14 Tristen's Practice Spar

♔ Tristen (P.O.V.)

The news of my father falling worse into his illness isn't much of a surprise. I knew this day was coming and I was prepared for it. Yet no amount of preparing for killing your father, your last parent, makes you any more ready to do it. Faced with losing a loved one makes one's eyes really open. Some people try to stay in a state of denial.

That's why I'm standing here. Staring at the front entrance to my house as the sun begins to take its nap.

The "palace" as some call it. It's not really a palace, it's just referred to like that since we are the equivalent to werewolf royalty. It's more of a fancy 2 story, 6 bedroom home.

From where I'm standing the conglomerate walkway adorned with its gray and white hued rocks are snuggled perfectly into their vertical positions. Elegantly outlined by an even darker gray rock all leading to the front porch stairs. The first and fifth white marbled stairs have a small yellow light embedded into both sides of the concrete ledge. A slender ebony railing is placed on the concrete ledge. Instead of vertical posts, two diagonal support beams stretch from corner to corner, leaving an x in the middle.

Both stair railings are connected to the first two black metal columns which form into an archway. Further to the right is one more column which also forms an arch. Instead of a staircase with railings connected to the opening, another ebony railing with an x in the middle connects the second column with the last. Directly behind the arch with the railing is the front door.

There's a rectangular flower bed filled with green shrubs that occupy the space against the wall that meets next to the left side of the third stair ledge. The walkway doesn't stop directly at the stairs, instead of after kissing the bottom stair the stones continue their vertical path around the left side of the house, along the flower bed.

The house in its rectangular shape is covered with gray endurathane stone siding.

This big house after tomorrow will be even more empty than it already is. Although my pack is a decent size only a few live in this specific house. Namely the King, his Queen, the Duke, the Duchess, their kids, and the Collins family. The Collins are high in the power line even if they're just head warrior and top tracker. Not really a high rank as Duke or Duchess.

"Get out of your head, Tristen." A voice startles me from my thoughts.

"Nom de Dieu!" I shout into the dark.

"It's me you dumbass." Remus barks into my head.

"Bloodyhell Remi. You nearly gave me a heart attack," I can feel the embarrassment rush into my face after screaming into the dark at nothing.

"I can tell. Get in there so we can get this over with."

I sigh, "Okay."

It's Jakub.

"Tristen!" Jakub yells. "About damn time boy."

"Uhh. Sorry Jakub," I weakly apologize. I honestly have no excuse for taking my sweet time.

"Listen, boy, I need to stay by your father's side. Especially since his condition has worsened. Just in case something bad were to happen. So, I won't be the one sparring with you today. Instead," he motions behind me, "she will be."

Confusion floods across my face. I thought Jakub would be lecturing me, let alone he'd be the one sparring with me. Who could be taking his place?

Looking behind me provides all the answers I needed. An average height petite young woman stands there. Her curly long red hair flows behind her. Her silver nose ring shines in the light of the porch. Her black furry coat snuggles her body tightly. Instantly I know who she is, her bright yellow eyes give her identity away. Avery Collins.

Most people who are werewolves have normal colored eyes. Unless you're a Lycan alpha, our eyes are Silver. People who have really strong werewolf sides tend to have the same color eyes their wolf has. Such as the Collins family. Both Avery and Luka have yellow eyes in or out of wolf form.

"My my, I have the pleasure of sparring with Jakub's second in command," a smile crosses my lips. I've never sparred with anyone inside the pack other than Jakub and Felix. The very thought makes me excited.

Avery giggles and her voice speaks softly, "My wolf won't be as big as Jakub's but I promise I won't hold back." She flashes her white smile.

"I'll expect you to do so Miss Collins," I tease. "I can easily beat Felix so if you prove a tough opponent for me then you should do just fine with Felix. When it's the time of course."

"My goal isn't to beat you, Prince Tristen. I'm to prepare you for your father. Nothing else." She states, her soft low voice as low as before.

