Chapter 14
Chapter Fourteen
The training hall is empty when I get there just after midnight.
It's become a routine now, this late-night escape when the rest of the Academy is sleeping and I can pretend my body isn't betraying me.
The door is unlocked like it always is, and I slip inside and let it close behind me with a soft click that echoes in the darkness.
I don't turn on the lights. The moonlight coming through the high windows is enough to see by, and somehow the darkness makes it easier to forget about everything except the staff in my hands and the repetitive motion of the drills I've been teaching myself.
My body feels worse at night. The heat symptoms that are bearable during the day become unbearable once the sun goes down, like something biological in me recognizes that darkness is when wolves mate and my body is responding whether I want it to or not.
My skin is hypersensitive enough that even the loose training clothes I'm wearing feel too rough.
Every movement sends little sparks of sensation through me that I'm trying hard to ignore.
I pick up the staff from where I left it last night and start working through the basic forms. Strike high, recover, strike low, spin.
The wood is smooth under my palms from repeated use, familiar and comforting.
My hands are still healing from the obstacle course but the pain helps me focus.
Gives me something concrete to think about instead of the constant awareness of my own skin, my own heartbeat, my own body that won't stop demanding things I don't know how to give it.
Strike. Recover. Strike. Recover.
The rhythm is soothing. Predictable. I can control this even if I can't control anything else.
I'm halfway through the sequence when the hair on the back of my neck stands up. It's that feeling you get when you're being watched, that primitive awareness that you're not alone anymore. I freeze mid-strike and spin around, staff raised defensively.
Knox is standing in the doorway.
I don't know how long he's been there. Long enough to watch me without me knowing, which means he's better at being quiet than I am at being aware. He's just leaning against the doorframe with his arms crossed, completely still in that way he has that makes him look more predator than person.
The moonlight catches his face and I can see he's watching me with those pale eyes that never seem to blink enough. There's no expression on his face that I can read. No hint of why he's here or what he wants.
"You're getting better." His voice cuts through the silence between us. They're the first words he's said to me since the tower, since he pulled me back from the edge and told me not to disappoint him.
I lower the staff slightly but don't put it down. "Did you come here to critique my form?"
"No."
He pushes off the doorframe and walks into the room. Not toward me directly but circling, moving around the perimeter like he's assessing the space or maybe assessing me. Every movement is measured and purposeful. There's nothing casual about how Knox Wilson moves through the world.
"Then why are you here?"
He stops circling and turns to face me. We're maybe fifteen feet apart, close enough that I can see the scars on his face more clearly, the one through his eyebrow and the smaller ones along his jaw. "I came to see if you're as dangerous as you smell."
My stomach does something uncomfortable. "What do you mean?"
"Your scent." He tilts his head slightly, still watching me with that unnerving intensity. "It's distracting."
I think about what Caspian said this afternoon.
About how every unmated male can smell what's happening to me.
About how my body is broadcasting things I didn't consent to broadcasting.
The heat makes me want to back away from Knox and move closer to him at the same time, and I hate that I can't control either impulse.
"I can't help that."
"I know." He takes a step closer. "Doesn't make it less distracting."
Another step. He's close enough now that I could hit him with the staff if I wanted to. Close enough that I can smell him, that mix of earth and pine and something underneath that's just him, something wild and barely contained.
"Put down the staff," he says.
I hesitate. The staff is the only thing between us, the only weapon I have if he decides to do whatever it is dangerous people do when they're alone with someone weaker than them.
"Put it down, Nova."
I set it on the floor. Don't know why I'm obeying him except that there's something in his voice that makes it feel less like a command and more like a test I'm choosing to take.
He looks at the staff on the ground, then back at me. "Hit me."
"What?"
"You want to learn to fight?" He spreads his arms slightly, making himself an open target. "Fight me."
"I'm not going to hit you."
"Why not?"
"Because you'll hit me back."
"Maybe." He drops his arms. "Or maybe you'll surprise me. Won't know until you try."
I curl my hands into fists. "Fine. Show me."
"Hit me first."
I don't think about it. I just swing, putting my weight behind the punch like I've seen in movies. My fist connects with his ribs and the impact jars up my arm hard enough that I know I'm going to feel it tomorrow.
Knox doesn't even flinch. "Again. Harder."
"I hit you as hard as I could."
"No, you didn't. You pulled it at the last second. Stop being afraid to hurt me and actually commit."
I swing again. This time I don't pull it. My fist slams into the same spot on his ribs and I feel something give slightly. Knox actually grunts, the sound surprised out of him, and when he looks at me there's something in his eyes that might be approval.
"Better."
That's all the warning I get before he moves.
One second he's standing still, the next he's grabbed my wrist and spun me.
My back hits the wall hard enough to knock the air from my lungs.
His hand catches both my wrists and pins them above my head, his other hand braced against the wall beside my face.
