“That’s good.”
“It’sworse.” Nate paced two steps, then caught himself like he was remembering we were in a ring. “He just looked at me like—like I was something breakable and dangerous at the same time, and he said, ‘We’ll work on control.’”
I couldn’t help it. A sound escaped my throat—half-laugh, half-sigh. “Sounds like good advice.”
“Infuriating advice,” Nate said, then looked down at his hands like they didn’t belong to him anymore. “I don’t want to work on control. I want to be normal again.”
I raised the pads again, because if I let silence sit too long, grief always slid in like it owned the place. “Normal is overrated,” I said. “Hit.”
He hit harder this time. A jab-cross that snapped my arms back, not enough to hurt but enough to remind me there was something else inside him now. Power that didn’t ask permission.
“Again,” I said.
He moved, fast. Too fast.
Three punches in a burst—clean, controlled, and still, underneath it, restrained. Like he was fighting himself more than he was fighting me.
“You almost shifted yesterday,” I said between hits, because sometimes the only way to talk about things with Nate was sideways.
His eyes flashed. “Someone cut me off in traffic.”
I barked a laugh. “That’ll do it.”
“I’m serious.” He struck again, then stopped, breathing hard. “I had to pull over. Like—full-on hands shaking, hearing too much, smelling too much. I was one bad thought away from claws in the steering wheel.”
“In a parking lot?”
“Do you know how humiliating it is,” he said, voice pitched high with panic and humor and anger all tangled together, “to be doing breathing exercises next to a dumpster while a grandma in a Buick stares at you like you’re about to rob her?”
I lifted my eyebrows. “Were you about to rob her?”
“No.”
“Then you’re fine.”
Nate made a noise of pure teenage suffering even though he hadn’t been a teenager in years. “Evan says it’ll get easier.”
“Evan would know.”
Nate’s mouth softened at the name, then he immediately tried to cover it with sarcasm. “Yeah. Evan the Wolf Whisperer. Evan the Patient Saint. Evan who can look at me like I’m losing my mind and somehow make me feel like I’m still me.”
I held the pads steady and watched him. “That’s what you need.”
He swallowed, throat bobbing. “I know.”
We went another round. I forced him to push, but not break. Forced him to stop apologizing with every punch. His bodywanted to be stronger. His instincts wanted to be faster. The fear was what kept him small.
When I called time, we leaned on opposite ropes, breathing hard.
Nate wiped sweat off his brow with the back of his wrist and stared at the empty gym like it might explain itself if he stared long enough. “Gideon’s also got me doing… whatever the hellthatis,” he muttered.
“The forest stuff.”
“Yeah, the forest stuff.” He rolled his eyes, then the expression turned uneasy. “It’s not like Evan’s training. Evan’s practical. He’s like, ‘Here’s how you breathe. Here’s how you ground. Here’s how you shift without ripping your jeans.’”
I snorted. “Useful.”
“Gideon is like, ‘Stand in this creek and listen.’”
