Chapter 19 A Game of Wills
By early evening, Gabriel had decided that sitting around and waiting for the Horsemen to regroup wasn’t a luxury we could afford.
Not that I’d expected him to handle it any other way.
Gabriel didn’t do helpless. He did focused, methodical, and impossible to stall, even when there was no clear road to walk down.
He’d spent nearly an hour after Anita left pacing the living room like a caged animal, his mind clearly working through scenarios and strategies while the rest of us tried to process the reality that we were trapped in a warded town with no way out.
Not that running away had ever really been in the cards for us anyway, but knowing the option was completely off the table made everything feel that much more terrifying.
When he finally stopped pacing, he fixed me with a look that said he’d made a decision and there would be no arguing with it.
I loved that for me.
“Training. Now,” he said, already heading for the door. “If the Horsemen are preparing, then so are we. We need to make sure you’re ready when they come back.”
I hadn’t argued. Mostly because I knew he was right, but also because a part of me needed the distraction. Needed to focus on something I could control instead of spiraling about everything I couldn’t.
The dining room furniture was still pushed up against the walls from our last training session, the rugs rolled and stacked in the corner, other odds and ends relocated to safer territory.
Somewhere along the way, the house had stopped feeling like a refuge and started feeling like a makeshift sparring hall, stripped down to its bones and repurposed for survival.
A solid hour of relentless drilling later, I was drenched in sweat and my muscles screamed with every movement.
Gabriel had been merciless about it too, pushing me through drill after drill until my body moved on pure instinct rather than conscious thought.
Considering I’d been bedridden and half-dead twenty-four hours ago, the fact that I was still upright at all was nothing short of a miracle.
He stood across from me now, his arms crossed over his chest, watching as I blocked his latest strike and countered with one of my own.
His expression was carefully neutral, stoic even, that familiar mask of calm control firmly back in place since the spell had broken.
Gone was the aggressive edge that had been honing him over the past couple of weeks.
Gone was the man who had needed to be reined back from the brink of his worst impulses.
I preferred him this way, even if it meant he kept more of himself locked away.
“Good. Again,” he said evenly.
I groaned but reset my stance, raising my hands in front of my face. My arms felt like deadweights, but I kept that part to myself.
Gabriel’s strikes were as clean and efficient as ever, but I could feel them coming a half-second before they landed now. I blocked, ducked, countered. The pattern had become automatic, my body responding before my mind could catch up. But of course, some of them still got through perfectly fine.
He swept my legs out from under me, and I hit the mat hard, the air punching out of my lungs.
“Better,” he said, offering me his hand. “You’re starting to anticipate the movement instead of reacting to it.”
“I’m glad you think so.” I took his hand and let him pull me back up, my legs wobbling slightly beneath me. “Because right now, I just feel like I got hit by a truck.”
“That’s how you know it’s working.” He grabbed a towel from the chair and tossed it to me. “That’s enough for today.”
I caught it gratefully, pressing it against my face as I tried to catch my breath. “Thank god. I don’t think I had another round in me.”
Gabriel’s gaze moved past me to where Trace and Dominic had been watching from the edge of the dining room.
They’d been silent observers for the past hour, though I could feel both of them tracking me through the bonds.
Trace’s quiet, watchful concern thrumming on one side, and Dominic’s deeper presence resting against me on the other, like a hand braced against the small of my back even from across the room.
“Start working with her on resisting your compulsion,” said Gabriel, the words directed at them. “She needs to learn how to fight it. How to recognize when it’s happening and call on her tethers before it takes hold.”
Dominic’s mouth curved into a pleased smile that was all darkness and delight. “It would be my pleasure.”
Heat crept up my neck before I’d even registered why. Then my brain caught up to what they were proposing, and I nearly choked on the implication of it.
“Wait.” My grip tightened on the towel as Gabriel started toward the doorway. “How exactly is that supposed to—I mean, are you sure this is a good idea?” I squeaked, my stomach fluttering nervously.
“Practicing against Dominic’s compulsion is the best way to prepare you,” answered Gabriel without breaking stride, as though he were explaining something as mundane as stretching after a workout.