I'm caged between the stone at my back and Knox in front of me. I can't move.
We're both breathing hard. I can feel sweat cooling on my skin and smell it on him too, mixing with pine and earth and predator. His grip on my wrists is firm enough that I couldn't break it if I tried but not painful. Just completely inescapable.
He leans in slightly and I feel his breath against my neck. Against the exact spot where Caspian had his hand earlier today. "You smell like something I shouldn't touch."
My breath catches. I can feel my pulse hammering everywhere his body is close to mine, which is everywhere that matters.
"Then let me go."
He doesn't move. Doesn't release my wrists or step back. Just stays exactly where he is with his face close enough to my neck that I can feel the heat of him. "I don't think you want me to."
The terrible thing is he's right. My body is responding to his proximity in ways I can't control, in ways that have nothing to do with choice and everything to do with biology I'm only starting to understand.
The heat makes everything worse, makes the space between us feel charged with something that's been building since the tower, since he pulled me back from the edge and made me promise not to disappoint him.
But he releases my wrists anyway. Steps back. Puts space between us like it costs him something to do it.
"Keep training," he says, his voice rougher than it was before. "You're going to need it."
He turns and walks toward the door. I stay against the wall because I don't trust my legs to hold me if I try to move. My wrists feel cold where his hand was.
He stops in the doorway without turning around. "I killed something in the forest tonight. A deer. Clean kill."
I don't know what to say to that so I don't say anything.
"Do you want to know why?"
"Why?"
"Because I needed to kill something. And it was either that deer or I was going to come find you."
He walks out before I can process what that means. The door closes. I'm alone in the training hall with the moonlight and the lingering scent of pine and the feeling of his hand on my wrists like a brand.
I slide down the wall until I'm sitting on the floor.
My whole body is shaking. Not from fear, though maybe there should be fear mixed in there somewhere.
Knox is dangerous in ways I'm only beginning to understand.
But what's making me shake is the realization that I wanted him to kiss me.
Wanted him to stop holding back and just close the distance between us and I don't even know him.
Don't know anything about him except that he kills things in forests and watches me from shadows and pulled me back from a tower roof when he could have just let me fall.
I don't know how long I sit there. Long enough for my breathing to even out and the shaking to stop. When I finally push myself up and leave the training hall, the moon has moved across the sky and the patterns of light on the floor have changed.
I make it back to my dorm without seeing anyone. Lily is already asleep, curled up in her bed with her back to the room. I change into sleep clothes as quietly as I can and slip into my own bed, pulling the covers up even though I'm still too hot.
Sleep doesn't come. My body is too restless, too aware, too flooded with adrenaline and heat and the memory of Knox's body against mine. I lie there staring at the ceiling, unable to stop noticing I can still smell pine on my skin where he was close to me.
After what feels like hours of lying there, I give up on sleep and get out of bed. The floor is cold under my bare feet. I go to the window and look out at the dark grounds below, needing to see something other than the inside of my own head.
That's when I see him.
A wolf. Black fur, massive even at this distance, sitting on the grass with its head tilted up toward my window.
I know it's Knox before my brain even finishes processing what I'm seeing.
I don't know how I know, but I do. The same way I knew it was him standing outside the library earlier today.
Some part of me recognizes him even when he's not in human form.
I should close the curtains and go back to bed. Should pretend I didn't see him. But I don't.
Instead I open the window. The cold air hits my overheated skin and I gasp at the shock of it, but it feels good. Helps clear my head slightly. Knox's ears prick forward but otherwise he doesn't react.
We stare at each other across the distance. Girl in the window, wolf on the grass. I lean out slightly, my hands gripping the windowsill, and he stands. The movement is fluid and graceful, nothing like his human form. He's completely alert now, attentive, waiting to see what I'll do.
I don't know what makes me put my hand out. It's a stupid gesture, meaningless across this much space. But I do it anyway. Palm up like I'm offering something or asking for something or just acknowledging that he's there and I see him.
Knox makes a sound. Not quite a howl, something lower and more contained. Almost like a whine but not quite. Then he turns and runs, disappearing into the tree line in seconds. I watch until I can't see him anymore, until he's just another shadow among the other shadows.
I close the window and go back to bed. Pull the covers up and stare at the ceiling some more. My hand still feels warm from where I held it out, like the gesture meant something even though we never touched.
When I finally fall asleep, I dream of running through the forest on four legs that aren't mine.
The ground is soft under paws I don't have.
Trees blur past on either side as I run faster than I've ever run before.
And beside me, matching my pace stride for stride, is a black wolf with pale eyes that glow silver in the moonlight.
We run together until the dream shifts into something else, something I won't remember when I wake up. But for those few perfect moments in the forest that isn't real, I'm not alone. I'm not afraid. I'm just running with him beside me like that's where I'm supposed to be.