10. Cory
10
CORY
I was starting to feel pretty tired by the end of Haven Selection—all the old books and dust were threatening to send me into an eternal slumber—but we had one more class before I got to rest, and it was the one I’d been dreading ever since Felix had mentioned it this morning: Combat.
I’d never been athletic, strong, or even particularly coordinated. I’d hated gym class, ever since we’d stopped using those little scooters to roll around and play crab-soccer—which was to say, ever since second grade.
It hadn’t helped that my dad had hated how skinny and short I was. He couldn’t believe he’d ended up with a kid with no athletic prowess, and he made sure I knew it. Even the bullies at school had been nicer than he was.
And now I had to do magical combat? I didn’t know what that involved, but I was sure I was going to suck at it. Which would be bad enough, but I had to suck at it in front of other people, too. Probably in front of Sean. Definitely in front of Ash and Felix.
What if I was so pathetic that they didn’t want to hang out with me anymore? And if that sounded like too whiny a concern, my second, much larger worry was that my complete incompetence would get back to Dean Mansur and make him reconsider whether I belonged here. I could get kicked out before I even learned how to control who—or what —I was.
Combat took place outside the mansion, in another building on Vesperwood’s grounds. We took a freshly-shoveled path through the woods to a long, low building with a terracotta roof and broad wooden doors. I could hear waves somewhere in the distance.
“Used to be the stables where the magician housed all the magical creatures he brought in from the far corners of the world,” Ash informed me.
“Or just where he kept his horses,” Felix said. “His regular, everyday horses.”
Ash gave him a disgusted look. “It’s like you want life to be boring.”
They kept bickering as we entered the building, but I wasn’t paying attention. I was too busy taking in what the stables had been turned into.
We stood at one end of a massive room. Wrought iron chandeliers hung from the ceiling in between great wooden crossbeams. The wood floor showed signs of recent polish. Any horse stalls that might once have existed were gone. The place looked like a cross between an ancient armory and a YMCA.
One wall was lined with what looked like props from a Renaissance Faire, only real. Halberds, spears, swords, and lances. Even a two-headed battleaxe that looked like it weighed more than I did.
The other wall was lined with mirrors and a ballet barre. I was struck by the deeply incongruous mental image of doing whatever mortal combat we were about to learn while wearing a pink tutu, and had to swallow my laugh when another student gave me a strange look.
There were blue wrestling mats scattered across the floor, a row of weights in one corner, and a climbing rope in another, none of which looked promising. I turned to my friends, wondering if I could feign a stomach ache to get out of this, and caught sight of Sean and his friends entering the gym. Sean raised an eyebrow at me when we made eye contact, and I looked away quickly, only for my eyes to creep back to him once he turned around.
As I watched, he walked over to the wall with the weapons and ran his hand along the edge of a long, straight sword with two very sharp-looking edges. Not only did he look like he knew how to use it, the way his fingertips caressed the metal was vaguely sexual.
So I wasn’t just going to make an ass out of myself in front of him and my friends, I was going to do it while turned on, too. Perfect.
My anxiety was rapidly turning my fake stomach ache into a real one. I looked back at the door we’d come through, wondering if I really should get out of here, when a voice cracked through the air behind me.
“Alright, everyone. Line up.”
Four words. Nothing special about them. But lightning shot through my body at the sound, and I turned in spite of myself, wishing I could hide.
The lumberjack from the Balsam Inn was standing behind me. Glaring.
He looked just as handsome—no, handsome wasn’t enough, he was hot —as he had that night, if not more so. Despite it being January and about twenty degrees outside, he wore a pair of black joggers and a tight black T-shirt that showed off the muscles of his arms and the outlines of his abs. He was cleanly shaven today, but that just accentuated the planes and angles of his face, making his chin even granite-ier, if that were possible.
And he was covered in knives. He had two strapped to his arms, two more hanging at his waist, and I suspected more I couldn’t see. He’d been wearing long sleeves at the Balsam Inn, but I wondered if he’d had them on then, too. Why did the thought turn me on?
He wasn’t glaring at me directly, at least. I just needed to get out of the room without him noticing. Without him seeing me and remembering how I’d looked in the bathroom, disheveled and desperate. Without him remembering how I’d acted , staring and drooling and coming from a simple question.
No way. I couldn’t handle that. It wasn’t enough to get out of the room, I needed to leave Vesperwood entirely if the lumberjack was a professor here. I couldn’t deal with seeing him regularly, with him knowing my weakness.