He picked up his jacket from the chair and headed toward the door.
“I’ll be back after I check in on Tessa. ”
“Gabriel—!”
But he was already gone, his footsteps echoing down the hallway until they faded completely.
Motherfluffer.
I turned back to Trace and Dominic, my pulse kicking up as I realized we were completely alone again.
Before I could say anything, Dominic pushed himself off the wall and stalked toward me with that dark gleam in his eye that always made me question my life choices.
His walk was purposeful, almost predatory in a way that made heat coil low in my stomach despite myself.
“I don’t—” I swallowed hard, my mouth suddenly dry. “This feels like a very bad idea.”
Dominic stopped a few feet in front of me. “On the contrary, angel. It’s quite practical.”
I glanced at Trace. He hadn’t moved an inch.
He stayed where he was with his arms folded across his chest and his expression unreadable save for the muscle ticking in his jaw.
Even so, I could feel the tension coming off him through the bond, restless and uneasy, like a current running just below the surface of his skin.
I just wasn’t sure if it was coming from our soulmate bond or the anchor bond or both.
Wetting my lips, I looked back at Dominic. “How do you figure?”
“Because when the Horsemen come for you again, they will not give you a practice run first.” His tone was almost conversational, but his eyes held mine in a way that made my breath catch.
“There will be no warning. No time to brace yourself. One moment you will be standing exactly where you are now, and the next, every instinct you have will be screaming at you to obey.”
A chill slid down my spine because I remembered it well. The terrifying feeling of not being in control of my body or mind anymore. Of wanting to destroy something that I knew in the bottom of my heart, where it was just me and my will, that I wanted to do nothing more than protect.
“And losing my will to you is somehow going to help me with that?” I asked, narrowing my eyes at him. “Because that feels like…asking for trouble.”
Then again, I never said it would be the bad kind.
“Learning to recognize the sensation of being coerced and how to fight back against it is the only chance you stand when the next call comes.” He took another measured step closer. “And there is no better place to practice than here. In a controlled environment. With supervision.”
I gestured vaguely toward the empty doorway Gabriel had disappeared through. “Define supervision, Dominic. Because it looks to me like our supervision just walked out the door a couple of minutes ago.”
A corner of his mouth lifted. “You wound me, angel.”
I rolled my eyes, even as my pulse refused to slow. “I’m serious, Dominic.”
“So am I.” The teasing edge bled out of his voice as he stopped just shy of me.
“They will not stop when you ask them to, angel. They will not care if you are frightened or if it hurts, and they will force you to do the one thing we both know you don’t want to do.
” His dark eyes held mine. “Your only hope is to train your mind to resist. To learn how to fight back even when every instinct is screaming at you to give in.”
“And being compelled by a Revenant is supposed to do that?” I asked, taking an involuntary step back. My gaze darted over Dominic’s shoulder to Trace for, I don’t know, backup? A way out? Permission to do this?
“It’s a different kind of compulsion,” answered Trace from across the room, his arms still crossed over his strong chest. “But it makes sense that fighting it will help strengthen your mind and teach you to recognize the feeling before it takes over.”
Despite his voice coming out smooth and even, I could still hear the strain beneath it.
See the stiffness in the way he was holding himself.
He didn’t like this. Probably because he knew it would be Dominic doing the compelling.
Dominic drinking my blood and using the bond between us to override my will while he watched it all unfold.
But he was still standing there. Still agreeing to it.
Because he knew I needed to do this.
“Okay,” I breathed out, even though every nerve in my body was screaming to run. “What do I do?”
Dominic’s smile widened, slow and wolfish. “First, you stop backing away from me.” He took another purposeful step toward me, erasing what little distance had been left between us. His presence pushed in all around me, dark and dizzying and caging me in without even laying a hand on me.
My traitorous heart hammered against my ribs and I immediately bit down on my bottom lip, trying to ground myself. The taste of copper hit my tongue a second later, but I didn’t stop biting.
A low sound rumbled from his chest, something between a growl and a purr that made my stomach clench.