Chapter 19
Over the next week, I fall into a painful routine.
Every morning, I wake up pressed against Aurelia, having somehow shifted toward her in the night.
I fight my every instinct, forcing myself to climb out of bed while trying not to wake her.
Then, I leave the tent as fast as possible so Aurelia won’t notice how achingly hard I am just from being close to her.
At first, shifting and running for a couple of miles is enough to straighten out my thoughts and make my body calm down, but after a few days that doesn’t work anymore.
I try jumping in an ice-cold creek, but when even that can’t completely clear my head, I finally give in and jerk myself off before returning to the camp as if nothing happened.
Usually, by the time I get back, I find Aurelia awake, either eating breakfast or talking to her squirrel as if he understands her. She’ll say good morning, apparently not caring at all where I’ve been, and then we go out to the practice field with the rest of the camp.
Once the other wolves notice how good Aurelia is with a sword—when she wants to be, that is—they stop looking at her with so much hostility, and their gazes become more curious.
Unfortunately, that means that some of them want to spar with her, and I grind my teeth all afternoon as I wrestle with the insane urge to kill anyone who touches her.
Finally, it’s time to return to camp where the torture only gets worse. We go to dinner and sit with either Kai or Luka while putting on the show of being mated, before it’s time to return to our tent and silently fall asleep next to each other so we can do it all again the next day.
Before long, there’s only two weeks left until the full moon and Aurelia’s birthday when we’re supposed to travel to the castle with Kai and the others.
I keep hoping that Aurelia might change her mind about wanting to go, but she doesn’t bring it up at all.
She hasn’t mentioned a single thing to me about her mother or the supposed sister she never knew anything about, so I have no idea what she’s thinking, and it doesn’t seem like the kind of thing we should discuss by passing notes in our silent tent.
I keep thinking I should find a way to ask her about it anyway, but then I become distracted by the rest of our painful daily routine and can’t find time to get the words out.
Somewhere in the back of my head I know that my entire day has shifted to center around Aurelia, as have my every waking thought—and apparently, some of the sleeping thoughts as well. I know my fixation isn’t safe for her, but more and more I catch myself finding new ways of justifying it:
This is only temporary.
What’s one more week?
Of course I can’t stop thinking about her, she’s with me every second of the day.
After next week, we’ll go back to Vernallis, and then everything will go back to normal.
I still can’t give her “more” as she put it, but maybe after this ludicrous test run she won’t want “more” anyway… And, if perhaps sometimes thinking about that makes my vision black out with rage, then that’s my problem to handle.
I’ll handle it next week.
It’s late morning and the sun glints off Aurelia’s blade as she dances backwards, avoiding a thrust from her sparring partner.
She’s winning the match, but she looks ridiculous while doing it.
Her hair is tied back in two loose braids, and she’s wearing a frilly skirt of all things, cut short enough to show off several inches of thigh above her knees.
My sword hangs forgotten at my side as Luka circles me, his third unanswered attack leaving him huffing with impatience. I catch myself tracking a bead of sweat sliding down Aurelia’s neck, the way her feet pivot in the dirt, how she tosses her hair from her eyes with a quick jerk of her chin.
Luka’s practice blade catches me hard across the ribs, and a growl of pain escapes my lips before I can stop it. I whip around, scowling, and glare at him, even though I know it was my fault for not paying attention.
“Sorry, I thought you’d block it,” he says, smirking before his eyes shift over my shoulder.
“She must be good if you’re fucking her every night and still can’t focus on—ow!
” He yelps when the flat of my blade cracks against his temple and gives me a reproachful look as he rubs the side of his head. “Just saying what everyone’s thinking.”
I lower my sword, jaw clenched. I hate to admit it, but he’s right. I’m more distracted than I can remember being in a long time, and the worst part is, the feeling is all too familiar.
This is like those early days training Aurelia, when I’d spend hours watching her, growing more and more restless, but unable to do anything about the heat building under my skin.
That was fucking torture.
I couldn’t tell back then if she was doing things on purpose to get my attention, or if I was so focused on her that I was reading too much into everything.
She would stare at me with this wide-eyed look that I could swear was saying “come get me.” But since she never said it out loud, I didn’t know for sure if she was even aware of what she was doing.
