19
It was a bad sign.
I shouldn’t be surprised, since every day in this castle has been infuriating at best and excruciatingly painful at worst, but lying on my back in the middle of a damp field with a thunderstorm waterboarding me while Katerina Aston threatens to slit my throat with her claw was not on my list of expectations for today.
The redhead grins a perfectly porcelain smile, her lips painted red and not even a little bit smudged. She licks her teeth, emphasizing that her fangs have yet to drop. Not mine though. One pierces through my lower lip while the other refuses to transform. I growl, and she laughs.
“Pretty submissive for someone so special ,” she teases, her hair tickling my collarbone as she tightens her hold on my neck and squeezes.
Fuck.
No one pays attention. No one hears the stuttering of my heart or my shallow breaths.
The rest of the class has paired off into half a dozen sparring sessions while Instructor Shepherd speaks to Calix on the side of the field.
Every so often, Calix’s gaze flicks to me.
But if he notices that I’m dying, he says nothing.
Sweat drenches my forehead, mixes with the rain, and runs into my eyes.
I blink through the searing pain. Refuse to choke on my weakness and fear.
Instead, I thrash wildly. Side to side. Up and down.
There has to be a way to dislodge her. Her thighs clench around my stomach; her body presses hard into mine.
Imprisoning my arms against my sides. The more I fight, the tighter she coils around me.
Rides my struggle as if she’s swimming along a lazy current instead of battling a riptide.
“Get. Off,” I hiss through clenched teeth.
“Do it yourself.” Katerina throws her hair over her shoulder and bares down, closer to my face now. I contemplate spitting on her, or maybe even biting her. But that would be ridiculous. I just need to regain control of my limbs. I need to free my arms.
If only Instructor Shepherd had taught me how to do so—had taught me how to do anything before forcing the entire class into tight spandex and pairing us with someone of our corresponding size and stature.
God, I hate it here.
Katerina might be my exact height and shape—a little curvier on top than I could ever hope to be—but she weighs more than six tons of bricks. And she has the iron grip of a freaking cyborg.
“K-Katerina…” I stutter as my windpipe begins to collapse. “Can’t breathe.”
“Combat,” she murmurs, “and conquest.”
With that, she bites my nose. Just. Like. That. She rips off the tip and spits it onto the ground with a mouthful of blood. I stare at her in shock, in disbelief as she throws back her head with another evil cackle, and scarlet dribbles down the corners of her mouth.
It smells like death.
I scream.
Immediately, the sounds of fighting cease.
Instructor Shepherd shouts and hurries toward us, followed by my peers.
All of them. Katerina leaps off me with ease, smirking as she drags the blood off her mouth with her finger and then sucks it clean.
“You know,” she says as I clutch my nose in my hand, “you still look better than you did on the beach. Red does wonders for your complexion.”
Somehow, she’s telling the truth. And I loathe that I know that, even as I sit up and try futilely to stop blood from spurting from the gouged appendage.
I feel that soothing compression around my heart in conjunction with the searing pain of my nose, and I wish they would stop. Both of them. Forever.
The beach.
Red drips between my fingers and onto wet grass. Red clouds my vision. I’m losing control again. I’m going to kill her. No no no —my bones begin to shudder. My knuckles crack. Claws rip through my left hand. My other fang finally protrudes.
But just as I take a running leap at her pretty face, someone hooks an arm around my stomach and drags me against them.
“Play fair, darling,” Sin breathes in my ear. “We’re sparring in our human forms today.”
“She bit off my nose !” I buck in his grasp, but he holds me firm. Anchors me to his side. But he can’t keep me close if I slip away from him. And I can slip away if I finish fully transforming.
The idea hits me with the sudden onslaught of a downpour. Freedom and punishment at the same time. I home in on Katerina’s face. Her glowing yellow eyes. Her pert, freckled nose.
I’ll eat that first. Then I’ll devour the rest.
