Chapter 7 Selene
SEVEN
SELENE
The smell of food wakes me.
Not the stale scent of canned goods from Grandma’s pantry, but fresh fish and herbs. A smell that makes my stomach growl before my eyes are fully open.
I stumble out of the bedroom, still half-asleep, and stop dead in the doorway.
Drayke is in my kitchen.
He’s standing at the counter, shirtless—because apparently shirts are optional for dragon shifters—gutting a fish with the kind of efficiency that suggests he’s done this roughly ten thousand times.
A pile of wild berries sits in a bowl nearby.
The morning light catches the hard planes of his back, the muscles shifting as he works.
Don’t stare at his back. Don’t stare at his back. Don’t—
He turns. Catches me looking.
One eyebrow rises.
“Stalker much?” The words come out before my brain catches up. “Breaking into my cabin, cooking in my kitchen, standing there all—” I gesture vaguely at his entire torso, “like that.”
“You need to eat.” He turns back to the fish. “Training on an empty stomach is foolish.”
“And you need to wear a shirt.”
“Does it bother you?”
Yes. In ways I’m absolutely not admitting out loud.
“It’s distracting.” I head for the coffee supplies. “Hard to take survival training seriously when my instructor looks like he wandered off a romance novel cover.”
A sound escapes him. Low. Rough. It might be a laugh.
“Romance novel.”
“Don’t pretend you don’t know what you look like.” I fill the kettle, refusing to look at him again. “All brooding and muscular and ‘I’ll protect you with my giant sword.’”
“I don’t use a sword.”
“Missing the point, caveman.”
When I finally risk a glance, he’s watching me with an expression I can’t read. Something heated underneath the usual stoic mask.
“Eat.” He slides a plate across the counter. “Then we train.”
The fish is incredible. Flaky, perfectly cooked, seasoned with herbs I didn’t even know existed in the area. The berries are sweet and cold, still damp with morning dew.
I eat in silence for a few minutes, hyperaware of his presence. He’s found a shirt somewhere—one of the flannel ones from Grandma’s closet—but he hasn’t buttoned it, which is almost worse than no shirt at all. Now I have glimpses of chest to distract me instead of the whole thing.
“Where did you learn to cook?” I ask between bites.
“Four hundred years is a long time.” He’s leaning against the counter, arms crossed, watching me eat with an intensity that should be uncomfortable but isn’t. “You pick things up.”
“Four hundred—” I nearly choke on a berry. “You’re four hundred years old?”
“Roughly.”
“Roughly.” I set down my fork. “How do you ‘roughly’ know your age? Did they not have calendars in the sixteenth century?”
“Time moves differently when you’re immortal.” Something flickers across his face. “Decades blur together. Centuries pass. Eventually, you stop counting.”
There’s weight behind those words. Loss. Loneliness.
I pick up my fork again. Don’t push. Some doors aren’t ready to be opened.
After breakfast, I explore the cabin more thoroughly while Drayke cleans up—which he insists on doing, despite my protests. Behind a false wall in the back room, I find what I’m looking for.
Grandma’s real weapons cache.
It’s larger than I expected. Swords of various lengths, their blades gleaming despite their age. Daggers with blades that could split a hair. And more—throwing knives, a mace, what appears to be a genuine battle axe.
The walls are lined with them. Rows and rows of weapons, organized by type, each one maintained with obvious care. This isn’t a collection. It’s an arsenal.
What were you preparing for, Grandma? What did you know was coming?
“Your grandmother was well-prepared.” Drayke’s voice comes from behind me.
I don’t jump. I’m getting used to him appearing silently.
“She was a lot of things I never knew about.” I run my fingers over a sword hilt, testing the grip. “Did you know her?”
“We met. Once.” He moves past me, selecting a blade with practiced ease. “She was... formidable.”
“That’s one word for her.” I pull a sword from the rack. It’s heavier than I expected, but balanced. “She made really good pie too.”
His mouth twitches. Almost a smile. “Come. We train outside.”
The clearing by the stream is bathed in morning light.
I stand in the center, sword in hand, trying to remember everything I’ve seen in movies about sword fighting. Feet apart. Blade up. Look menacing.
Drayke circles me. His expression is unreadable, but there’s a tension in his shoulders that suggests he’s not entirely happy about this arrangement.
“If you’re so worried about my survival,” I say, tracking his movement, “then teach me to fight properly.”
“I don’t train humans.”
“Good thing I’m apparently not entirely human.”
He stops circling. Those eyes fix on me—intense, evaluating.
“Show me what you know.”