Later, after she started coming to my room, it got easier. We could train all day and then she’d come to my room at night and relieve all the tension.
But now? Now I’m back to drowning in all that tension with no relief in sight. And somehow, knowing exactly what I’m missing makes the ache that much worse.
Like she can feel me watching her, Aurelia suddenly pivots and glances over at me before she swings her sword around and catches her opponent in the stomach. The woman grunts and puts up a hand to signal that she needs a break. Aurelia beams and reaches out her hand toward the other woman.
As she bends to help her opponent up, Aurelia’s hair falls forward and I can see the pale bite mark on her throat.
My stomach rises with excitement, then plummets again as a wave of guilt hits me.
The mark is fading. I didn’t know many mated shifters growing up, but I saw the marks on some of the older wolves and somehow I assumed that they were done once and that was it. I didn’t realize that they would fade, and were being placed on the skin over and over again.
Only a few days ago, Aurelia’s mark was a deeper shade of pink, but now it’s turning light brown. Soon it will be gone completely.
I need to tell her we have to redo it, but I’m honestly not sure if my self-control is good enough right now to have my mouth anywhere on her, especially when she keeps giving me that wide-eyed look again, and now I know exactly what it means.
Frustrated with my inability to focus, Luka runs off to find another partner.
I don’t care, as now I’m occupied by watching Aurelia sparring with a new partner.
This time, she’s fighting a tall male wolf, and even though I know I’m being irrational, I have to bite back a growl every time he gets anywhere near her.
Aurelia probably isn’t aware of it, but her opponent definitely is. He’s a mid-level dominant wolf, and my constant growling is getting to him.
Over the top of Aurelia’s head, my gaze catches on another familiar figure at the edge of the training field. It’s Gunnar, the skinny teenager who fired too early against the wyvern and nearly got Kai killed.
I wave him over to me and he startles, then jogs around Aurelia and her sparring partner to reach me. “M-morning.”
“How are you holding up?”
Gunnar’s shoulders tense, but he forces a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Fine.”
I frown. “Why aren’t you training?”
“No reason. I just wanted to watch.”
Bullshit. Probably the others are giving him a hard time because everyone has heard now that it’s his fault Kai got burned.
Kai made a full recovery and is even out on the field today, so it’s time for the others to get the fuck over it.
At the very least, his family should be bringing him back into the fold.
“Who are your parents?” I ask.
“Uh, I don’t think you would have known them. They both died a few years ago.”
“Do you have siblings?”
He shakes his head. “I had three brothers, but…” he trails off. “And I have a sister, but her hunting party was supposed to come back a month ago, so…”
Fuck. Dead parents, three dead brothers, and a sister we both know is also long dead.
If I didn’t already feel bad for this kid, I would now.
Fuck, at one point, I was this kid. The only difference between me at fourteen and Gunnar, is I’d realized I was going to have to train hard if I didn’t want to die too.
For some reason, he hasn’t grasped that yet.
I gesture toward the practice swords. “Want to spar?”
Gunnar’s shoulders straighten, and I watch his face light up. “Really? With you?”
I almost say yes, but then I have a better idea. “Not with me. With her.” I point to Aurelia, whose back is turned to us as she cleans her sword. The male she was fighting seems to have gotten frustrated and stormed off. Good.
Gunnar’s eyes widen, and he looks, if possible, even more nervous than before. “You want me to practice with her?”
“Yes.”
“Isn’t she your mate?”
“Yes.”
It’s the best idea I’ve had all week. Aurelia wants to participate, but I can’t seem to keep myself from panicking every time she faces off against anyone.
It’s irrational—I know how well trained she is because I trained her myself—but the wolves are better fighters than the soldiers back in Vernallis, and I can’t deal with the idea of her getting hurt.
Gunnar is perfect, though. He’s not going to hurt her, and the sparring will actually help him.
“What if I accidentally hurt her?” he stammers, only confirming my opinion that this is a great idea.
I snort with real amusement and clap him on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, you won’t.”
I have a harder time convincing Aurelia than Gunnar. She crosses her arms over her chest, lips pressed into a thin line. She eyes Gunnar’s lanky frame skeptically. “He’s just a kid.”