I just need to transform. Need to know how —
“A little help,” Sin says, sounding far calmer than his pulse. A rapid thumpthumpthump beats into my shoulder. He’s too late, though. She has to pay. They all have to pay—
Calix wrenches me into his chest and grabs the back of my neck roughly before my bones can further crack, forcing it up so I have to meet his eyes. Almost instantly, my bones cease breaking. Remend themselves with loud snaps .
I growl, but he doesn’t remove his gaze.
Just stares, his eyes boring into mine. His heart rate is steadier.
Thump. He breathes. Thump. Exhales. His touch hardens with each passing second, as though he’s afraid at any moment I’m going to win this fight.
That I’m going to transform and slaughter my way through this class of far stronger wolves.
His touch hardens as though he actually believes I could.
Ridiculous.
“You’re too unpracticed to be out here with the rest of us,” he says instead, his tone dark and accusatory.
Maybe his special gift is that he’s a mind reader.
I don’t speak. I don’t want to admit that he’s right.
So I keep staring, refusing to look away first. I watch the muscles tick in his jaw, his gaze drop to my chest. At first, I wonder if he’s admiring the cropped spandex they’ve stuffed me into, but then his mouth twitches.
Not smiling—of course not. He’s mouthing numbers.
He’s tracking my breaths. My heart rate.
I snarl, but it doesn’t burst from the pit of rage in my chest like usual. “Let go of me.”
His eyes narrow in challenge. “Make me.”
My heartbeat falters. “Excuse me?”
“This is a combat class, so show me how you’d combat someone like me.” His breath flutters across my face. “You want to fight? Let’s fight.”
I try to yank myself from his grasp, but he doesn’t relent.
He’s more than six tons. He’s a solid wall.
He’s the very fortress we’re standing beside.
He’s the thunder throttling the ground and the lightning striking the sea.
“I don’t know how to fight,” I spit, my chest flushing even as it heaves.
“Is that what you want to hear? I don’t know how to fight. I don’t know how to win.”
This isn’t like volleyball at all. I’m not dealing with recorded strengths and weaknesses. These are werewolves. Impossibly fast. Unnaturally strong. And they’ve spent their entire lives honing their skills. They’ve had years to transform and wrestle and spar. I haven’t even had days.
The realization—the scent of my own musky fear—turns my legs into noodles. I sag in Calix’s grasp, but he doesn’t support me. He releases me with a look of disgust.
“You’re not weak because of your physical strength,” he says.
“You’re weak because of your mind.” He shakes his head.
“I was using pressure points. Werewolves have two on the back of their necks. If you catch them in time, applying a rigid amount of extreme pressure will make it so even the strongest of werewolves are unable to transition. It calms us, eases our pulse. Makes us more pliable.”
He speaks as if talking to a child, and I hate it. Hate him.
With his hands off my neck, I think about swinging a fist at his face.
Instructor Shepherd seems to sense the impending explosion, so he steps between us with an authoritative voice befitting his seven-foot-tall bodybuilder stature.
“That’s enough, Calix.” Amber eyes gleam bright against youthful brown skin.
He doesn’t look a day older than twenty-five.
“If you’re not going to spar, go sharpen the swords and rapiers. ”
I wait for Calix to argue or maybe even glower, but he simply shakes his head again and stalks off to the corner of the open field that houses a small portico.
Rain splatters fat droplets onto a stone arch that shelters racks of weapons and a single wrought iron bench.
He snatches up a fallen sword and brings it to a stone wheel.
When he glances up next, it’s not to glare at the instructor. It’s to glare at me.
As if this is my fault. Any of it.
I lift my head to the skies and sigh. The same rain beats down on me, soaks through the raven-black spandex of our sparring uniforms. It tastes…
sweet. Much sweeter than rain back home, like a memory from childhood I’d almost forgotten.
Like I imagined Celeste’s pies would taste if she’d made them out of sugar instead of mud.
I duck my head at the thought, glancing down at the holes and rips in my uniform.
Up the sides. Down the sleeves. Even across my thighs from where I’d begun to transform.
My emotions fade gradually as I examine the damage, as the rain washes blood from between my fingers.
Not only am I the weakest here, but I’m also the most disheveled.
It shouldn’t matter under the circumstances, but it somehow does.
