The warrior's name was Brek, and he was the largest wolf I had ever seen stand on two legs.
Six foot four, shoulders that belonged on something that lived in the ocean, with hands that could close around my skull with room to spare. He had the kind of scar tissue across his knuckles that accumulated over decades of consistent, serious fighting, and he moved across the training yard with the loose, unhurried confidence of a man who had never once walked into a physical situation he didn't control.
He had been waiting when I arrived. That told me everything about who had sent him.
The training yard was packed. Word had moved through Ashveil faster than I expected, which meant the court was hungry for information about me and not particularly subtle about it. Warriors lined the perimeter three deep. I spotted the young wolf from the wall who had watched me arrive the night before. I spotted two of Kael's inner circle pretending to review a weapons inventory near the armory door.
I did not spot Kael. That didn't mean he wasn't there.
Mara stood at the edge of the yard with her arms crossed and her jaw set in the expression she wore when she was furious about something she knew she couldn't stop.
I dropped my coat over the nearest fence post and rolled my sleeves.
Brek looked at my midsection. Not aggressively. Almost clinically, the way you'd assess a structural weakness in a wall before deciding where to hit it.
"King said full protections," he said. His voice was as large as the rest of him. "Didn't say anything about the yard."
"No," I agreed. "He didn't."
"You sure about this?"
I looked at him steadily. "Are you asking because you're concerned or because you need me to confirm I'm choosing this so you can live with yourself afterward?"
Something moved through his expression. He hadn't expected that. Good.
"Both," he said, with a honesty that surprised me.
"I'm sure," I said. "And I'm not fragile. Don't insult me by going easy."
He nodded once. Settled into his stance. Gave me nothing with his eyes.
I had fought bigger opponents than Brek. Size was an advantage with a specific set of counters and I had drilled every one of them since I was fourteen years old. The key with a wolf this large was simple in theory and brutal in practice. You did not meet his force. You redirected it. You stayed out of his grip because inside his grip the fight was over. And you hit the same two or three vulnerable points repeatedly until the size stopped mattering.
Simple. Brutal. Effective.
He came at me with the first move that big wolves always used, the forward press, using mass and momentum to push a smaller opponent back and off balance. I sidestepped left, let his weight carry past me, and put my elbow into the junction of his neck and shoulder with everything I had.
He grunted. Did not go down. Turned faster than his size suggested he should be able to.
The yard was very quiet.
He tried four more approaches in the next two minutes, each one more considered than the last, adjusting as he read me. He was good. Genuinely good. This was not a bully who relied on intimidation. This was a trained fighter who happened to also be enormous, and the combination was exactly as dangerous as it sounded.
But he was fighting with one constraint I didn't have.
He was still, on some level, holding back. Not much. But enough and I was not holding back at all.
On his sixth approach I let him get closer than I had allowed before, close enough that his hands found my arm, and I used that contact as a pivot point, dropping my weight and turning his own grip against him. The leverage sent him forward and down, and I came with him, and when we hit the ground I had my knee in the specific point on his back that made continuing a matter of choice rather than ability. His choice.
He was still for three seconds.
Then he tapped the ground twice with his open palm.
I stood up. Stepped back. Offered him my hand.
He looked at it for a moment that stretched just long enough to matter. Then he took it and let me pull him to his feet, which was largely symbolic given that I weighed about sixty percent of what he did, but the symbol was the point.
The yard stayed quiet for another two seconds.
Then it wasn't quiet anymore.
Not applause. Wolves didn't applaud. But the sound that moved through those three-deep ranks was something better, the specific low sound of a crowd revising its opinion in real time.
Brek looked at me with his scarred hands open at his sides and something in his face that had not been there sixty seconds ago.
"Where did you train?" he asked.
"Ironveil." I picked up my coat. "Before that, the Northern Reach combat program. I started at twelve."
He was quiet for a moment. Then, "You should have started at ten."
It was the closest thing to a compliment I was going to get and I knew it.
I turned to leave the yard and found Kael standing at the far gate.
He had been there the whole time.
His expression gave away nothing. But his eyes stayed on me for three full seconds before he turned and walked back into the keep.
Three seconds was a long time for a man like Kael. I filed that away too.
