The Almighty Dominance novel Chapter 718

The Rime Lynx hit the dirt on its side and didn't get back up, one paw twitching against the packed ground, out cold before its own keeper had finished registering what he'd just watched happen.

Dorian Vance stood frozen at the rail, mouth open, no sound coming out of it.

His vision actually swam for a second — a genuine, physical lurch, like the ground had shifted under a match he'd already spent in his head.

Fluke, he told himself, and didn't believe it even as the thought formed.

His Rime Lynx had trained under a licensed handler since it was a kit. It had never gone down in one exchange. Not once. Not to anything.

How, he thought, and had no second half to the sentence.

The breeder-woman at the rail had gone the color of old paper. "That's not—" she started, to no one, and didn't finish that either.

Grim didn't gloat. He didn't need to. He simply turned his head toward Dorian and held the look, calm and unhurried.

Behind Alex, the row of keepers who'd called this the easiest match on the board had gone very, very quiet, and stayed that way.

The judge took longer to find his voice than the fight had taken to end.

"The — " He cleared his throat and started again, pen hovering over his ledger like it might change what he'd just watched. "The Rime Lynx is unable to continue. Winner: the challenger."

Nobody cheered. Nobody said anything for a full three seconds, which on a betting yard was its own kind of verdict.

Then it all came apart at once.

"That's a hundred wins, gone. Just — gone." A man near the rail tore his betting slip in half without seeming to notice he'd done it.

"I had money on the Lynx," someone else said, flat, like he still expected the world to correct itself.

The breeder-woman finally finished her sentence from earlier, quieter this time, mostly to herself. "That's not a guard-line dog. I don't know what that is."

"New money," the old man muttered again, but there was nothing gloating left in it now. Just a man revising his own math out loud.

Monica didn't say you have no idea out loud this time. She didn't need to. Her face was doing it for her.

Dorian didn't move from the rail for a long moment, and when he finally did, it was toward Alex, not away from him.

"The gold," Alex said. "Two kilos."

"I don't—" Dorian's jaw worked. He had the look of a man doing arithmetic he badly wanted to come out differently. "I don't have that on me. Nobody carries that kind of weight to a yard match."

"Then you'll owe it."

"Fine. I'll owe it." Something in Dorian's voice tried, weakly, to sound like this was still a negotiation.

“No,” Alex said. “You write it down. I don’t trust spoken promises—only ink on paper, and a blood seal if it comes to that.”

The judge, already reading the direction of the conversation and glad for something official to occupy his hands, pulled a scrap of contract paper from the registration desk before anyone had to ask.

"Write there. Two kilos of gold, owed," Alex said, "or its worth in labor, on call, whenever I need it. No set date. No negotiating the terms once they're signed. You come when I call, and you keep coming until the debt's called even."

"That's not a debt, that slavery—"

“Then settle it in cash. Do you even have the money? The whole yard watched you push for this bet. Don’t stand there and tell me you can’t pay.”

“I…” Dorian cut himself off. His eyes moved to the crowd, then to his Rime Lynx still lying motionless in the dirt, and finally settled—longest of all—on Grim, who remained right beside Alex’s leg, staring at him without blinking.

Pride wouldn’t let him lose face in front of the entire crowd. He signed.

The judge witnessed it without comment, folded it once, and handed the paper to Alex like he was glad to be rid of it.

“Head to the Warden’s office. Your beast is registered now. You can collect the license form there.”

Processing Grim’s paperwork at the Warden’s office took half a day. According to Petrie, that was quick for a first registration.

“Guard-line hound, healed condition, no prior registration,” she read from her copy, tapping the entry. “Tier: Low.”

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