I run through the basic movements I’ve taught myself. A slash. A thrust. A clumsy attempt at a parry. It feels wrong—awkward, off-balance—but I push through anyway.
When I finish, breathing hard, he’s staring at me with an expression caught between horror and amusement.
“Your footwork is terrible.” He finally puts me out of my misery. “You’ll trip over your own feet before an enemy gets close enough to kill you.”
“Then fix it.” I plant my feet, refusing to be embarrassed. “Instead of being a smug spectator.”
A muscle jumps in his jaw. He sighs.
“Once.” He steps into the clearing, every movement predatory grace. “I’ll show you once.”
“That’s all I need.”
“We’ll see.” He positions himself behind me.
Behind me. As in, directly behind me. As in, close enough that his chest brushes my back when he breathes.
Every nerve in my body lights up.
“Your grip is wrong.” His hands close over mine on the sword hilt. Large. Warm. Completely enveloping. “Too tight. You’ll exhaust yourself in minutes.”
His voice is low, rough, barely more than a rumble against my ear. His breath stirs my hair. His heat seeps through my clothes, spreading across my back, my shoulders, everywhere we almost touch.
“Relax your fingers.” He adjusts my hold, his thumbs pressing into the backs of my hands. “Firm but flexible. The blade should feel like an extension of your arm.”
Focus. You’re supposed to be learning.
Easier said than done. His proximity is making it impossible to concentrate on anything except the solid wall of muscle behind me and the way his hands dwarf mine.
“Balance comes from your core.” His palm flattens against my stomach—just for a second, just to demonstrate—and heat shoots straight to my core. “Not your arms. Power from here.”
“Right.” My voice comes out strangled. “Core. Got it.”
“Your stance is too narrow.” His foot nudges mine, widening my base. “If I pushed you now, you’d fall.”
“Maybe don’t push me then.”
“Enemies won’t be so considerate.”
He guides me through the first movement—a basic slash that should be simple but feels impossibly complicated with his body pressed against my back.
Every adjustment brings new contact. His thigh against mine.
His arm brushing my arm. His chest solid and scorching through the thin fabric of my shirt.
He smells incredible. Smoke and pine and a darker, wilder edge that makes my pulse quicken and my breath catch.
“Your hips.” His hand settles there—brief, correcting. “Turn them toward the target. Power comes from rotation, not just your arms.”
I turn my hips, trying to focus on technique instead of the heat of his palm still burning through my shirt.
“Focus.” The word is a growl against my ear. “You’re leaning into me instead of the blade.”
“Hard to focus with you breathing down my neck.”
“Would you prefer I stand elsewhere?”
No. Absolutely not. Stay exactly where you are forever.
“I’d prefer you stop being smug about being good at everything.”
His mouth curves. I can feel it against my hair. “I’m not good at everything.”
“Name one thing.”
The pause stretches. His hands tighten on mine, just slightly.
“Staying away from you.”
The admission hangs in the air between us. Heavy. Loaded. Full of everything neither of us has said out loud.
I don’t respond. Don’t know how to respond. My heart thumps so hard, he must be able to feel it.
He steps back. Creates distance that feels like loss.
“Again. On your own this time.”
We train for hours.
He’s a brutal teacher. Demanding. Critical. Every mistake earns a correction, every sloppy movement a sharp rebuke. But he’s also patient in ways I didn’t expect—willing to demonstrate the same technique a dozen times, adjusting his instructions based on what I struggle with.
“Your elbow. Drop it.”
I drop my elbow.
“Too far. You’ve left your ribs exposed.”
I adjust. He circles me, gaze clinical, cataloging every flaw.
“Better. Again.”
Again. And again. And again. The same movements repeated until they start to feel less foreign. Until my body begins to remember what my mind is still learning.
He shows me how to read an opponent’s weight distribution. How to anticipate an attack by watching the shoulders instead of the blade. How to use momentum instead of fighting it.
“A sword isn’t a hammer,” he says during one of my less graceful attempts. “You don’t bludgeon with it. You guide. You redirect. You let the blade do the work.”
“Easy for you to say. You’ve had four hundred years to practice.”
“And you’ll have significantly less if you don’t stop telegraphing your strikes.”
By midday, my arms are screaming. My legs are rubber. Sweat plasters my hair to my face, and I’m fairly certain I’ve developed blisters on both palms.
But I’m getting better.
“Again.” Drayke stands at the edge of the clearing, arms crossed, face unreadable. “The full sequence.”
I plant my feet. Find my balance. Breathe.
The movements flow—not gracefully, not yet, but smoothly. Slash, parry, thrust. Turn, block, recover. Each position finds itself, muscle memory already forming, my body learning what my mind keeps fumbling.