Wyatt stripped to his undershirt. He rolled his shoulders and settled into a combat stance that was textbook precise.
I mirrored him. Loose, easy, the stance Solomon had drilled into me two centuries ago but worn down to instinct.
The first exchange was fast. Wyatt jabbed, I slipped left, caught his wrist, redirected. He recovered and swept at my lead leg. I hopped it and countered with a palm strike he blocked with his forearm.
“Not bad,” I said.
“Patronizing a human in front of his colleagues.” Wyatt circled. “Bold move.”
“I prefer confident.”
He came in harder on the second exchange. Combination punches, tight form, no wasted movement. One caught my shoulder and the impact was real even at human-calibrated strength. Reese whistled. The newer converts cheered.
I grinned. Shifted my weight and answered with a three-hit sequence that backed him up four steps before he found his footing.
The third round was where Wyatt adapted. He’d been reading my patterns and on the next engagement he feinted left, shot for my waist, and got me into a clinch.
For a human, the man was phenomenal. My wolf respected it but also wanted to establish dominance over any male within a hundred yards of Mira.
I broke the clinch, swept his ankle, and put him on his back in the dirt. The camp went quiet for half a second before Reese started clapping.
Wyatt stared up at me from the ground. “You said human strength.”
“That was human strength,” I offered my hand. “Mostly.”
He took it with a grudging laugh and pulled himself up. His eyes caught a figure over my shoulder and the laugh softened into an expression I recognized because I wore it myself every time she entered a room.
I turned.
Mira stood at the clearing. She must have come through the drainage route while we were sparring because her boots were caked with tunnel mud and her jacket was zipped over the bump she’d stopped being able to hide.
She was watching me.
And the look on her face was the one she kept locked behind walls and armor.
Then she caught me looking and the walls slammed back. She crossed the clearing toward Farmon’s station, asking about medicine schedules, all business.
But I’d seen it.
I found her an hour later at the stream. Alone. Sitting on the same fallen log where she’d scratched behind my ears in wolf form and told me she’d missed me.
The echo of that moment lived in the bark, in the water, in the space between us that had been shrinking for days.
“Hey,” she said without turning. She always knew when it was me. The bond or the scent or the fact that I was constitutionally incapable of approaching anyone quietly.
“Hey yourself.” I sat beside her. Close enough that my thigh pressed against hers. “You watched me fight.”
“You were showing off. There’s a difference.”
“You had a look on your face.”
“I had a normal face on my face.”
“Love.” The endearment landed between us with its full history. “You had the look.”
Her jaw tightened. The precursor to vulnerability she was trying to suppress.
“I’m scared,” she said. Quiet enough that the stream almost swallowed it.
