“We will take our leave of you,” he announced with a formal bow, picking up the tray he’d set aside before he kissed me.
His eyes no longer burned green fire. His words no longer hissed.
Before I could protest again, he headed for the door, back stiff as if he hadn’t confessed to me like a character in a romance anime holo earlier.
He left me standing there in the middle of the Pleistocene Age, lips still warm from the best kiss of my life, watching my fated mate walk away with a breakfast tray. Frustrated beyond all belief. And no closer to getting to that door.
There Was A kiss?
Less than two hours later,Diarmuid came through our shared wall door.
I guessed I should call ithisdoor. He walked in at the same mid-morning “top of pause” every day, but I hadn’t been able to get the green rectangle back since that first time I’d stumbled into his office.
When I asked him about it on the second day, he’d said, “We fear you are too clever to be given access to our working quarters.”
Yet another clue that he had a job, an actual reason for being here on Earth. But so far, I hadn’t figured out what it was.
Diarmuid was especially brutal that day.
My new least-favorite exercise, wall sits, until my thighs shook. Agility sprints back and forth across the glen until I lost count. Then back to wall sits, because apparently the word of the day was MISERY—as in complete and utter. We jogged around the bog with him directly behind me, setting a blistering pace that meant he shoved into me like an eight-foot train whenever I dared to slow down.
Sparring was usually my least favorite part of training, but that day I let out a breath of relief when he finally called me overto the peaty and damp piece of land we used as a mat for falls when we sparred.
Well, I used it for a mat. So far, I hadn’t managed to so much as nick Diarmuid with my knife, much less take him off his feet as he often did to me.
But anything was better than endless drills. I got into the fighting stance he’d taught me: knife arm extended, blade angled upward, weight low, and back foot planted.
“Do not ever lunge. Control the burn of your frustration and anger. Wait for your opening to attack our underbelly, where we are most vulnerable.”I’d been given the instructions so many times, his voice played like a Pavlovian recording as soon as I adjusted my body.
And he got into position a few meters away from me so he’d have enough room to shift—or, as he called it, unshell. But not before he got in one last dig. “Your temper burns especially bright this training. Attempt to stay on your feet more than a few sun ticks by not letting it get the better of you.”
This guy…
I lowered my knife.
“Question: are you being three poop emojis in a row today because of the kiss?”
He froze, his head tilting to the side.
“There was a kiss?”
I squinted. Was he eggplanting with me? Sometimes he goaded me because he claimed learning to regulate my temper was a drill of its own.
He could just be baiting me.
If so, it was working.
“You know good and well there was a kiss!” I growled back with my wolf in my throat. “A good one. Don’t act like it wasn’t memorable. I don’t…”
The rage that had sent my mother running to Scotland when she believed I’d killed my birth father threatened to spike. To take over, like it did that day at the lake with Naomi. The moment that started all of this.
Rule number one…Kiwi reminded me.
“I don’t like it,” I told him, struggling to keep my voice level.
His face fell. Then reset to a block of ice.
“That kiss should not have happened. It was…” His mouth twisted into a disapproving frown. “Unwise.”
