Chapter 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Fergal was going to lose his mind.
It had been a year. An entire year since the night he’d stood in that corridor and promised Gregor he’d find every secret behind those walls, and what had he gotten for it?
Absolutely nothing. Twelve months of impeccable professionalism, of “Your Highness” delivered with military precision, of tutoring sessions so rigidly structured they might as well have been conducted by a robot rather than a man.
He’d respected Gregor’s boundary about the magic.
He hadn’t tried to slip into his mind again, hadn’t even nudged him with his influencer ability.
Not once. He’d practiced both gifts extensively on others—he was significantly better at controlling them now, able to slip in and out of minds with a precision that would’ve terrified him a year ago—but Gregor remained untouched. A promise was a promise.
And what had his restraint earned him? More distance. More formality. More of that maddening composure that made Fergal want to set something on fire.
He stood at his window, watching the weak spring sunlight fight its way through the clouds.
The snow was thinning at the edges of the compound for the first time in months, patches of dark earth showing through.
The Canadian winter was loosening its grip, but grudgingly, the way it always did.
As if warmth were a concession rather than a season.
Fergal felt like that snow—compressed, frozen, ready to crack at the first real heat.
Today’s lesson was on historic military strategy. Maps and tactical diagrams and historical siege analysis. Despite all modern changes to warfare, old-school strategies were still taught. Fine. Good. He’d use it.
Gregor always stood close during map work, leaning over the table to point out terrain features and defensive positions.
Last week, Fergal had caught the faintest trace of his scent—leather and steel and something woodsy underneath—and had nearly lost his composure right there over a diagram of a thirteenth-century fortification.
He checked his reflection. He still looked too young, but something had changed in the past year, something he could see even if no one else could.
His eyes were harder, more focused. The eyes of a man who’d spent twelve months watching and waiting and learning patience despite every cell in his body screaming at him to act.
Well, he was done being patient, and he knew exactly which buttons to push.
He arrived at the library to find Gregor already positioned at the table, maps spread before him like a paper battlefield.
Dark shirt, sleeves rolled to the forearms because, of course, the man deliberately chose to expose the one part of his anatomy most calculated to destroy Fergal’s concentration.
Those forearms—thick, corded with muscle, dusted with dark hair that had gone silver at the wrists—were an act of war.
“Your Highness.” Gregor didn’t look up.
“Gregor.” Fergal dropped into his chair. “What are we conquering today?”
“Siege defense. Specifically, how the O’Connor clan defended their compound against a dragon-slayer attack in 1402.”
Fergal leaned forward, genuinely interested despite himself.
Gregor began walking through the tactical setup—the terrain advantages, the positioning of defensive wards, the use of natural barriers to channel attackers into kill zones.
His deep voice was steady and precise, his thick fingers tracing supply lines and troop movements across the aged map.
Despite modern conveniences, Gregor preferred teaching with old-school methods like maps instead of screens.
Fergal lasted twenty minutes.
Twenty minutes of watching those hands move across maps.
Twenty minutes of breathing in leather and cedar while pretending to care about fifteenth-century warfare.
Twenty minutes of Gregor standing close enough that Fergal could feel the heat radiating from his body, a furnace of barely contained dragon fire that the man seemed completely unaware of.
“You must’ve been formidable,” Fergal said, interrupting Gregor’s analysis of a flanking maneuver.
Gregor paused. “I’m sorry?”
“In combat. Back in the day.” Fergal gestured vaguely at Gregor’s frame. “Before you got behind a desk and went soft.”
The micro-twitch at Gregor’s jaw was barely visible, but Fergal caught it. Years of watching this man had made him fluent in the language of Gregor’s restraint. That twitch meant I am not rising to this bait. “The lesson is about the O’Connor defense, Your Highness, not my personal—”
“Why don’t you ever want to spar with me?”
“That’s not relevant.”
Oh, but it was. Fergal stood, pushing his chair back. “I sparred with Ruben and his team this morning. They were decent but sloppy. No footwork, no discipline. Not much they could teach me.”
Nothing about that was a lie. Ruben—the head of the royal guards—was a man built like a bull and with the single-digit IQ of one as well. All he and his men knew was brute strength.
