Chapter 26
HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON… TO FIGHT YOU
ALICE
Ori hasn’t been to training.
He stopped coming after I ran into him at the bagel shop. One miss, fine. Two skips, sure, maybe he’s exceptionally busy with wedding season. But five?
Given we’re pressed for time, every second counts. We meet every morning, except for recovery days or like this weekend, when Steph and Erica visited, so it’s a slap in the face on his part to no show with no notice.
The only benefit of him not coming is I feel less embarrassed when I lose against Jessa.
It’s different than fencing, a combination of swordplay and hand to hand combat, and the practice weapon she’s given me is bulkier than the sabre I used to wield in high school, so it’s taken some getting used to.
But the basic principles of reading your opponent are the same, and I’ve progressed farther than Jessa thought I would by now.
I’d be lying if her proud smile and murmured praise hadn’t turned me on from the beginning. But ever since the other night with Harley, my body’s been a live wire, and shocks zap my nervous system every time she gets close.
And she gets close during training. It’s some twisted version of foreplay.
“Good footwork,” Jessa says as I dodge one of her swings.
My heart flutters in my chest at the compliment, but then she switches up her movements in a way I can’t anticipate. I’m knocked onto my ass, and I grunt at the impact. I’ve quickly learned that grass doesn’t soften your fall like you think it will.
She offers me a hand. “You’re decent at dodging a human, but you’ll have to move faster than that if you don’t want to get swiped by a dragon claw.”
I’m simmering with annoyance as Jessa pulls me to my feet—not at her, but at him. The beast that I’m putting in the work to help. The beast whose crown I’m going to win. And he can’t even show up and pretend to care?
“How am I supposed to know how fast a dragon can fight if I don’t ever train against one?” I huff.
Jessa hums knowingly. “Let’s take a break.”
I lay on my back, my annoyance subsiding as my heart rate settles. My hands slip through the slightly waxy blades of grass at my side, and I mindlessly rip some from their roots, letting them float away in the wind.
Jessa’s water sloshes in her bottle, and the faint metal clanging fills the air between us as she drinks and reseals the cap.
I close my eyes, and summer sounds take over my brain; birds chirp in their trees, wind rustles the leaves, and the eerie tune of an ice cream truck passes through the neighborhood.
“He’s stubborn,” Jessa finally says.
I lift my head and crack open one eye, careful to look only at her and not at the sun.
“Who?” I ask, even though I know.
“Almost as stubborn as you,” Jessa says, shaking her head. “Ori.” She heaves a sigh through her nose. “You know anything about why he might be acting up again?”
I chew the inside of my cheek. I may not have told her or Harley about our run in the day after my anniversary. I had gone out to grab us all breakfast as a thank you, after Harley fell back asleep in my studio while I painted through the early morning hours.
“I saw him at Strathmore the other day,” I say slowly. “We… talked.”
“You talked.”
“Yeah?”
“You don’t sound sure about that, Trouble.”
I frown as I sit up. “Don’t use that nickname in such a scolding manner.”
“Why not?” Jessa taunts, a lopsided smirk cutting a dimple into one cheek. “You do something bad, Trouble?”
I shrug. “We talked.”
“About what?”
“About things,” I mumble. “About him.” She raises one black brow, egging me on. “About what happened the day I left.”
She sighs. “Well, that explains the past week, at least.”
Jessa runs a hand over the slicked-back part of her ponytail, avoiding messing up her surprisingly sweat-free bangs, and pulls the long swath of hair over her shoulder. Her fingers toy with the red and black ends.
“You two will keep on clashing unless we come to some kind of understanding,” she mutters, as if pondering things through. “We need to force his hand. Make him admit he cares enough to help you.”
I scoff. “He clearly doesn’t care.”
“I beg to differ. Might not be in the way any of us think he should care, but he does. You have to remember that he’s meant to work with you,” she says, rubbing at her chest, right over her heart.
“You don’t understand what it’s like having a beast inside of you.
They make everything more intense. And when they’re upset, they make you do irrational, stupid things. ”
“That seems more like an excuse than an explanation,” I argue. “We’re all adults. He should be able to talk it through if he has an issue.”
“You can view it however you want, but I know he’s only acting this way because he doesn’t want to get hurt again,” she says.
Now that, I can relate to. How many of the military friends I’d gained over the years had I pushed away because I didn’t want to be reminded of the hurt? Too many.
I tie a blade of grass into a knot instead of answering.
