Chapter 50.
833 Words
The dawn was a bruised purple, the sun yet to crest the jagged peaks of the Nightshade range. The training ring was covered in a fresh, thin skin of rime that crunched like broken glass under Rhiannon’s boots. She had barely slept, her mind a frantic swirl of Sora’s words and the memory of the pull in the garden.
Fenris was already there.
He was stripped down to a thin, charcoal tunic that clung to his shoulders, his breath hitching in steady plumes of white vapor. He looked like he had been running for hours, his hair damp and his eyes already shimmering with that dangerous, restless amber.
"You’re early," he said, his voice a low, gravelly rumble that seemed to vibrate through the frozen ground.
"I didn't want to keep the Alpha waiting," Rhiannon replied, her heart doing that strange, jumbled dance.
Fenris went rigid at the title, his jaw tightening. He was trying to be the commander today- the rigid, disciplined wall that kept the world in order. But Malphas was right at the surface, his protective instinct pushed to a fever pitch by the breach in the garden. To the wolf, Rhiannon had been touched by a predator's gaze, and the mountain was no longer safe enough.
"We focus on the close-quarter draw," Fenris commanded, his tone clipped and professional. "If a man gets his hands on you, you don't wait for the gap. You create it."
He stepped into her space, and the air between them instantly ignited. It was different today. The word mate sat between them like a living thing, invisible but heavy.
"Position your lead foot here," Fenris said, reaching down.
When his hand brushed her ankle to adjust her stance, a jagged bolt of electricity snapped between them. Rhiannon gasped, a wave of goosebumps erupting across her skin. She didn't pull away, but she felt her breath catch in her throat. Fenris’s fingers lingered for a second too long before he jerked them back, his knuckles turning white as he stood.
"Again," he barked, though his voice lacked its usual iron.
The training became a grueling, intimate war of wills. Fenris moved to correct the angle of her elbow, and the moment his palm pressed against the small of her back to steady her, the pull became a physical weight. It felt as if a magnetic current was trying to fuse their skin together. Rhiannon’s magic flared in response, a soft neon-green light flickering at her fingertips, humming in harmony with the thrumming heat of his body.
Fenris groaned, a low, involuntary sound from the back of his throat. He was fighting himself- fighting the urge to stop the training and simply pull her into the crushing safety of his arms.
"Your grip is too loose," he muttered, stepping behind her.
He reached around, his large hands closing over hers on the hilt of the wooden trainer. He was flushed against her back, his chest a furnace of heat against her shoulders. The scent of him- cedar, rain, and the wild, sharp musk of the wolf, overwhelmed her senses.
The electricity wasn't just a spark anymore; it was a constant, vibrating hum. Rhiannon felt her head swim, the scrambled feeling Sora had described taking hold. She should have moved. She should have stepped forward to break the contact. But she found herself leaning back, just a fraction, into the solid strength of his frame.
Fenris’s hands tightened over hers. His breath was hot against the shell of her ear, and she could feel the frantic, heavy thud of his heart through his tunic.
"Rhia," he whispered, and the way he said her name wasn't a command. It was a plea.
Neither of them moved. It was a silent battle of endurance- a test to see who would be the first to surrender to the demand of the bond. The sun finally cracked over the horizon, spilling molten gold across the frost, reflecting in Fenris’s eyes as he looked down at her.
The pull was a deafening roar now, an invitation to stop being a survivor and start being a home.
Finally, with a sharp, ragged exhale, Fenris let go. He stepped back so abruptly it was as if he’d been burned. He turned his head away, his chest heaving as he fought to force the gold back from his irises.
"That's enough for this morning," he said, his voice strained and raw. "You... you have the motion. Practice it alone."
He didn't wait for her to answer. He turned and strode out of the ring, his shoulders set in a hard, pained line. Rhiannon stood alone in the light of the new sun, her hands still tingling where his had been, realizing that while she was learning to own her skin, she was also learning that it belonged, quite irrevocably, to him.
- Writer