I began backing away as the group of students around me formed some semblance of a line. Ash looked over his shoulder questioningly, and Felix motioned with his hand for me to step in between them.
I shook my head and kept backing up, one step after another, willing my legs to work faster. Ash stared at me like I’d lost my mind, and Felix looked worried, his hand working overtime.
“You are aware of what a line is, aren’t you? Or do you all need to go back to kindergarten and work on your shapes?” the lumberjack barked.
As the remaining students straggled into a line, I turned and ran for the door. I only made it three steps before his voice cracked through the room once more.
“Someone’s too good for us, I see. Turn around, everyone. We’ve got a master martial artist here. No need for the basics of hand-to-hand combat, if he’s already leaving class.”
My stomach sank. I knew I should just keep going. Run and run and never look back. But his voice was like a magnet.
Not just his voice. His whole being. I could feel his presence behind me, and I was pretty sure I could tell you the exact distance between our bodies down to the last millimeter.
I turned around.
The entire class was staring at me, but I barely noticed them. My attention was on the lumberjack’s face.
It was hard to say what I saw, exactly. Surprise, first—the tiniest widening of his eyes. But that was gone so fast I thought maybe I’d imagined it. It was followed by the hint of a lip curl, and his body stiffening, like he wanted to take a step back, but self-control was stopping him. Disgust , whispered the voice in the back of my head.
But in the blink of an eye, that was gone too, replaced by a nostril flare, and his brows knitting together. Anger. There was no mistaking that.
And then, nothing. It was like a portcullis smashed down in front of his face, sending his features back to stillness.
It was all over before anyone else had a chance to notice.
“Would you care to share your skills with the class?” the lumberjack said. You would never have known from his tone that he recognized me at all. “Perhaps come up here and teach the lesson that you’re so convinced you don’t need to attend?”
His face was so blank, his posture so rigid, that I wondered if maybe that was just his default setting. He didn’t look like the kind of guy who relaxed easily. It was hard to even picture him sitting down.
He was waiting for a response, I realized with a jolt. And now everyone was watching me, and I was going to make a fool of myself before class had even officially begun. Fan-fucking-tastic.
“Uh, no. Sir.” I added the honorific, uncertain if it was necessary but figuring it couldn’t hurt. “I wasn’t—I don’t—I’m not an expert. At all. I just wasn’t, uh, feeling…”
I trailed off, not quite able to mention my by-now-very-real stomach ache. I had a feeling the lumberjack wouldn’t care. I jogged forward, joining Ash and Felix in line.
“Sorry,” I said when I realized he was still staring at me. What more did he expect me to say? Sorry I watched you dominate some guy in a public restroom and fantasized about you doing the same thing to me last night? “Sorry, I didn’t—I mean, it won’t happen again.”
After a long moment, he nodded, as if he expected nothing less. “See that it doesn’t.”
With that, he scanned the rest of the line and began to explain a confusing set of instructions regarding the moves we’d be practicing that day. At least he didn’t make me introduce myself again. With my luck, I’d forget my own name and make an even bigger ass of myself.
Hi, I’m an idiot, and horrified by how much I’d like to suck your cock .
“What’s up?” Ash whispered as the lumberjack continued to talk. “You okay?”
“Yeah,” I said faintly, trying to keep up with the instructions. Most of them made no sense to me, but I didn’t need to get yelled at a second time for not listening. “Just, uh, wondered if I could find a bathroom here.”
“Far end of the room, through the door on the right, then down the hall on the left,” Felix said with an encouraging smile. “But I wouldn’t try to go until the second half of class. Professor Braverman hates it when people miss the beginning of lessons.”
“Professor Braverman,” I said under my breath. So that was his name. Still hard to match that to the guy who’d told me to get on my knees in a public restroom.
“You can just call him Noah,” Ash said. “Everyone else does.”
“Not to his face,” Felix said.
Noah .
I rolled the name around on my tongue, tasting the edges of it. Noah . It fit him, I decided. Not that I’d ever tell him that. I was still hoping that magic would turn out to involve time machines, and I’d be able to go back and undo this whole day.
That wish only got stronger after we were broken into pairs and arranged around the mats to practice the day’s moves. Ash and Felix began arguing about who should partner with me, but before they could decide, the lumberjack’s voice cut through the din around us.
“Sean. Come on up. You can partner with our expert over here. It sounds like he could use a challenge, and you’re always talking about how this class is too easy.”