I'm thrown off guard by her monotone response. I've never spoken to Avery personally. I've never needed to speak to Jakub's second in command. For that reason alone, I still have Jakub our Duke and lead warrior. If I ever have a reason to work with the warriors I go to him.

Luka, her brother, I've spoken to him multiple times. He's our spy and can move around freely, unlike how I can for now. Until I take over for my father I'm not allowed to leave Canada, even to find my mate. There have been a few rogues we've caught on our border coming in from the states, which is problematic even on its own.

To make matters worse they've been whispering about a pack in the east that's gaining members by collecting rogues. Using them for their entertainment and burning neighboring packs. We haven't caught a rogue that has told us where the pack is other than it's in the east. So I've sent Luka into the east of the United States to perform a 'check-up' of the packs we have on record.

As the future king, it's my duty to make sure that none of the big packs start a Wolf War. Those wars can get ugly, it causes wolves to fight until either pack is eliminated. Sometimes causing human casualties. Which causes the werewolf hunters to have the right to go after the packs involved. Killing innocents, women, children or whoever is involved with that pack.

My grandfather worked hard to gain the peace treaty we have with the hunter society. Sure some hunters don't obey those laws they've enforced, but it's been quiet and peaceful. Not near as bad as the bloodshed and fear that lingered around every corner a werewolf and hunter met.

"I understand. So where exactly are you wanting to do this?" I question.

"I was thinking we could go to the arena since that's where yours will be held," She suggests.

"Lead the way, Miss Collins," I laugh as I perform a bow jokingly.

Avery rolls her eyes scoffing at my gesture and begins to walk off towards the arena we have tucked safely away in the forest behind our house. Back in the day, that arena was used for entertainment purposes, rising in rank, and testing power. Only one of those is what we use it for today. Killing our predecessors to take over as the ruler. Anyone can still challenge the King it doesn't have to be his child. The thing is, no one does because they are aware it's a fight to the death. If they lose even if they're related, they die.

The good thing about this spar that's about to take place is we won't have to kill each other. Honestly, the only thing I'm looking forward to right now. My heart sinks at the thought of what's about to come.

Am I ready to take over from my father? Can I beat him? I guess only time will tell.

The arena is vast in size, both inside and out. The darkness doesn't hinder the view of the area.

The base is rectangular, almost resembling a horseshoe with its single opening. The grey stones that built the walls are now decaying with age. No doubt in the next few decades, it'll be nothing but ruins. The gate that hovered above the opening to seal the area is no longer attached snugly with both sides. Instead, it is laid against the wall from the inside.

The inside is built out of the same stones that hold the arena up. Stone-like bleachers stretch across the entirety of the walls, getting smaller as they reach the bottom. Perhaps a total of six separate rows of seats decorate the area. A petite oblong box rests at the very pinnacle of the arena, standing directly opposite from the horseshoe opening. That is where the king of that time and the ruler of all werewolves sat. The ground is made out of fine dirt, allowing various old footprints and new alike litter the loose terrain.

The arena has been here for generations. Although it hasn't been used often in the last few, it used to be the biggest attraction.

My ancestors used to hold callings. Callings were for entertainment purposes only; they had no rhyme or reason to them. Almost all the packs would gather around to watch as two or more wolves were thrown at each other. They relished in the entertainment from the fights. Whoever won was given a reward. Almost always, it was their freedom.

Besides the callings, it had smaller, more recreational uses. To move up in rank in The Royal Lycan Pack, the current titleholder and challenger had to spar. The only fight that was mandatory be to the death was the spar between the king and his challenger. The winner keeps or takes the king's place. If the current king loses, his mate had to step down as queen. More often than not, the new king would exile the previous queen and her children. Ensuring his place on the throne. The pack hasn't had to worry about that happening for a while. After all, for the last few decades, it's been held by my family.

"Prince Tristen," Avery speaks up, shaking me out of my thoughts. Standing in the middle of the arena, she motions with her hands to come closer. Her long curly red hair still flowing as elegantly as it had before.

