“Mira, you can barely hold a grapple for twenty minutes before your arms give out. Your veins are showing through your skin. That’s not a training load issue.”
“Then it’s a bad diet issue. Or a stress issue. Or a my-life-fell-apart-weeks-ago issue. Take your pick.”
Wyatt studied me. The quiet assessment of a man trained to read people, running it against the instinct of a man who might actually care.
“The fact that you’re keeping up at all in this condition is remarkable.” He said it without flattery, just honest evaluation. “Thiago’s right about one thing. You are a legacy.”
“Don’t tell anyone about this. The shaking, the nosebleed. Any of it.”
His jaw tightened. “Mira...”
“I mean it, Wyatt. Not Thiago. Not the clinic. Nobody.”
The reluctance was visible. He worked through it slowly, mouth pressed flat, before giving a single nod. “Fine. But if you collapse during a session, I’m carrying you to Elaine myself and you can be mad about it later.”
“Deal.”
We sat in the mud while the morning sun dried the puddle around us and the guards on the south wall pretended not to watch.
“Can I ask you a personal question?” I said.
“You can ask. I reserve the right to deflect.”
“How did you end up here?”
The pause was brief. He’d told this story before.
“Rogue wolf killed my parents when I was nine. I was at a friend’s house that night.” He pulled a blade of grass from the edge of the courtyard and wound it around his finger. “Foster care after that. Eight years. The Order found me, explained what really happened, gave me a choice.” He shrugged. “So I chose.”
His story sounded so similar to mine.
If Thiago hadn’t abandoned me. I’d have grown up inside these walls. Would have become exactly what my father wanted.
If three lycans had walked into my life would the girl raised inside this compound have felt the bond pull and followed it?
I didn’t have an answer.
“I’m sorry,” I said.
“Long time ago.” He stood, offered his hand. “Come on. Thirty minutes left.”
I took his hand and got out of the mud and carried the question with me through the rest of the session.
Thiago’s office smelled of coffee and the faint chemical undertone of whatever they used on the leather.
“Your grandmother had the same aptitude.”
Fourteen times. I’d started counting after the eighth because the repetition felt intentional.
“You have instincts that training can’t teach.” He set a file on the desk between us.
“Is that your way of saying I’m getting better at falling down?”
“It’s my way of saying you belong here, Mira.”
The words landed in a place I didn’t want them to reach.
Because the training did feel good. Discovering my body could do things, not feeling helpless anymore.