He circled the table slowly, coming to stand next to Gregor. Close. Too close. “I bet in your prime, you could’ve taken any of them apart in under a minute. Maybe you still can.”
“Flattery won’t distract me from today’s curriculum.”
“It’s not flattery. It’s an observation. But I wouldn’t know for sure because you refuse to fight me.” He tilted his head, studying Gregor’s profile. “Spar with me.”
“Absolutely not.”
“Why? Afraid I’ll beat you?”
Gregor’s eyes cut to him, steel-gray and sharp. “Not a chance, Your Highness.”
“Prove it. Unless the great Gregor has gone soft in his old—”
“The training room. Five minutes.” Gregor was already rolling down his sleeves, his movements clipped and precise. The tutor had vanished, and something older and more dangerous had taken his place, sending a shiver down Fergal’s spine. “And, Your Highness? Don’t call me old again.”
Fergal grinned. He had him.
The training room was in the compound’s east wing—stone floors, padded mats, weapons racks lining the walls, the lingering smell of sweat and leather embedded in every surface.
Fergal trained here every morning, but the room felt different with Gregor in it.
Smaller. Charged, like the air before a lightning strike.
They faced each other on the center mat. Gregor had removed his boots and rolled his sleeves back up—apparently, forearm warfare was acceptable in combat—and stood with the easy balance of a man whose body had been a weapon for centuries.
“Rules,” Gregor said. “Controlled contact. Tap out to yield. No magic of any kind.”
“Agreed.”
“And this is a training exercise. Not a—”
“Not a what?” Fergal raised an eyebrow.
Gregor’s jaw tightened. “Begin.”
The first few minutes were instructional, despite Fergal’s best efforts. Gregor corrected his stance twice, adjusted his guard, demonstrated a hip throw in slow motion before letting Fergal attempt it at speed. He was patient, methodical, professional. Teaching, not fighting.
Fergal hit him. Not a training tap—a real strike, fast and hard, catching Gregor’s ribs just below his guard.
Gregor blinked, then looked down at where Fergal’s fist had connected and slowly raised his head again.
“Harder,” Fergal said. “Or I’ll think you actually have gone soft.”
Something shifted behind those gray eyes. The teacher receded, and the warrior surfaced. And when Gregor moved, Fergal understood for the first time how this man had survived the Murphys, survived three centuries of combat, survived everything the world had thrown at him.
He was fast. Terrifyingly so for someone his size.
Fergal threw a combination he’d been practicing for months—jab, cross, low kick—and Gregor deflected all three without apparent effort, his hands moving in tight, economical arcs that wasted nothing.
Before Fergal could reset, Gregor was inside his guard, one massive hand on Fergal’s shoulder, spinning him off-balance.
Fergal stumbled, caught himself, and came back swinging.
He couldn’t match Gregor’s skill or experience, but he was quick, unpredictable, and completely fearless, and he adapted in real time.
Every exchange taught him something—the way Gregor favored his left side, the slight drop in his guard after a combination, the half-second delay when transitioning from defense to offense.
They circled each other. Both breathing hard now.
Both sweating. The controlled exercise had become something rawer—not violent, but charged.
Every block was a collision, every grab lingered a fraction too long, every moment of body-against-body contact sent a jolt through Fergal that had nothing to do with combat.
Gregor felt it too. Fergal could see it in the way his breathing had changed—not just from exertion but from something deeper. In the way his pupils had dilated. In the way his grip tightened on Fergal’s wrist during a block and didn’t immediately release.
Fergal struck again—a wild, reckless hook that left his entire right side exposed. Was it calculated? Was it instinct? He genuinely didn’t know. All he knew was that he’d left himself wide open, and Gregor couldn’t not take it.
Gregor caught his wrist, twisted, and swept his legs out from under him in one fluid motion.
The world spun, and then Fergal was face down on the mat with Gregor’s full weight pressing him into the floor.
His arm was twisted behind his back, immobilized.
Gregor’s chest was a furnace against his spine, the heat of him bleeding through both their shirts, dragon fire barely contained beneath skin.
Gregor’s breath came in harsh bursts against Fergal’s ear, and this close, the scent of him was overwhelming—sweat and leather and that cedar heartwood, plus something darker now, something primal.
Neither of them moved.