Who is Magpie?
Chapter 40- A Challenge

Outside a small audience had already gathered around the bare patched area used for sparring. Except for the counsel and Fiona, everyone gawked and stared at the approaching prison cyans, knowing it could only be one person. She stood at the edge of the opposite side of where Wallace was preparing himself.

He took off his shirt and shoes, tossing them onto the ground. Jessamine noticed that despite his age he still had defined muscle structures, and he stretched them out like he thought this would be a lesson in respect for more than just her. Ezekiel stopped beside her and her hand snaked around to the small of his back.

Reaching towards his ear she whispered. “I get winner.” When he looked at her she continued with a long growl to her voice. “You decide what that looks like.”

He hadn’t needed motivation before, but with this he was already stripping off his shirt and shoes as he walked in, dropping his pants just as he passed Jessamine to flash her his ass before shifting. As much as her personality had filled in to align with how she really felt, she was not accustomed to seeing naked males and immediately flushed so brightly that Bronx had laughed.

“That good eh?” He questioned, and she punched him in the hip.

“We are not that close,” she muttered.

“Awe, even after the tea-spiracy?” He replied sarcastically, hands together pleadingly.

“You didn’t end up having to, Tidas did, you just had to hold your tongue for five minutes and agree. Who knows if you would have followed through,” she replied with an air of stubbornness.

Ezekiel heard their conversation but got hung up on her appreciation of his ass until Wallace moved forward. The older man was more bashful, remaining in his boxers until shifting shredded them off. Both men pawed at the ground, testing the waters for the others reaction, and the crowd erupted in to cheers and growls.

Jessamine’s wolf was elated, not only at seeing her mate, a dark, nearly black, brown wolf that stood as large as a horse, but at the prospect of seeing him fight. For a reason the females could not describe fully to anyone else, both the woman and wolf believed that their critique of this ability was absolutely necessary in confirming their mate.

Wallace leapt first, looking to knock Ezekiel over with his back paw as he landed and slid next to him, but Ezekiel swiped his paw out, knocking him away. As Ezekiel moved back to place himself head on, Wallace lunged again. This time landing short and swiping, but again Ezekiel bat him away.

This pattern continued, Wallace lashing out and swiping, Ezekiel batting him away and shifting his feet. It felt like a parent teaching a cub a lesson. Ezekiel was putting out barely any energy while Wallace was huffing and puffing.

At the next lunge when Ezekiel moved to bat his paw away a spray of dirt showered into his eyes, blinding him. Wallace used this to swipe with his other paw, cutting Ezekiel across the shoulder and chest. Growls whipped around from Ezekiel’s side and cheers from those behind Wallace, making it clear to Jessamine that there were no rules against this in a challenge.

Her wolf seemed to swell up within her, carrying her forward as snarls whipped through her lips. Arms wrapped around her waist, holding her back, and she tried to force them off as the fight continued.

She turned back to see Bronx, barely looking at her as he watched his Alpha and then he winced at the same time Ezekiel growled. She turned quickly back to the fight, catching Wallace straightening up after being batt across the side of his head with a large paw.

Jessamine couldn’t stop her desire to go to him as the smell of his blood still drifted in the air. Just as it had begun before, her shoulders seemed to roll forward as her limbs seemed to extend, bones cracking painfully into place. She whimpered, a quick high sound that she regretted instantly as it pulled Ezekiel’s attention.

Wallace used the chance to lunge and sink his teeth into his neck. Ezekiel whined, but he didn’t even finish the sound before snarls ripped through his teeth. He bashed the side of Wallace’s face with a clawed paw, raking him from cheek to nose. The pain made him let go and while he was recoiling Ezekiel was already pouncing on him. He was swiping left and right with his paws, alternating between using his claws and just his pads, as the wolf on his back tried to block him and strike back.

Wallace managed to wriggle free, backing up only a few meters before Ezekiel was on his back, sinking his teeth into the back of his neck like he was nothing but a pup. Wallace dropped down on one leg, but Ezekiel continued to twist his collar until the man was down on his belly. Giving one more twist to attempt to free himself and failing, he whimpered, lying his head on the ground in submission.

Ezekiel held onto him for another moment, for whatever they were saying to each other in their wolf forms, no one else was privy to. When they did separate, Wallace’s wife approached with a robe, laying it over his shrinking for like it were a puddle of a man. Not waiting for him to stand, she stalked back off toward the house, soon followed by his barely covered bleeding body, off to the medical bay for a check, but the bite in the back of his neck was a clear reminder of the loss.

Jessamine rushed to Ezekiel quickly, invading the cleared area that no one else dared cross. She ran up as he rose to two legs and jumped on him, arms wrapping around his neck and legs around his waist, nearly knocking him back to the ground. Her cheek brushed up against his as she held him closely, and her hips unintentionally ground up against his as she tried to get a tighter grip.

“You keep moving like that and their will be a second, a lot less decent, wrestling match happening here,” he whispered in her ear.

When she realized what she had been doing she dropped to the ground, standing in front of him with her face burning red. Though, she was only embarrassed because it had been unintentional, now, in front of him, she blatantly rolled her eyes up and down him. He stood watching her, as Bronx brought over his pants, like they were the only two there.

Bronx tapped him twice with the pants, but he didn’t break his stare with Jessamine. “Put on your pants you bloody jay bird.” Bronx smacked the pants against Ezekiel’s chest, but it was the words that made Jessamine jump.

Ezekiel put his pants on before moving to wrap his arms around her. “It’s nothing, it’s stupid…- Bluejay was basically my keeper more often than not,” she whispered quickly, embarrassed that something so minutely similar had made her feel like she was back there. “But you’re injured…”

He shrugged. “They will heal. Won’t even scar.”

She jabbed two fingers into the side of his ribs hard enough to make him flinch. “I told you to keep dirt out of your eyes.”

He chuckled. “That you did.” Kissing the top of her head like they had been together forever. “You whimpered,” he remembered and then glared at his brother. “Was Bronx mean to you?”

She shook her head, but Bronx answered first. “She tried to shift,” he informed.

Ezekiel gave her an understanding look but she tried to ignore it. “So what do you want to do?”

Without hesitation she uttered, “burn these prison cyans.” She looked around at all those who stared at her, and though she knew it wasn’t so much the fault of the clothes, she also hated them.

Before he could stop her she was revealing that when she had torn the bottom half of her pants off to hold the cuffs on, she had turned the pants into shorts to wear underneath. She dropped the pants and the shirt to the ground, standing in her black clothes once more that now smelt like the soap from her sink. She eyed both men expectantly, and then gestured toward the pile.

“I’m not kidding. I’d honestly rather burn the clothes I came in with, but seeing as I’m not walking around looking like an inmate, I pick those.” Jessamine waited for another second before the men erupted into laughter and she took matters into her own hands.

The pin hidden in her hair contained a reusable match, and she struck it against the rough edge before touching it to the cyan fabric. The cheap material caught flame, also catching the attention of those that had stayed behind after the counsel left. Jessamine imagined that she wasn’t completely through dealing with them, but for now she was outside and the fresh air blew through her long hair, pushing it into her face.

When asked later why she did it, she would claim it was just time for a change. But the minor inconvenience of her hair tickling her nose, after everything that had happened in such a short time from her time in the garden with Kay until then, left her wanting to be violent. With no one worth stabbing, she opened one of her pins from her waist band revealing a blade and cut two feet off her hair, dropping it into her small dwindling fire.

Ezekiel rubbed her arm as he pulled her in closer, a sombreness quieting the laughs from moments ago. “How do you feel?”

She smiled. “Lighter.”