Obeying her, I quickly closed the space between us. Leaving enough room for two or three humans, "what's next?"

"We strip," she shrugs. The statement seemed ordinary to her.

My eyes grow wide as she begins to shed her large black fur coat. Underneath the fur coat, she had a solid black crop top that stopped right below her belly button. Her black leggings formed tightly around her body. Elegantly on her raised heel boots, she walks over to the old stone seats and rests her coat on them. Removing her shoes and socks, she stands barefoot on the dirt.

"You going to strip? I don't think you want your clothes to rip in the shift?" She tilts her head in confusion.

"Oh, yea. Right, right. It's just uh," I trail off. I've never paid attention to Avery. She's always wearing baggy clothing or things that cover her body entirely. So her… the form of her body was off-putting. Her curves were profound, almost a perfect hourglass figure from her breasts to her round ass. I'm not going to lie, she's attractive. She's not my mate though, and I can't let my mind wander for anyone else. It's wrong, and the very thought makes my skin crawl.

"I'm not very fond of being naked together," I state, awkwardly laughing as I rub the back of my neck.

"Oh! You thought-," she laughs softly and begins twirling the ends of her hair, "Excuse my rudeness, Prince Tristen. I would never imply we would be completely nude. This is as far as I'm removing my clothes. I'm fine with these ripping, it's the entire reason I brought the huge coat."

"That's a relief," I breathe.

Turning around and facing the opening, I begin to remove my clothes. Quickly sliding my black tennis shoes off, I toss them to the side. Pulling my plain white t-shirt off over my head, it gets tossed to the side as well. Followed by a red pair of shorts.

"Ready?" I ask.

"Ready."

The sounds of insects can be heard through the late-night air. Their songs don't drown out the sounds that erupt as bones begin to shift. My bones begin to split and develop into their wolf counterparts.

My teeth become sharper and make room as K-9's make their appearance. My solid red fur begins to sprout along newly formed hair follicles. Black nails form on my large, now formed paws.

I howl and shake my fur as the adrenaline flows through my body. Avery's howls out at the same time, clearly as thrilled to be in her wolf form as I am. Our howls mix creating an almost sing-song sound.

Turning myself around I catch a glimpse of her wolf for the first time. She's smaller than my wolf by a long shot. My burly 3 foot 4-inch wolf towers over her wolf that stands at least lower than 3 feet. Her grizzled gray coat almost shines in the moonlight, which is only complimented by her bright yellow eyes. The very same shade as her human eyes, which was to be expected.

"Don't hold back, and remember your father will have a bigger hitbox than I do. I'm merely to loosen you up and show that even with a size disadvantage you still have a shot," Avery opens a pack link between us. She twitches her tail as she continues, "have they told you how any of this works?"

"I have ideas on how it works, but other than that. No, not really," I replied, shaking my head no. Plopping my rear end on the ground, I stare at her inquisitively, swishing my tail back and forth rhythmically.

Avery sighs through the pack link as she shakes her head, "joy. I'll run you through the basics. You and your father will enter the ring as humans, you'll then shake each others hands or some sign of respect and admiration. After the formalities are over you'll both shift, the announcer will have the both of you sit about as close as we are now. Two to three human lengths away." Pausing she asks, "you getting all this?"

"Crystal clear," I smile a wolfish grin. We'll get through formalities, we'll shift and then the announcer will tell us to sit.

"After you're told to sit they'll announce which wolf is who. They'll tell you to orbit. Why they call it that, I have no idea. You'll orbit or walk around in circles with each other for a total of three cycles. They'll call them out as they go. After the third one, Jakub will howl signaling the fight to begin. The rest is self explanatory."

"Right," I say, confirming that I understand. After we sit they'll finish more formalities, we'll orbit three times and after Jakub howls the fight will begin. If I win, I become king and my father dies. If I lose, I die and my father stays king until he's challenged again. "Wait why is Jakub howling?"