My stomach plummeted to roughly the center of the earth. I looked over at the lumberjack— Noah, his name is Noah —and Sean, who had joined him. Sean was smiling that predatory smile again, while Noah remained expressionless.
With a final glance back at my friends—Ash mouthed a silent sorry at me, and Felix winced in sympathy—I walked over to meet Noah and Sean, my body leaden. At least no one else was looking at me now, busy as they were with their own exercises.
No one else except Noah.
“I’m sorry,” I said when I reached him. “I wasn’t trying to say I knew the lesson and didn’t need to be here. I swear, I don’t know anything . I just—”
“I’m sure if there’s something you don’t know, Sean will be happy to help you.”
It was the kind of thing you were supposed to say with a smile, but there was no trace of one on Noah’s face.
The smile on Sean’s face only grew. “More than happy, Professor Braverman.”
“Excellent.” Noah took a step back, his eyes flicking between me and Sean. “Well?”
“Wait, you want us to—I mean—while you’re—now?”
I stumbled over my tongue, feeling like an idiot. Worse, I knew that feeling would only intensify, once I had to practice hand-to-hand combat with a guy who’d threatened to murder me at lunch, in front of a man who’d seen me jerking off in a men’s room.
I looked across the mat at Sean, who seemed to take that as a sign that I was ready to go, because the next thing I knew, he was advancing, one hand raised, the other waist-level. There was a quick jab, and a wrench of my arm, and suddenly I was on my back, the wind knocked out of me. Sean’s body straddled mine, one knee on either side of my thighs, his face inches from my own.
His mouth parted, and his tongue flicked between his teeth like he was tasting the air, catching the scent of prey. I wasn’t thrilled about the way his pupils had dilated, or the way his eyes pinned me to the mat as strongly as his arms did.
Sean looked up at Noah. “Not much of a challenge, sir.”
“You’re lucky. If he were at all competent, you’d actually have to answer for your sloppy form,” Noah replied, his voice as expressionless as his face.
Sean’s gaze hardened, and as he lifted himself off of me, his smile turned to a scowl. He held out a hand, but when I took it, he jerked me to my feet like he was attempting to pull my arm out of its socket. Noah was still watching us, arms folded over his chest.
“Again,” he commanded.
I took three steps back, breathing deeply. Sean set his feet in the starting position. I looked up, and again, he began moving the second our eyes met.
I tried to remember the defensive stance Noah had demonstrated at the beginning of class, but it was no use. I’d barely shifted my weight before Sean was on me again. If anything, I went down faster this time.
Once again, Sean straddled me, our faces uncomfortably close. I could see a tiny scar at the corner of his mouth, and I was getting way too familiar with how pink his lips were.
Don’t think about his lips , I scolded myself. Don’t think about anything on his body . But it was hard. Literally. Sean might be an asshole, but asshole appeared to be something I was attracted to. Or at least, part of me was.
I shifted, willing my rapidly stiffening cock to calm down, because if there could only be one situation in which it wasn’t helpful to get turned on, it was right now. Noah was still watching us, for Christ’s sake. I couldn’t imagine a more embarrassing situation.
“You call that a takedown?” Noah barked. “Look at your elbows. Look at your feet. Anyone with a modicum of ability could see how off-balance you are. Are you trying to demonstrate all the ways to do this wrong?”
Sean’s scowl grew deeper.
“Again,” Noah said.
This time, Sean didn’t offer me a hand up. I was grateful for the break in physical contact. My saving grace was that while asshole seemed to do it for me, kicked in the ribs by a horse didn’t, and that was how I felt right now. My cock calmed down a little as I turned my attention to the various aches and pains in the rest of my body.
I stood slowly, brushing my hands off on my pants, and tried not to breathe too deeply and bother my ribs. I looked at Sean. This time I managed to get my arms raised before he advanced, though they were nowhere close to the position Noah had demonstrated, and they offered as much resistance as toothpicks. Within seconds, I was down again, Sean’s body pressed against mine.
“Were you listening at all when I was talking?” Noah snapped. “At this point, you’re no better than the new kid. Which is saying something, considering his atrocious performance. Again.”
Sean’s gaze got harder and harder, as did my falls to the ground. By the seventh go-round, I was trying to decide which part of me would give out first: my ribs, or my right arm, which was growing disturbingly numb from all the times it had been wrenched.
“Again,” Noah said, glaring at Sean. “If you can’t manage this, I don’t know how you think you’re going to earn the right to a sword. I wouldn’t trust you with a pair of safety scissors.”
