Chapter 18 One Good Thing
One Good Thing
Ian
The north training ground was not a field, no matter what Ronan called it.
It was a walled acre of old resort land built into the slope behind the east wing, where luxury ended and the island remembered it had teeth.
Cypress trees grew in crooked lines along the outer path, stone ruins cut the ground into broken chambers, and low hedges divided the center into narrow lanes that dropped toward a dry creek bed filled with pale rock and shadow.
There were places to hide, places to fall, and enough blind corners that every instinct I had started making a list of where an enemy could wait.
Cassie stood twenty yards away beside Sava, wrapped in a loose black sweater over borrowed clothes, studying the grounds with narrowed eyes.
“This is not a field,” she said.
“No,” I agreed.
Her gaze moved to Ronan, who watched from the upper terrace. “You people are allergic to accurate naming.”
Ronan didn’t react. “The hunt ground is larger.”
“Of course it is.”
“This is the safest place to train.”
“That says terrible things about the island.”
Cormac stood near the terrace steps with one hand on his cane and a look of open enjoyment. “She is not wrong.”
Ronan ignored him, which was one of his more common leadership strategies.
Sava checked the monitor clipped to Cassie’s wrist. “You are not running today.”
Cassie glanced at the broken walls, the hedges, and the dark mouth of the grove. “That was not my first concern.”
“You are hiding.”
Cassie looked at me, and the mark warmed beneath my skin in answer.
It had been doing that since the kiss. Every time her gaze touched my mouth and slid away again, every time I remembered her hand on my chest, every time her anger flared because I had stopped and I knew she had been right to be angry, the mark answered before either of us could pretend not to feel it.
Last night had not gone away. It had settled into both of us, unfinished and dangerous, a live coal under every careful word.
Cassie looked away first. “Hiding I can do.”
Ronan stepped down from the terrace. “The exercise is simple. Cassie has five minutes to choose a hiding place inside the marked boundary. Ian waits behind the lower gate until Cormac gives the call. He finds her. Sava ends the exercise if the mark destabilizes.”
Cassie lifted a hand. “Question.”
Ronan looked at her.
“If this is practice for the official hunt, and the official hunt is supposed to prove he can find me, why does everyone look like they expect me to politely hide behind the first decorative shrub?”
Cormac’s smile sharpened.
Ronan’s eyes narrowed by a fraction. “No one expects that.”
“Good. I’ve been underestimated enough this week, and I would like to diversify.”
Pride moved through the bond before I could stop it. Cassie felt enough of it to glance at me, and the brief satisfaction in her face nearly cut through my control more cleanly than fear ever could.
Sava’s mouth tightened. “Diversify carefully.”
“I have never hidden recklessly in my life.”
“That is not reassuring.”
Cassie turned toward the ruins with Sava beside her.
Her steps were careful over the uneven ground, though she tried to make them look casual.
She favored her left side when the path dipped, and the bandage beneath the sweater pulled when she misjudged the first rise of stone.
She hid the pain well from everyone watching.
Not from me. The urge to follow her hit hard enough that I took one step before Ronan’s voice stopped me.
“Gate.”
I turned slowly.
My brother met my stare without blinking. “You agreed to the rules.”
“I agreed because she did.”
“And you will keep agreeing for the same reason.”
The lower gate opened behind me. I stepped through, and iron closed between me and the training ground with a sound that made the wolf push against my skin.
Cassie looked back once from the ruins. Only once. Then she disappeared behind a broken stone wall, and the mark tightened as if something inside my body had been tied to hers and pulled across the ground.
Five minutes should not have been difficult.
I had waited longer for kill orders. I had stood beside my brother through council sessions that lasted until dawn.
I had held my shift under silver smoke while old wolves tested whether my control could be used against me.
None of that mattered while Cassie moved through broken stone with a half-healed wound, the day before wolves would call her false if I failed to bring her back.
At first, I could hear her breathing and Sava’s low instructions. Then their voices dropped into the wind, and the ruins swallowed them.
Cormac came down the steps and stopped beside the gate, his cane tapping lightly on the path. “You look calm.”
“I am not.”
“No?” he said. “You look calm. I said nothing about being it.”
I kept my eyes on the ruins. “Do you have a purpose here?”
“Several, but annoying you is the one giving me the most pleasure.”