Twitching her tail more she answers, clearly irritated, "It's tradition that the duke of the current king be in his wolf form. It shows unity and respect for his king. The duke starts the fight by a wolf's howl, sharing his song with the world."

"Right, right," I say softly between the link. I knew that, my father has told me some of the history behind our pack. With everything on my mind, I guess it could be easy to get distracted and forget things.

"Let's begin. We will orbit three times like you will in the real deal. We will count down in our pack link together, on three we will start. We can stop when one of us is placed in a kill spot, or we get tired out." Standing up she flicks her tail, signaling for me to follow.

We begin to orbit together. Walking slowly behind the other, watching the other as we go around.

"One," we say together as we pass our first orbit.

"Two."

"Three," we both howl through the pack bond.

At the mention of the word three, we both stop circling. Almost at the speed of light, we both lunge at each other.

Teeth bared I launch off my back legs towards her throat. Prepared to wrestle her down with my front paws, and weight advantage.

With quick reaction time, Avery curls her body in an almost impossible fashion and dodges to the left of my path. Almost successfully sending me face-first into the dirt. Landing with an awkward thud, I manage to catch myself. The hard impact sends dirt flying around in a whirlwind, clouding my vision.

With no warning, Avery's wolf pops through the dirt cloud. With her white teeth bared, she launches at me head-on. Her yellow eyes glow with determination.

Adrenaline rushes through my body, as I drop my neck and lock my legs. Effectively shielding my kill spot and hopefully making it hard to move me.

Carefully bracing myself for her body to slam against mine. Instead of brute force, a sharp pain rushes through the meat of my front left leg. A deep growl erupts from my throat as I face the stabbing ache. Blood slowly trickles down my leg tuft. A petite bite wound rests above my elbow, directly in the meat of my leg.

Briskly looking around checking for signs of my attacker, it quickly becomes clear. She's vanished, I can't see Avery's anywhere in the dust before me. Focusing on my hearing, I can hear the faint thudding of her paws hitting the dirt. Her pace begins to quicken, almost as if she's going in circles. The dust swirl around me that had finally thinned thickens. Dust quickly starts to flow endlessly around me, in a medium-sized cloud.

She's trying to block me in!

Clever use of terrain I have to admit, but I can't let that happen. It's already hard enough to see with the dirt floating everywhere, easily clouding anyone's vision at night.

I have to get out of this spiral, or she'll have the drop on me. Focusing my hearing on her paws again, I can vaguely tell as the sound switches from my left ear to my right ear. Pinpointing her location makes it easier to figure out where to escape.

As her paws near the left side of me, I quickly spin myself around to my right. Dashing through the dust, I charge around the spiral in her direction. Charging at her with max speed, I swiftly tackle her sending us in a continuous tumble. Rolling over each other in an endless circle, we bite anywhere our teeth can reach, and scratching anywhere our claws can grab. After what seems like an eternity of rolling, we slowly come to a stop ending with me on top.

Her wide yellow eyes glow with surprise. I start biting her flank as she tries to push me off with her legs to no avail. Howling in delight, I go in for the kill spot on her neck, holding her head down. Without warning, she begins clawing at my underbelly. Slowly ripping it to shreds as her claws make contact with my flesh. I can feel as blood starts to drip and run down my stomach.

A loud yelp of pain escapes my body as I feel her claws dig deeper into my bare flesh. Suddenly teeth are wrapped around my throat and applying small amounts of pressure. Avery lets out a low growl, declaring she wins. Tapping my front paw softly on the ground three times, I signal that I submit accepting my loss.

"Go shift back, then we'll talk about what you did wrong," she breathes through the pack link, clearly out of breath.

"Sounds fun," I breathe tiredly.

Padding my way over to my clothes, I notice I have a small limp on my front leg she previously bit. It's sore, so clearly she has a hell of a bite for someone so tiny. Groaning as I finally reach my clothes, I silently will for myself to turn back into my human form.