“Fuck. You.” Sean jumped to his feet, his chest heaving. “This hand-to-hand bullshit is useless. Witches can just spellcast, and Hunters have our own abilities, plus bonded weaponry. When the time comes for a fight, we’re not going to be playing around with whatever off-brand karate this is.”
When , I noted. Not if the time came for a fight, but when . He assumed it was a given.
“And you can’t imagine a single situation in which a witch might be unable to cast? In which a Hunter could be incapacitated in battle, losing their precious weapon?” Noah’s voice was cold and measured. “It’s the fights you don’t prepare for that you lose. The enemy you’re sure you can take who beats you. Complacency breeds weakness, and weakness is death.”
Neither of them seemed to remember I existed, down there on the mat. I rolled onto my side, then wobbled to my feet. I felt light-headed. Mostly from the punishment my body had taken, but it didn’t help that Noah was staring at Sean like he wanted to rip him in half—and he’d never looked hotter.
God, I didn’t want to be turned on by this. Not by men, not by angry men, not by men who so clearly thought I was worthless. I needed to get out of here. Surely by now I’d been thrown to the ground enough that I’d earned the right to go to the bathroom.
“Could I, um—” I began, but Noah cut me off.
“Now do it again.”
Sean’s eyes flashed, full of rage, but he didn’t talk back. Instead, he transferred that glare to me as he squared up. He looked like he wanted to kill me—or possibly Noah, and I was just the acceptable replacement target. It hardly mattered. I knew what I was in for either way.
Except I didn’t, because the next time Sean advanced, he feinted right, then came at me from the left, which wasn’t what we’d practiced at all. This time, he flipped me down onto my stomach and put a boot on the back of my neck.
All the breath left my lungs. All I could feel was heat, and a dry, rasping sensation that felt like thirst, until I realized I wasn’t thirsty, I was running out of air. Sean’s boot was compressing my trachea. I tried to catch his eye, but all I could see from underneath his boot was the sweaty blue surface of the mat.
Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. I hated being pinned down like this, on my stomach, unable to fight back. I beat my limbs futilely, trying to struggle free, but he wouldn’t budge.
Panic surged through me. Didn’t Sean realize he was choking me? Didn’t he care? Every cell in my body was straining for air, and my vision was starting to go dark around the edges.
I was going to die here, right in the middle of class, because Sean was taking his anger out on me, and the instructor hated me too much to stop it. I was going to die. I was going to—
“That’s enough!” Noah yelled, and suddenly the weight on my neck was gone.
I stared in shock as Noah pulled Sean off me. Not content just to separate us, he put Sean on the ground too, pinning his arms behind his back and holding his legs down with one of his knees. Then he used his free hand to press two fingers into Sean’s neck in a way that made his eyes bulge out of his head.
“You never use a hold like that on another student without instruction. You never deviate from the lesson without permission. The point of this course is to teach you how to keep from killing yourselves, not to act out petty vendettas. If you can’t follow orders, you’re out of my class and out of this school.”
Sean’s eyes glittered with anger, but they weren’t focused on Noah. They were locked on me.
It suddenly seemed like a good time for me to leave, permission or not. The rest of the class had stopped practicing by now and were all staring at Sean. Noah didn’t even seem aware of my existence.
I pushed to my feet, taking one step away, then another. When Noah didn’t react, I turned and ran through the door Felix had pointed out earlier. I saw another door labeled Restroom at the end of the hall, wrenched it open, and collapsed against it once I made it inside.
I was still struggling to breathe. I’d been pinned before, which was unnerving enough, but I’d never been choked. Never even played with a plastic bag over my head as a kid. What Sean had just done was legitimately terrifying—maybe even more than those tenelkiri creatures who’d come after me.
They might be trying to hurt me—Dean Mansur seemed sure of that, anyway—but at least they looked like the monsters they were. Sean, on the other hand, looked human. Was human. And he’d wanted to kill me just the same.
Unless I was overreacting? Maybe he was just mad. Maybe he hadn’t realized how much he was cutting off my air. Maybe it was an accident.
Then again, you don’t put your boot on someone’s neck if you’re trying to help them breathe.
I pushed away from the door and crossed to the sink. I put a hand on the back of my neck. I was pretty sure I could feel the imprint of his boot. I twisted, trying to catch a glimpse of it in the mirror.
I was still peering over my shoulder when the door opened and Sean stormed in.