The Love Triangle

Training

     My alarm rings at 4 am. Oh, my God. Why is it so early? The sun isn’t even out… Goddess, I hate Jace right now. I roll over in bed to go back to sleep. I start to drift back to sweet, sweet, precious sleep. Then, my second alarm goes off. *BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP* “Aaaaah!” I slump up out of bed and get ready.

     I arrive at the pit in the Pack Land. This is where Jace told me to meet him. I don’t see him anywhere, but I know it’s time for us to start. I freeze and hear Jace from behind me. I can sense him ready to pounce on me. ‘Run’, he mind-links. I jump and transform in the air. Then, I run as fast as I can. I keep running and running, but I keep hearing him behind me, snapping twigs and rustling through. We run for miles. I think it has been at least 15 miles. ‘Stop.’ I finally stop running. I try to catch my breath. I bend down with my hands on my knees. I am exhausted from all this running. How is this training me? Jace stands next to me. He isn’t breaking a sweat. He still looks absolutely incredible.

     “Good. I wasn’t sure if you could handle me chasing you like that.” I lift my head slightly to look at him.

     “What the heck was the point of that? You just chased me like 15 miles!”

     “It was 12 miles. You are fine.” I look at him like he’s delusional. “You told me that you wanted me as your trainer. This is what I do as a trainer. If you want to quit, then-”

     “No! I’m not quitting.” I interrupt between gigantic breaths. My lunges and heart are aggressively trying to recirculate my air. “I want to train.”

     “Good, then you have 30 minutes to be back at the Pack House.”

     "What?” He has got to be kidding, but he isn’t kidding. I’m already exhausted, and he is going to make me run another 12 miles om 30 minutes?!?!?.

     “For short periods of time, werewolves can run up to 35 miles per hour. You have been holding yourself in and you need to let go!” He walks over to a car. I didn’t notice it was there. Then, he starts driving away. He pulls up next to me. “Be back in 30 minutes or don’t bother coming back.” I pace around for a second. Then, I take off and run back to the Pack House. I’m so exhausted, but I have no choice except to keep running.

     I’m 11 miles into the second run, mile 23 I've ran overall. I finally see the Pack House. It is within sight, but I only have 90 seconds left. I have no more energy, but I need to get back to the Pack House. Oh, Goddess. I charge even faster. My wolf smiles. I feel some type of extra adrenaline kick in. I feel connected to him like I have never before. I suddenly have so much power. This is incredible. I get back to Jace’s Office. He walks outside and sees me standing there. “I was getting worried. I wasn’t sure if you were gonna make it.”

     “Well… here I am.”

     “Good. Get ready for school.” Is that it? All he did was make me run 24 miles. Is this what it’s gonna be like every day? I don’t know what I got myself into.

     “What the Hell is wrong with you? What did that teach me? That was so, utterly stupid.” Jace gets up in my face. His scent entices me, and his shirtless body gets right up against my own. His breath brushes against my lips. I know my groin is pulsing from how close he is.

     “You remember the last minute of this run. You connected with yourself. You really felt your wolf. When learning, you must be taken to your breaking point. You have to be at the brink of failure until you learn to properly channel it.” I don’t respond. He walks away from me, saying, “This is how all of your training will work. Stop complaining or stop wasting my time.” as he trails off.

     Training like that surprisingly doesn’t stop. It continues every morning at 5 am. Every morning I wake before sunrise and do some crazy training designed by some type of psychotic, serial killer. On one morning, he had me sit in what he himself described as a torture position for two straight hours. I had to squat down with my arms wrapped around a rod. It hurt so much. It made me experience a totally knew type of pain cause my muscles were healing just to immediately strain and rip apart again and again. Sometimes he trains with me and sometimes he watches me, but regardless, he has never broken a sweat. I don’t understand how he can be this perfect all the time!

     Other days of training included when he tied my arms behind my back and blindfolded me. Then, he made me fight three weaker wolves with only my legs, hearing, and smell. There are definitely some days where I think he is either trying to kill me or punish me. The challenges keep getting more and more intense. He wasn’t kidding about finding my breaking point and testing if I can keep going or if I can fail. Over the last three weeks, I have managed to earn the title of Delta. He told me my training would be complete after one final test.

     We finished training today. I am drenched in sweat, and Jace is just as perfect as usual. Today was specifically focused on grappling and hand-to-hand combat. Translation: Jace continuously threw me to the ground, flipped me, choked me, placed me in painful holds, and punched me in every single spot of my body for 3 hours. Well, he isn’t perfect. He is still a complete Asswhole. I don’t understand how anybody has ever liked him. More importantly, I don’t understand how Carson was able to date him. Throughout the training, he has never smiled unless it was when he was causing me pain, either mentally, physically. or spiritually.

     I get all my stuff to go to school. “Pup,” he says “Listen.” I look at him. Jace is showing me a new side of him all of a sudden. His guard is down. He has been the worst human being for three weeks, but something is all the sudden different. He continues, “I know I’ve been a d**k recently. I know I was hard on you. I needed to be impartial during your training. It was really important for me to be impartial as I trained you since I am the Alpha. I can’t show you special treatment. It wasn’t personal”

     “Yeah, well it felt pretty damn personal…” I try to brush him off, but he gets closer to me.

     “The truth is Pup. You’re special. I can tell which is why I had to act this way. Tonight is your final test. If you do well, tonight, you become one of my Gammas.”

     am suddenly realizing why Carson liked him so much. This softer side of the big, strong Alpha is kind of great. He gets right up next to me. I can feel his breath against mine. The air fills with his pheromones which wrap around mine into a cluster. I want to kiss him. He is so alluring right now. My groin is so hard. I am lost in his eyes and a small part of me thinks that he feels the same way about me. He clears his throat, breaking the trance we were both in. “I’ll see you tonight.” Jace walks off."