These tears in my uniform—they’re another outward sign of my ineptitude. My failure.
Evie ropes her arm through Katerina’s with Nettie standing awkwardly behind them. “Better luck next time, pup.” Then, to her friend, she says, “She’s never making it past the Ascension.”
Smirking, she drags away Katerina, and Instructor Shepherd does nothing to stop them. He doesn’t reprimand Katerina at all. Apparently, it’s totally fine that the tip of my nose is buried in the nearby grass.
“Vanessa,” Instructor Shepherd barks when the trio takes refuge from the rain under the portico. “We do not transition in the middle of combat. Do you know why?”
I don’t care that this man looks as though he could break me with his pinky finger. I say, “If I transformed sooner, I would’ve been able to rip her nose off instead.”
Instructor Shepherd runs a hand over his smooth, bald head, slicking off the rain like a squeegee over a windshield.
“Your nose will heal completely by dinner. Already it is no longer an open wound. You need to care less about minuscule injuries and more about being killed. If you transition in the midst of a fight, of a war , you lose your upper hand. Those seconds when even the most competent werewolf transforms leave them vulnerable to a fatal attack. A claw in your chest. A snap of your neck. Wolfsbane bullet in your heart—”
“That’s enough . She understands,” Sin says, stepping forward with an oddly intent expression and glowing, burgundy eyes. They soften when he turns to me. “We shouldn’t transition fully if we’re already in combat. It’s easier to grow a claw or fangs and use those while you spar.”
“An excellent point, Wolf Prince,” Instructor Shepherd snaps, the muscles in his throat bulging with sudden restraint.
I frown between them, momentarily distracted.
“Portia, come teach Miss Hart how to control those wretched claws of hers.” Our teacher narrows those amber eyes between Sin and me before prowling toward Sin slowly.
Viciously. Sin glances up at the teacher with a smirk on his lips and a knife-sharp gleam in his eyes.
“Don’t ever use your compulsion over me again, princeling,” he hisses.
Wh-what? My mouth falls open. Compulsion? But there’s no way Sin would’ve used that here. In the middle of class. Against the largest man I’ve ever seen in my life.
“Why don’t you spar against me next round?” Instructor Shepherd says to Sin.
Sin’s smile widens. “I’d love to.”
It’s not the response Instructor Shepherd wants. Our teacher stomps across the yard and flexes his knuckles into claws. I turn to Sin before he can leave. “Did you compel him?”
Sin shrugs. “I’m beneath only the queen in the court hierarchy. It’s legal.”
I blink, suddenly unsettled. He just—he admitted to compelling our instructor. For me. In public. The realization catches like a hook in my mind, impossible to dislodge.
I can’t protect you, Vanessa, as much as I might want to do so.
I drop my gaze, and then, unable to help myself, bring it back up again, my eyes sweeping from the bottom of his feet to the top of his head.
The black pants mold to his leanly muscular legs, long sleeves hugging— emphasizing —his biceps.
Blond hair sticks to his forehead, rivulets of water dripping down his chin and onto his chest. Over his defined abdominals.
Suddenly, I can’t swallow. My tongue sticks to the roof of my mouth. And Sin knows. Of course he knows.
He winks and tugs on my ponytail. “Be nice to Portia. She’s not as durable as the rest of us.”
“But…” I force myself to speak, gesturing to our instructor, who is currently using the portico roof as a pull-up bar. “You didn’t have to stand up to him for me. He’s… he’s going to kick your ass.”
Sin laughs, a true and genuine laugh that lights me up from the inside out. “Are you worried about me, Vanessa?”
“Yes,” I admit grudgingly. “I—I think I am.”
He flicks my ponytail, then gently touches my nose.
As if he can’t keep his hands off me. “I’ve never lost a sparring match in my life.
Calix will say it’s because no one wants to hurt their prince and potentially anger their queen, but I’d like to think I’m strong enough to lay our instructor on his ass.
Besides,” Sin whispers, his eyes meeting mine and sending delicious sparks up my spine before he turns away to glance at his cousin, “I didn’t do it for you. I did it for Calix.”