Not His First Choice

chapter 4: Out Of Control

Mira pov

Mandatory training started three days after I got home, whether I felt ready for it or not.

The training yard hadn't changed much physically — same packed dirt, same weapon racks along the fence, same worn wooden posts for striking practice. But the energy in it was completely different. Ironwood wolves moved through drills with sharp, silent precision, none of the easy joking I remembered from Ashwood sessions. Everyone kept their eyes forward. Nobody wasted breath on conversation.

I told myself I could handle it. I'd survived a year on my own with nothing but my own two hands. A training session shouldn't have rattled me.

But grief doesn't care what you've survived. It waits for the moment you're already stretched thin, and then it finds a way in.

We were running combat drills, paired off against each other, when I ended up across from a broad-shouldered Ironwood wolf named Grant who clearly thought sparring with the new girl from the conquered pack was going to be easy work.

"Try to keep up, Ashwood," he said, smirking as he circled me.

Something about the way he said "Ashwood" — like it was a punchline instead of my home — cracked something loose in me. I thought about my father's scar. I thought about my mother's tired eyes. I thought about the burned-out markers where my pack's symbol used to stand. I thought, for one unwelcome second, about Deacon's face turning toward Brielle, and Grant caught the full force of everything I'd been carrying for the last year in one clean strike to his jaw.

He hit the ground harder than I meant him to.

The training yard went quiet. Grant sat up, blood at his lip, staring at me like he wasn't sure whether to be furious or impressed.

"She's got a point to prove," someone muttered from the sidelines.

I didn't care anymore. A year of grief and anger, all of it I'd been swallowing down since Deacon's birthday party, came rushing up at once, and I turned it loose on every drill after that — hitting harder than I needed to, moving faster than the exercises required, until my knuckles ached and my breath came in ragged gasps and I still didn't feel like it was enough.

That's when Alpha Kade Ryer walked into the training yard.

I'd heard his name enough times in the last three days that I expected someone loud, someone who filled a room the second he entered it. He didn't. He moved through the training yard the way a predator moves through familiar territory — unhurried, aware of everything, taking up exactly as much space as he needed and not one inch more. He was tall, built like someone who trained because he needed to, not because he wanted an audience. His dark eyes swept over the yard once and landed on me.

"You," he said. Not a shout. Just a flat statement that somehow cut through all the noise in my head. "You're the one who put Grant on the ground."

"He's fine," I snapped back, before I'd fully thought it through. "He'll live."

A few of the Ironwood wolves near me went very still, like I'd said something dangerous. Maybe I had.

Kade tilted his head slightly, studying me the way you'd study something unexpected. "That wasn't a question."

"I know," I said. "I was just letting you know he's fine, in case you were worried."

I don't know what came over me. A year alone had taught me not to back down, and grief had stripped away whatever patience I might have had left for anyone telling me what to do. I was tired. I was furious. And this man, whoever he was, represented every single thing that had changed about my home without my permission.

Kade crossed the training yard toward me, and up close I could see he was even more solid than he'd looked from a distance, a long scar tracing one eyebrow, his jaw set in a way that suggested he wasn't used to people talking back to him.

"You've got a lot of anger for someone who's been here three days," he said.

"You've got a lot of nerve for someone standing on my family's land," I shot back.

The training yard had gone completely silent now. I could feel every eye on us, waiting to see what would happen next. I should have been afraid. Some distant, reasonable part of me knew I should have been afraid. But grief and exhaustion had burned that part of me down to nothing, and all that was left was the girl who'd learned to throw a real punch over the last year.

"You want to test that anger against me?" Kade asked, low and even.

I didn't answer with words.

I swung.

I don't fully know what I expected — for him to dodge easily, probably, to make a fool of me in front of his whole pack and put me firmly back in my place. What I did not expect was my fist actually connecting, clean and hard, against the side of his jaw.

The training yard went dead silent.

Kade's head barely turned with the impact. When he looked back at me, there was no fury in his expression, which somehow scared me more than fury would have. There was something else entirely — something sharp and interested, like I'd just done something no one had dared do in a very long time.

I didn't wait to find out what came next.

I turned and ran straight for the locker room, my knuckles throbbing, my heart slamming against my ribs, absolutely certain I had just made the worst decision of my entire life.