“Okay, Timbuktu, that’s enough. Drop and give me five hundred pushups. Then we’ll see who the weakling is. I’m totally killing it at this training thing.” ~Jen
“Duck and roll!” Jen yelled for the tenth time, or maybe it was the fiftieth. She’d lost count. And the little twerp still didn’t duck or roll. Instead, Titus hit the mat on his back with a resounding thud. In his wolf form, Gavril stood over the boy, his lips pulled back in a ridiculous-looking canine grin while his tongue lolled out, reminding Jen of a puppy.
“He’s too fast.” Titus laughed when Gavril stuck his cold nose against the boy’s neck.
“No.” Jen shook her head and rested her hands on her hips. “You’re too slow.”
“Same thing.” Titus huffed.
Jen swiped a hand through the air. “Completely different things.”
“How so?” Sally sat in a chair along the edge of the sparring room.
Jen glanced at her friend. “Nobody asked you, healer. Give me a break. I’m working on a wing and a prayer.”
“I don’t think that’s how the saying goes.” Titus rolled to his feet. Gavril stepped back and sat down on his haunches. Even sitting, he towered over the boy.
“I’m not paying you to think,” Jen said.
“You’re not paying me at all, Aunt Jen. Wait.” Titus tapped his chin. “Can I get paid for this? I mean, I’m training to do a job, right?”
“Tell you what, Ticktock.” Jen walked over to him and bopped his nose. “You manage to pin me to the ground one time, and I’ll pay you.”
Titus’s face lit up, and he held out his hand. “You’re on, Aunt Juniper.”
“Bloody hell,” Jen muttered.
“Language,” Sally growled.
“I’m teaching him what not to say.”
Sally shook her head. “Let’s use positive reinforcement instead and teach him what he should say.”
Jen stared at her for a moment and then scrunched up her face. “That sounds completely boring, and I don’t want to.”
Gavril made a sound that was as close to a laugh as a wolf could manage.
“And you sound super mature. Whose idea was it for you to train my kid?” Sally glanced around as if she was actually looking for someone.
“Our alpha female,” Jen reminded her. “If you don’t like it, take it up with Red.” She turned her attention back to Titus. “All right, you and me,” Jen shook out her arms and legs and then got down into a crouched position. “Let’s do this.”
Gavril moved out of the sparring circle and off to the side. Then he flopped down onto his side like a graceless cat and blew out a breath.
Titus started moving in a slow circle, his short frame even shorter as he, too, crouched into a fighting stance. One foot over the other, he stepped, his eyes constantly moving over Jen’s form.
“Watch my torso and ignore everything else,” she told him. “Whichever way my belly button moves is the direction my body is going to go.” After several more seconds of circling one another, Jen spun on her heel, turning her back briefly until she made a 180-degree turn and ended up behind her opponent. Just as she went to grab him, he dropped to the ground and rolled backward through her legs. “Oh, now you duck and roll?”
She turned to look at him, but he was already moving. Titus whipped out one of his own small legs, attempting to take Jen’s feet out from underneath her. Had he been a little bigger and weighed a hundred pounds more, it might have worked. As it was, he would have just left a bruise on her leg. But just before his foot made contact, Jen reached down and clamped a hand on his little ankle. She jerked him up by the leg and started dragging him across the mat on his back. He wiggled and jerked, but Jen’s grip was sure. “What do you do now, Trip? How do you get away?”
Titus pulled himself around until his body nearly wrapped around Jen’s feet.
“Ow! Bloody—”
“Language!” Sally yelled, cutting off Jen’s words.
Jen looked down to see Titus’s teeth sunk into her ankle. She growled, trying to shake the boy loose. “Your turd-head son has latched himself onto my leg like it’s a drumstick, and you’re worried about me teaching him words he’s heard me say a hundred times?”
“It’s the principle of the matter.”