Over 300 bones form my wolf like body. Each bone that lines my body must break and realign. Cracking sounds ripple through the air, like a thunderstorm in the middle of the night. Pain springs all through my body as bones begin to find their rightful place.

First to reform is my spine. The bones snap out of their curved state and straighten and form back into my human shape. My muzzle begins to retract and snuggle back into place on my face. My arms and legs both begin to crack and reform into longer counterparts of my human limbs.

My senses that are heightened naturally, in my wolf form, fade down into a bearable normal for my human abilities. The red fur that once lined my body begins to itch as it retracts back into hibernation. My wavy brown hair comes to and flows freely down to my shoulders.

"Ah. Good to be baack," I sigh as I lay my left arm on my head and tug on my elbow with my right, stretching my newly formed muscles.

Quickly throwing on my undergarments, blood catches my eye. From my left pectoral down to the bottom of my left rib, claw marks checker the area. Under the right pectoral down to my stomach scatter various claw marks as well. Blood oozes from the wounds creating a large bloody mess.

A stinging sensation knocks on my left bicep. Right on the meat of my arm and down into possibly some muscle, a petite wolf bite mark dances across my bare skin.

It's been a while since I was hurt in wolf form. So it easily slipped my mind that wounds followed us into our human form. Groaning, I drape my white shirt around my neck.

"Big bad muscle man not putting on his shirt?" Avery sneers jokingly from behind me.

I turn around to face her, a smile dancing on my lips. She's dressed snuggly in her large coat. One would think it wouldn't cover everything, but it does.

"Not quite, Miss Avery. There's no sense in ruining a perfectly good white shirt," I say, laughing.

"Oh my!" A loud gasp escaped her lips. "I didn't mean to do that much damage." She scowls as she nibbles her lip, "let me help."

"I'm okay, I can clean it when I get into the house."

"I'm the one who went overboard," she insists. Grabbing a corner of her jacket, she carefully rips a piece off and begins dabbing the blood off my chest.

"Avery, I'm fine. Just tell me what all you needed to say to help me with tomorrow," I growl using my alpha's voice.

Avery jumps back the moment the growl leaves my body. I can tell her body begins to shake softly.

"Hey," I reach out to her, but she pulls away. "Look, I apologize. I'm just not okay with being touched by other she-wolves. Even more so those who are unmated," I say calmly.

I honestly didn't mean to snap at her. It was just that, her touching my body with that cloth made my skin crawl. I don't want just anyone; I want my mate. If I didn't want her, I wouldn't have waited for four years. What's worse is that Avery is unmated, meaning she doesn't have her mate yet. Wolves are pack animals; we want someone by our side. The longer we go without our mate, the more we become ready to accept someone else into our lives. Mate or no mate.

"I understand," she whispers. "There are a few points you need to keep in mind. First, you celebrated too early. Two, you left your underbelly exposed when you went in for the kill, that's how I got the upper hand. Three, you didn't take into account my smaller stature. So when you lunged at me the first time, I quickly dodged it. Finally, you thought I was going to rush you, and you tensed up. That locked all your abilities up, considering you closed your eyes doing so. That short window of time gave me enormous amounts of opportunities," she says while hugging her arms close to her body.

"Thank you, Avery, for everything. You'll do great against Jakub, and I'm sure you'll take his place," I reassure her.

"Thank you," she smiles and slightly loosens her tenseness.

"I'll see you later, Miss Avery. Go home and get some rest, you'll have to be there too. After all the entire pack and alpha's all over the world will come to see this," I state weakly, not ready for what's going to happen in the morning.

Turning around and grabbing my shoes, I start towards the house. I'll have to clean these wounds before I go to bed, so they'll at least be almost healed by tomorrow.

"Goodnight, Prince Tristen, and good luck tomorrow," she calls out.

I'll need it. My father is a seasoned warrior, who's almost the same size as my wolf. I'm not going to lie, I'm nervous as hell.

"Goddess, help me now," I breathe.