Quickly risking a glance his way, I’m sure my frustration is clear. “What is it you guys evendo? We going to rob a bank and I need to be able to sprint away?”
I have to turn my head to face forward before I fall, but I imagine his face matches the anger in his voice. “You’re too small to ever land a good punch; not against the sort of people we deal with. You need to be ready to run, Elyse.” My head whips back to him at the use of the nickname, not expecting it. “Because Julian’s set you up to fail, though I’m not sure why. When the time comes, you’re going to have to make a break for it.”
He sighs, looking suddenly hopeless. “And we’ll give you as much of a head start as possible before he sends us to hunt you down.”
Elyse’s pained cry has my hand clenching, kicking off from the wall to intervene. She manages to duck Mav’s next blow just before his fist could drive into her temple, but he swipes her legs out from under her in the next instant and she lands on her ass. He’s clearly holding back, far more so than I expected him to with how hard he’s been going out of his way to avoid her since they started training a week ago. He barely even joins us at dinner anymore.
“Is this really necessary?” I growl when he pins her on the mat so that she can’t get up.
Her arms are crossed over her chest and he holds them there easily with one hand, using the other to keep part of his weight from crushing her. Still, his body stretches over hers, straddling her waist to keep her legs pinned between his thighs.
I hate it, not just the way he’s all over her, but the defeated look in her amber eyes. She looks utterly helpless, knows that if Maverick were anyone else, this position could end very differently outside of these walls.
“Clearly,” Mav scoffs. He turns to face me, but doesn’t release her. “She’s going to get her ass handed to her out there.”
Grinding my teeth, I try not to spit the words, but fail. “She won’t be alone. She’ll be fine; we’ll just keep her close to one of us.” Something flashes in her eyes before she turns her face away from me and back on Mav, making me pause, not sure what I said to upset her.
“So you won’t be working like the rest of us, you’ll be babysitting Elyse, then?” Maverick taunts.
Before I can take another step in his direction, Elyse head-butts his face and he reels back with a curse, his nose gushing blood instantly. She doesn’t stop though. While her legs are pinned with Mav sitting back on his heels, pressing a hand to his face, he ends up releasing her arms. She doesn’t hesitate, going straight for the nut shot he left himself open to.
“Son of a bitch,” he curses, falling to the side on the mats with a huff. One hand clutches his face and the other his balls while Elyse scrambles away, anticipating his retaliation.
“Oh my god, I’m so sorry, I thought you’d block me!” Her face is pale minus the small spray of blood, full of regret and fear as she apologizes profusely.
I help haul her to her feet before taking half a step in front of her, expecting him to lash out for retribution. To her credit, she doesn’t just stand there in fear, instead darting out of the room, returning a few moments later with a couple of ice packs.
Warily, she inches closer, treating Maverick like a snake coiled and ready to strike. He sits up, and internally I sigh in relief when I catch the look in his eyes. Sure, he’s still clutching himself, but there’s a gleam of relief in them when he takes the first ice pack from her.
“You actually got me.” His tone is gruff, but amused. Despite how much he’s seemed to detest having to train her, he honestly sounds proud.
Elyse’s hand is still trembling, not knowing Mav as well as I do. “I never thought I’d actually hit you; you always block me.”
He shrugs a single shoulder. “I let Ev distract me, it’s my own fault. But you finally quit pulling your punches and holding back when trying to throw a punch, so bravo.”
A shaky laugh slips past her lips as she sits back on the mat. “Only because it was clear I couldn’t hit you even when Iwastrying.”
“This is good though,” I praise, and they both look up at me. “Because anyone that looks at her twice is going to dismiss her, not registering her as a threat. They’ll underestimate her, and she can use that to her advantage.” Elyse heads over to grab a towel, passing it to Maverick as the bleeding starts to slow.
He swipes off his face before adjusting the ice pack and tilting his head up. “Never expected her to kick someone’s ass. Goal’s just to get her first reaction to be to defend herself or avoid a hit rather than brace for oncoming blows,” he announces easily.
“Oh.” My brilliant statement leaves an awkward silence in its wake.
After finding out Julian put Maverick in charge of her training, I’ll admit, I was annoyed. He has a tendency to be far more brutal than necessary, and with his apparent disdain at having Elyse live here, it was like Julian was just asking for her to get hurt.
Fuck, that’s it.
I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner, but I’ll be the first to admit I’ve been distracted the last month or so where she’s concerned. I was so caught up with being annoyed at the extra workload thrown my way that I never stopped to look at things from an outside perspective.
Julian’s a selfish man, I’ve always known that. But he’s done enough good where we’re concerned over the years that it’s hard to remember how cruel he can actually be since we’re the ones always carrying out those sentences while his hands remain clean. He blurs the lines with guilt, deflecting away from his manipulations with even more. Nothing’s ever easy or clear where he’s concerned, but when enough time passes without an incident to remind me exactly who he is, it’s easy to delude myself into being grateful for all that he’s given me, the life he saved me from.
If it wasn’t for him, I’d have been left in that cell to rot.
“Shit, it’s because of the way Grave’s been acting, isn’t it?”
I know that my split attention will have been a factor, but ultimately, Julian King is a man that values himself above all of us. He wears his pride like a crown, and he’s always had an intensely jealous nature. Grave is his ultimate achievement, the weapon he cultivated from birth into being his golden ticket to the top.
But the last few weeks, Grave’s been behaving less erratically, something we’ve all noticed, but haven’t exactly hated the development. The way he decided to pull Elysium into the fold shocked the hell out of all of us, but seeing as he’s taken to being her shadow too? I can only imagine Julian doesn’t like playing second fiddle.
