She froze, her entire body going still. I saw the war in her eyes. The deep, instinctual suspicion of a trap warring with the desperate, undeniable need for what I was offering. A weapon. A fight. A chance to feel like a wolf again, if only for an hour.
The need won. “Fine,” she said, her voice tight with a mixture of excitement and hostility. “But if I draw blood, you can’t have me executed for it.”
A true, deep laugh rumbled in my chest. “Kael, if you manage to draw blood on me with a blunted practice sword, I will not have you executed. I will have you made a captain.”
Her lips twitched, the barest hint of a smile. It was like watching the sun try to break through a storm cloud.
The main training ring of the stronghold was a wide, circular pit of packed sand, surrounded by weapon racks and a low wooden fence where off-duty warriors often gathered to watch, gamble, and pass judgment. When I entered with a small, red-haired human woman at my heels, the usual chatter diedinstantly. Every eye in the place fixed on us. I ignored them.
“Choose your weapon,” I said to her.
She scanned the racks, her eyes passing over the heavy Orcish cleavers and axes. Her gaze settled on a pair of blunted short swords, the kind our youngbloods used to learn their forms. They were still heavy by human standards, but they were tools that prized speed over brute force. She picked one up, testing its weight, its balance. She settled into a low, familiar fighting stance, and I saw a ghost of the soldier in the mud, a flicker of the fire I so desperately missed.
I did not choose a weapon. It would not be a fair fight. My hands were weapons enough.
“Ready?” I asked.
Her only answer was a blur of motion.
She came at me fast, a whirlwind of controlled aggression. It was a beautiful thing to watch. She didn’t try to match my strength—she knew that was a fool’s game. She was water, flowing around me, looking for a crack in my defense. The blunted sword was an extension of her arm, a steel serpent that darted in, aiming for my knees, my ribs, the back of my thigh.
I parried her blows with my leather-bound forearms, the impacts thudding with a satisfying rhythm. I was a mountain, and she was the relentless storm lashing against my slopes. The warriors watching started to murmur, their tone shifting from mockery to grudging respect. She was impossibly small, almost a child by Orcish standards, yet she fought with the skill and ferocity of a seasoned veteran.
“You’re slow, General,” she taunted, breathing hard as she danced back out of my reach.
“I am patient, human,” I grunted back, a grin tugging at my own lips. This was life. This was the fire I had seen in her. “Patience is a weapon the young rarely master.”
I let her wear herself down for a few more minutes, enjoying the dance, the sheer spectacle of her. The way her muscles coiled in her back, the flush that crept up her neck, the absolute, murderous focus in her eyes. My admiration was a hot, heavy thing in my chest, a feeling so potent it almost distracted me.Almost.
I decided it was time to end the lesson.
The next time she lunged, aiming a low thrust at my leg, I did not block. I moved with her, letting theblade skim past my hip as my hand shot out and clamped around her sword wrist.
Her momentum came to a dead, shocking stop. Her eyes widened. The dance was over.
I twisted my wrist, and the sword clattered to the sand, the sound loud in the suddenly silent ring. Before she could recover, my other arm snaked around her waist, and I hauled her against me, lifting her clean off her feet. She let out a choked gasp, a sound of pure shock.
The contact was a lightning strike. Her back was pressed against my chest, her body so small, so slight against mine. I could feel the frantic, rabbit-quick beat of her heart against my arm. Her scent—honey and iron, now amplified by the salt of her sweat—filled my lungs, flooding my senses, short-circuiting every rational thought in my head.
She did not freeze. She exploded. She writhed in my grip, a feral thing, kicking her boots against my shins, driving her elbow back into my ribs. The blows were nothing, like a bird beating its wings against a stone wall, but the spirit of them, the sheer, untamed fury, stoked the fire in my blood to a raging inferno.
“Let me go, you bastard!” she snarled, her voice a raw thing.
A low growl rumbled in my chest, a sound I did not consciously make. “Make me.”
This was no longer a spar. This was something else. Something older.
I tightened my grip and used my leg to sweep hers out from under her. We went down into the sand together, me in control, turning in the fall so I landed on top, bracketing her body with my knees, her arms pinned to the ground above her head by one of my hands. My other hand rested on the sand by her head. She was trapped. Utterly, completely trapped beneath me.
And the world stopped.
All the sound, all the motion, faded to nothing. There was only the feeling of her beneath me. The fragile strength of her bones under my weight. The frantic rise and fall of her chest against mine. I could feel every line of her wiry, muscular body, a perfect, maddening fit against my own. The sand was cool on my elbows, but she was a furnace of heat beneath me.
Her face was inches from mine, flushed and beautiful in her rage. Her stormy eyes were blownwide, a tempest of fury and something else, something deeper that looked terrifyingly like fear. Her short, red hair was a chaotic halo in the sand, strands of it stuck to her sweaty temples. Her lips were parted as she gasped for breath, and the unholy, overwhelming urge to crush my mouth down on hers, to taste her defiance, was so powerful it was a physical pain.
The General was gone. The strategist was gone. There was only the male, the beast, its claws dug deep into my soul, roaring a single, deafening word.
Mine.
