And underneath the determination, underneath the warrior’s focus she’s wearing like armor, I can see what she’s trying to hide.
She feels it too.
The pull between us, the recognition that goes deeper than conscious thought. I watch the flush spread across her cheeks when our eyes meet, watch her breath quicken in ways that have nothing to do with exertion. Her body knows what her mind refuses to accept—that she was made for me, designed by ancient bloodlines and patient fate to be my perfect match.
I can smell her arousal beneath the sharp scent of her fear. Can see the way she fights her own responses, her jaw clenching every time her body betrays her. She doesn’t understand what’s happening to her, doesn’t know that the attraction she’s feeling is the first stirring of omega awakening.
She just knows that some part of her wants me, and she hates herself for it.
Perfect.
“Hannah Mitchell.” I let my voice roll across the arena, watching her shiver at the sound. “The protector of Ironhold. You’ve invoked the ancient right of trial by combat.”
“I have.” Her voice comes out steady, and I feel a flicker of admiration despite myself. Most challengers can barely speak by this point.
“You understand the terms?”
“I understand.”
“Then select your blade. The trial begins when you’re ready.”
She walks to the weapon rack with the careful movements of someone holding themselves together through sheer will. I watch her test several blades, noting the way her hands move—practiced, economical, the habits of someone who’s spent years learning to fight with whatever’s available. She selects a sword similar to the one she arrived with, tests its weight, finds it acceptable.
Then she turns to face me, blade raised, and settles into a fighting stance that tells me everything I need to know about how she learned her craft.
Self-taught. Adapted from necessity. Built for survival against opponents larger and stronger than herself.
She’s been fighting things that should have killed her for eight years, and she’s still here.
For the first time in four hundred years, I’m genuinely curious to see what happens next.
“I’m ready,” she says.
“Then begin.”
She attacks without hesitation.
Her blade comes at me in a sweeping arc that I deflect with my forearm, the steel ringing against skin that’s harder than any human metal. She doesn’t let the failed strike slow her—she’s already flowing into the next attack, using the momentum of my deflection to spin into a low cut aimed at my thigh.
I step back, letting it pass, and she follows. Strike after strike, each one probing for weakness, testing my defenses, looking for any opening she can exploit. Her footwork is unorthodox but effective, constant movement that keeps her unpredictable, never staying in one place long enough for me to pin her down.
She moves like water around stone. Like something that knows it can’t win through force, so it looks for cracks instead.
The crowd has gone quiet, watching with growing fascination as this human woman does something no other challenger has managed in living memory: she survives past thirty seconds. Past a minute. Past two.
She’s not winning—she can’t win, and we both know it. But she’s not losing either. She’sfighting, with a skill and determination that makes something long-dormant stir in my chest.
I haven’t felt this interested in a fight since the Frost Court general who made me bleed four hundred years ago.
“You’re holding back,” she says between strikes, her voice breathless but steady. “Fighting me with one hand tied behind your back.”
“I’m being courteous.” I block a combination that would have been deadly against a human opponent, noting the way she adapts mid-sequence when her initial approach fails. Clever. “You’ve earned that much by walking into this arena.”
“Courtesy.” She spits the word like a curse, her blade singing through the air toward my ribs. “Is that what you call toying with someone before you destroy them?”
“I call it respect.” I catch her blade on my palm—the edge bites into my skin but doesn’t draw blood, my flesh too hard for human steel to pierce without real force behind it. “You came here knowing you couldn’t win. Knowing the odds, the history, everything that should have sent you running. And you came anyway.”
“I came because three girls in my village would have been taken if I didn’t.”
