Training Strong and Losing Breathe
912 Words
Lucien had me training before sunrise, and every mistake felt like it could get me killed.
The hidden clearing was locked in frost and darkness, the ground hard beneath my boots, the world still caught in that cold hush before dawn. The sky was only beginning to pale, washed in a faint blue glow that barely touched the trees.
“Again,” Lucien growled.
He barely moved as he stepped aside, broad shoulders rigid, gaze sharp as steel. My swinging fist cut through empty air.
I stumbled forward and hit the dirt hard. Ice bit into my knees, and a sharp breath left me as cold seeped through my clothes. I pushed my hair back from my face and turned on him, my hazel-brown eyes blazing with frustration.
“It is four in the morning, Alpha. Even the rogues are still asleep.”
“The rogues who carried Alfred’s token onto my territory are not sleeping, Arieth,” Lucien replied, his voice low and steady, the sound cutting clean through the freezing air. He took one slow step toward me, silver-gray eyes fixed on mine. “You are moving like a wounded deer. You need to drop your head, center your weight, and learn how to smell the wind before the predator perceives you.”
I hauled myself back up, jaw tightening. I hated how easily he could strip me down to my worst weaknesses with only a few words.
“I know how to look after myself. I survived eighteen years in a pack house that treated me like a disease.”
“You survived because Alfred is too much of a coward to finish what he starts,” Lucien said coldly.
That only made my temper flare hotter. I wanted to claw the edge out of his voice, I wanted to prove he was wrong, I wanted to stop the way his stare made me feel like he could see every c***k in me. He moved in suddenly, fast enough that I barely had time to react.
His massive hand closed around my wrist and turned my arm just enough to correct my stance.
Heat shot through my skin so fast my breath caught in my throat.
I hated that it happened. Hated that his touch felt like fire under ice. Hated that the space between us seemed to tighten, alive with a dangerous pull I had no business feeling.
I jerked against his grip and lowered my voice into something sharp and mean.
“Are you trying to teach me how to fight, or are you just enjoying the closeness, Alpha?”
A dangerous smirk tugged at the corner of his scarred lips, though his eyes stayed fixed and hard on me.
“If I wanted to hold you against your will, Arieth, you wouldn’t have enough breath left to make clever jokes.”
“Good to know you have boundaries,” I snapped.
I used the moment his attention shifted to drive my leg low, aiming for his ankles.
He did not budge.
My shin slammed into him like I had kicked a wall of iron, and pain shot up my leg so fast I nearly hissed aloud. He looked carved from stone, unshaken, while I stood there glaring at him with all the fury I could gather.
But underneath the anger, something colder was tightening inside me.
Fear.
Deep, suffocating fear.
Because what if he was right?
What if this thing inside me was not just power, not just instinct, but something raw and dangerous that needed control before it turned on me? The strange force awakening in my blood felt too wild, too heavy, and too alive. It pressed against my skin like it wanted out.
“Control your inner energy,” Lucien commanded.
He stepped back, his fists lifting again, his stance ready and alert. “Stop fighting your own nature. Stop trying to hide what woke up when you touched that bone charm.”
“I am not trying to hide anything!” I roared.
My anger snapped loose all at once. I lunged at him, throwing everything I had into one desperate strike, one furious blow, as if I could batter the truth out of my own body.
Our bodies collided in a violent exchange.
Then it happened.
A blinding heat burst from the center of my chest so fast it stole my breath. My vision blurred. The hazel in my eyes shifted hard, violently, until silver flooded through them like liquid moonlight. My pulse slammed against my ribs. For one terrifying moment, I felt as though my body had cracked open from the inside, stretched too far, pushed to the edge of a shift I could not control.
I gasped and stumbled back, agony tearing through my lungs.
Lucien froze.
That alone was enough to scare me.
His stillness was the kind that belonged to a predator sensing blood in the air. His eyes widened, just slightly, and something guarded and stunned flickered across his face.
I looked down at my trembling hands, waiting for the familiar silver-white mist of a wolf shift to begin curling around my fingers.
Instead, thick plumes of smoke leaked from fresh cracks in my skin.
Dark smoke.
Heavy, violent, and wrong.
It rose into the freezing air in slow, twisting waves, carrying a pitch-black magic that made the clearing feel colder than before.
And for the first time since this nightmare began, Lucien looked truly shocked.
- Writer