Ronan remained on the terrace, but I felt his attention sharpen when Sava emerged alone at the far end of the ground.
My body went rigid before my mind caught up.
“She is inside the boundary,” Sava said before I could speak. “She is hidden. She is stable. She is also smug, which I assume is normal for her.”
Cormac’s smile widened.
Sava came to the gate, and when she got close enough to scent me, her expression changed by the smallest degree.
“Open it,” she said to Cormac.
He did.
I stepped out, but she lifted one hand before I could pass her.
“Wait.”
“I have waited.”
“I know,” she said quietly. “That is part of the problem.”
My jaw tightened.
Sava glanced toward the ruins, making sure Cassie could not hear us, then brought her voice lower. “You need to understand what is happening before you go in there.”
“I know what is happening.”
“No. You know the hunting part. You know the wolf part. You do not know the medical part because none of you ever do.”
Cormac made a small pleased sound.
Sava ignored him. “Her pulse rose when she hid, but it was not panic alone.She is responding to pursuit.”
The wolf went very still inside me.
Sava’s eyes stayed on mine. “You are not in full rut, and she is not in full heat, but you are closer than I like. This training is going to push both of you toward it, and if you cannot keep control, you need to say so before you walk into that ground.”
I looked toward the ruins. Cassie was hidden somewhere beyond stone and hedge, alive, angry, afraid, and waiting for me to find her.
The mark pulled toward her in slow waves, not with pain this time, but with anticipation so unmistakable that the wolf knew what it meant before I allowed myself to name it.
“I can keep control,” I said.
Sava took one step closer. “If she wants you?”
The words hit harder because she didn’t soften them. My gaze returned to hers.
“If she wants you,” Sava said again, “you still ask. You still listen. You still make sure the choice is hers and not only the mark looking for a stronger anchor.”
My hands opened slowly at my sides. “Yes.”
She held my stare another second, then stepped aside. “Find her.”
Cormac lifted his cane and struck it once against the stone.
The sound carried through the grounds.
I entered the training field and forced myself not to move too quickly. The wolf wanted speed and straight lines, nose to ground, body low, every thought narrowed to find, guard, return. I gave it breath instead, sorting the air one layer at a time.
Salt from the sea. Cypress resin. Old stone. Ronan above us, cold and controlled. Cormac near the gate, amused and watchful. Sava’s herbs, metal, and clean anger. Two guards on the western path. Beneath all that came Cassie.
Not blood first anymore. The wound was there, of course.
The bitter trace of wolf magic in human skin, the bandage, the medicine, the fever she had survived because she was too stubborn to die when expected.
Under all of it, stronger now, was her. Clean soap.
Warm skin. Borrowed cotton. The fruit she had eaten at breakfast. The sharp edge of irritation.
The salt of nerves. Beneath that, faint but undeniable, was the heat Sava had warned me about.
Cassie was waiting and the bond answered my attention with a low pull under my ribs.
I went left, away from the obvious ruins.
Her scent had crossed the stones, doubled back, and lingered near the first broken wall long enough to suggest she wanted me to think she had stopped there. She had left a stronger trail where she wanted me to find it, which meant she was not only hiding. She was playing the game back.
The wolf approved of her. So did the man.
A soft scrape came from the creek bed. A small stone rolled down the dry bank, dislodged on purpose, and I almost smiled because it was too convenient. Cassie had thrown it.
Clever woman.
I turned away from the sound and moved into the hedge lanes.
The bond warmed as she felt me correct course, and somewhere ahead, her pulse changed too faintly for my ears but clearly enough for the bond to carry it.
Fear, excitement, and anger at the excitement reached me in one tangled rush, and my body tightened in answer.
Not now.
I turned down the narrow lane and caught her scent stronger along the left hedge.
She had brushed it with her uninjured hand, not by accident.
A false trail. She had listened when I told her wolves followed what touched, and she had used the lesson against me before the hour was over.
I followed the false trail for three steps, then stopped and looked back.
There.
A gap opened between two broken walls, barely wide enough for a person to slip through and too narrow for a wolf at speed.
It was shaded from the terrace and hidden from the gate, with no direct wind to carry scent cleanly out.
Cassie was not visible, but the air changed there.
Her scent didn’t pour from it. It held still. She had found a pocket of dead air.
Very good.
The wolf went low inside me.