The Iron Circle finals arrived on Day Three with the weight of expectation pressing down from every everyone.

I'd won every match leading up to this. Not cleanly. Not easily. But consistently. Through strategy, patience, and the specific advantage of being consistently underestimated.

My final opponent was a Solas senior—tall, broad-shouldered, the kind of alpha who had never had to work for anything because his body was already built to dominate. He looked at me across the arena floor with ...