She dragged her eyes from the toxic screen to his face. His expression was granite, but his eyes weren’t accusatory. They were… resolved.
“Mistakes are footholds for the enemy,” he said, his voice cutting through her spiraling thoughts. “But they’re also information for us. You know that. He’s told us two things. He’s coming, and he’s arrogant. We can use both.”
The rational part of her brain latched onto the tactic, the strategist rising through the fear. He was right. Bracken had just handed them a data point. But the emotional scar tissue throbbed at the sight of his words, at the casual, threatening ownership in them.
She set the phone down on a weight bench. “He wants me scared. He wants me to feel isolated.”
“Are you?” Korrak asked, not moving from his spot in the center of the mat.
Winslet looked at him—the Alpha standing in his domain, having just spent an hour forging her into something harder and sharper. She looked at the discarded phone, the symbol of her past vulnerability.
A new resolve settled over her. “No,” she said, the word firm. “I’m not. And I’m not done training.” She walked back towardhim, her green eyes meeting his blue ones without flinching. “Show me how to make an arrogant man regret his choices.”
Korrak’s teaching shifted from foundational drills to targeted violence. He became a relentless, moving opponent.
“He’ll come in high, expecting you to cower,” Korrak stated, his voice a flat instructor’s tone. He lunged, simulating a grab for her throat. “Don’t meet force with force. Redirect it.”
He guided her through the disarming pivot, his large hands manipulating her limbs with clinical precision. Her body learned the mechanics: step into the attack, not away; use his momentum against him; a sharp twist of the wrists could break a hold. When she executed it correctly, spinning him with a surprising leverage that made him grunt in approval, a fierce joy sparked in her chest.
Then came the strikes. “You won’t knock him out, but you can make him rethink his life choices,” Korrak said, holding up a thick leather pad. “Aim through the target. Not at it.”
She threw a punch, channeling all her frustration—at Bracken, at Viktor, at her own past fear—into the motion. The impact jolted up her arm, a satisfying, solid burn. She followed with a kick, her boot connecting with the pad he’d dropped to his side.
“Again. Your shoulder is dropping. You’re protecting it, which telegraphs the move.”
Another hour later, fatigue was a deep ache in her muscles, a tremor in her thighs, but adrenaline was a potent countermeasure. She pushed past it, driven by the sharp clarity in his ice-blue gaze. This was a different kind of conversation. Each successful block, each landed strike, was a sentence in a language they were building together.
Finally, he stepped back, lowering the pad. “Enough. Your body needs to remember the lessons, not just endure the pain.”
Winslet braced her hands on her knees, drawing in ragged gulps of air. She wiped the sweat from her brow with the back of her wrist, her gaze lifting to find him.
Korrak had leaned back against a heavy rack of weights, his arms crossed over his chest, just watching her. His expression was an unreadable mask of Alpha intensity, but the heat in his eyes was unmistakable.
The mate bond was a palpable hum in the charged air between them, a magnetic pull she felt in her very core. Her body ached, her mind was a riot of triumph and vulnerability, but one truth rose above the noise. She wanted this man. Not just his protection. But the bond, the future, the terrifying, beautiful permanence of it.
She watched as he moved to stow the equipment, his actions methodical and efficient. There was a precision to him, a powerful, contained grace that reminded her why she felt safe even when the world was hostile. Here was a man who didn’t lose control, who wielded his strength with purpose.
He finished and turned to her. “Ready to go inside?” he asked, his voice a low rumble that vibrated in her bones.
Winslet straightened, meeting his gaze. The wordyeswas on her tongue, simple and ready. But in her mind, it expanded, filled with the weight of everything she was too breathless to say.
Yes, I’m ready to go inside. Yes, I’m ready to stop running. Yes, I’m ready for you.
“Yes,” she said aloud, the single syllable loaded with a promise she hoped he could hear.
SIXTEEN
KORRAK
The Arctic wind sliced across the open ground between the outbuilding and his cabin, carrying crystals of snow that stung like thrown glass. Korrak’s boots crunched through the packed snow, each step deliberate and sure, but his attention wasn’t on the treacherous footing. It was on the woman walking beside him.
Winslet moved with a different cadence now—looser and more confident. The rigid tension that had defined her posture for days had melted into something fluid and dangerous. Her breathing created small puffs of vapor in the frigid air, and he could smell the salt of honest sweat beneath the sharp bite of winter.
Two hours.
That’s all it had taken to watch her transform from prey to predator.
His polar bear growled with approval deep in his chest at watching their mate discover her own lethal potential. She’d absorbed every lesson with a hunger that matched his own, her body learning the language of violence with an intuitive grace that made his pulse hammer.
