She fell seven times in the first hour.
Each time, she pushed herself up and started again without being asked. Snow clung to her clothing, her hair, her face.Her cheeks had gone red with cold and exertion, her lips chapped from the wind. She looked miserable and exhausted and absolutely radiant with determination.
Stop looking at her.
He forced his gaze away, studying the tree line instead. There hadn’t been any major storms since she arrived but the temperature had remained below freezing and the pass would remain blocked for days yet. Days of sharing the cabin with her. Days of training her. Days of standing close enough to touch while his beast clawed at its restraints.
“Is this right?”
He turned back to find her frozen in mid-step, her weight balanced awkwardly between her front and back foot. It wasn’t right—nothing about her form was right—but she’d managed to stop the pattern at the exact moment of transition he’d demonstrated, showing that she’d been paying attention to the details rather than just mimicking his movements.
“Your back heel should be off the ground. You’re flat-footed.”
She adjusted, lifting her heel. Her calf muscle flexed beneath the loose fabric of her trousers, defined despite her general lack of strength. She’d have good form eventually, he realized. Once she built the muscle to support it.
“Better.” He found himself moving closer again, pulled by an instinct he didn’t want to examine. “When you shift forward, lead with your hip, not your foot. The power comes from here.”
He placed his hand on her hip to demonstrate, intending only to guide the motion.
Her breath caught.
The sound was quiet, barely audible even to his enhanced hearing, but it shot through him like lightning. His palm registered the curve of her body beneath her clothing, the warmth of her skin bleeding through the layers of fabric. His fingers curled slightly, almost involuntarily, pressing against the jut of bone at the top of her thigh.
She didn’t pull away.
His beast surged forward, flooding his senses with her scent—that maddening combination of sweetness and warmth that had been tormenting him since the moment he’d pulled her from the pod. His body reacted without his permission, his blood heating and flowing south as he imagined her arching into his touch as she gasped that same breathless sound…
Move away,some rational part of his brain screamed.
But he couldn’t.
“Like this?” Her voice came out breathless as well, low and husky.
He cleared his throat, forced himself to remember he was supposed to be teaching her, not… whatever he was doing. “Yes. But keep your core tight. Don’t lean. The movement should be controlled, not falling into position.”
Her body tensed beneath his hand as she tried to follow his instructions. He could feel the effort she was making, the concentration in the set of her shoulders.
“Relax your shoulders,” he said, his own shoulders tight. “Tension locks your movement.”
“Easier said than done.” She gave a short, humorless laugh. “You’re touching me. My body seems to think it should do something about that.”
The honesty of her statement—so different from Lysara’s manipulative games—knocked him off balance. He dropped his hand as if he’d been burned and stepped back, putting a safe distance between them.
“Finish the pattern,” he said roughly.
Her eyes widened as she looked up at him, but he couldn’t read her expression.
“You—” His voice came out gravelly with suppressed desire. “You understand the movement. Practice it.”
He turned and walked away before he could do something stupid. Something they’d both regret.
He spent the rest of the afternoon demonstrating from a distance, keeping three meters between them at all times. He focused on technique, on form, on the mechanics of movement, and refused to acknowledge the way her eyes kept finding his, or the way he could feel her awareness of him across the small clearing like a physical touch.
By the end of the day, she could execute three of the five basic patterns without falling. Not perfectly—her movements were jerky, her balance precarious—but she could do them.
“We’ll stop here,” he said when she stumbled for the fifth time in as many minutes.
“I can keep going,” she insisted, though she was breathing hard and her limbs were trembling with exhaustion.