“I have an idea on how to force his hand though,” Jessa says, a devilish crinkle forming at the corner of her amber eyes. “Do you trust me, Alice?”
I eye her suspiciously. “Yes.”
“Wanna play a game?”
I wasn’t expecting for Jessa to take me to Arcadia, but here we are, at the familiar edge of the flower-filled Meadow.
“Are you going to explain how being here helps us get Ori to train with me?” A bit of snark is laced in my tone, and Jessa shakes her head at it.
“You know about Spanish bull fighting?” she asks. “I learned about it in the early years of scouring the human internet after we moved to Meadowbrook.”
“Not really…” I murmur.
Jessa starts to pace in a circle around me, eyeing me up and down as if I’m her next meal. I haven’t gotten to see her in Arcadia before, but there’s a predatory grace to her here that was missing minutes ago, across realms.
“I’ll summarize. There’s three main parts of the fight. First, you release a bull into a ring and you test him. You know, the whole waving a red cape image?” Jessa says. “You study his movements. It makes him less dangerous when you know how he reacts to stimuli.”
I spin in a circle, tracking Jessa. The hair on my neck rises; the simple action of her walking fills me with nerves—the good kind.
“Then, you tire him out. You poke him where it hurts. You weaken him and his resolve, until he doesn’t want to fight anymore,” Jessa continues. “Essentially, you break him of his stubborn nature.”
She stops and scans the woods behind me. Her pupils dilate, then narrow into slits, and I blink hard, thinking I’m imagining it.
But I’m not. Her eyes have shifted.
“Jessa…” I murmur.
“The third part of it is twofold: you show your skill in maneuvering the bull around the ring, controlling it. And then you go in for the kill. Of course, we’re not going to kill Ori.
But I do plan to murder this attitude he’s developed.
” Jessa steps forward, and I instinctively take a step back. She smiles. “You trust me, right?”
“I do,” I say. “You having to ask me a second time in fifteen minutes makes me a bit concerned though…”
“We’re going to taunt him, babe,” she says, closing the distance between us. Her thumb and pointer grip my chin, gently tilting my head up. “And you’re going to be the red flag.”
I blink up at her, still not fully getting it.
Her thumb slides along my bottom lip, and my pulse skips as her nail digs into the flesh, tugging it down.
“I’m going to give you a head start of one minute,” she whispers.
My muscles tense, anticipation thickening the air like humidity.
“A head start,” I repeat.
“Mhm.”
“Because…” Her hand glides along my jaw, anchoring at my nape. The touch is distracting in the best way, although it makes it hard to focus on understanding. I glance around the clearing, starting to put some of the pieces together. “Because we’re going to play a game?”
“Yep.”
“I thought you don’t play games,” I say, hushed.
“Not pesky emotional ones. But sometimes I enjoy playing with my food before I eat it.”
“And I’m the food?”
“For me. For him you’re the red flag.”
“Tracking,” I drawl. “So, I should think of this as an evasion exercise.”
“Sure. But, if you wanted to get caught I wouldn’t complain,” she teases. “We still haven’t talked about you sneaking off with Harley the other night. You’re allowed to do that, don’t get me wrong, but I’m jealous. He got to taste what I’m desperate to sink my teeth into.”
My tongue turns to cotton in my mouth, and I swallow around nothing but arousal at the dangerous, silky tone of her voice.
Okay, this is really happening.
Jessa’s about to chase me through magical woods, and that will also somehow help us get Ori back to training.
Honestly, in the grand scheme of crazy, it isn’t the most outrageous ask.
“If you hate this, tell me, and I’ll stop,” Jessa says, leveling with me. “I want you to want it.”
I take mental stock of my body. Gooseflesh? Risen. Heartbeat? Pounding. Underwear? Definitely damp.
Yeah, I think I want it. New kink officially unlocked.
I inch away, and Jessa’s hand falls from my nape. She watches as I slowly walk backwards, and a beaming grin grows with every foot I put between us.
“Run, Trouble.”
When I spun on my heel and sprinted into the woods, I didn’t think through two very important things.
One: Jessa knows these woods. Like, she could probably draw the trails from memory if you slapped a sheet of paper and a pen in front of her. Without making a mistake. No white-out necessary.
Two: Jessa said she could shift into a big cat. And by big cat, she meant a giant white tiger.
I’m going to pass out—I don’t think humans were made to sprint for this long—but I’m also incredibly turned on.
It’s clear she’s toying with me. Letting me stumble off the clear path and trip over roots and bushes. Letting me fall and get back up. Letting me get away.