“it’s been six hours”
“the sexual tension olympics are going great btw”
Chapter Seven
January 31
Luka
The arena tightenedaround me as the week wore on.
Nothing visible had changed. The same corridors looped through the complex in clean geometric lines. Everything operated exactly as it had three days ago.
Yet pressure pressed harder against my skin now, subtle but relentless, and I felt it everywhere—in the split second before elements, in the silence between conversations, in the exhausting effort required to keep my concentration pinned exactly where it belonged.
Training. Review. Reset. Repeat.
It should have been enough.
It wasn’t.
Mila didn’t comment on it, but then she rarely did. If she noticed a shift, she adjusted to it rather than naming it.
We ran the program cleanly. Every element landed where it should. The timing held. The structure remained intact.
The problem was how much effort it took.
By the time we finished, I felt it in places that usually took care of themselves—the transitions, the moments between elements where focus should have settled automatically.
Every lapse led back to the same place.
Dean Foster.
Kvrat.
I was twenty-four years old. This should not have been happening.
“Luka.”
I snapped my attention back to where it should have been.
Mila pushed away from me. “I’m going to take a break.”
What?
I straightened, staring at her. “Now?”
She checked the clock above the boards before answering. “I need to be somewhere.”
That phrasing alone unsettled me. Mila never spoke vaguely unless she was deliberately avoiding specifics.
“You are leaving the session.”
“I said I’m taking a break.” Her jaw tightened on the correction.
I studied her face, searching for context she clearly had no intention of giving me.
“More important than this?”
