, so the ground was particularly parched. With the absence of liquid in the ground, the grass was abnormally loud and dry. It didn't matter that she let the wolf out of her vision; she could still see him. Years of being locked in dark rooms and cages had taught her that the eyes could be your worst enemy. They will show you lies that have been conjured up in the dark parts of your mind. She learned to see with her other senses and navigate through battles with them. Raine itched to grab her weapons only to be met with a small pang of disappointment at the thought of their absence. This day would go by fairly quickly if she had her weapons. She probably could take them all on at once if she had even a fraction of them. It had been a long minute since she'd been forced to fight with her bare hands, especially in an empty terrain such as this. There were no trees she could use to her leverage or craters in the ground she could use to trip up her opponents. If anything, Raine had been put at a drastic disadvantage.