Betrothed To The Ruthless Alpha

Chapter Five: The Match

The training grounds sat behind the east wall, a wide stretch of packed dirt surrounded by weapon racks and targets that had clearly seen better days. A few Silver Moon warriors were already out there when I arrived, sparring in pairs, and every single one of them stopped to stare when I walked in.

Word traveled fast in this house. I was starting to understand that.

"You're the new Luna." A woman stepped forward, older, scarred along one forearm, holding a wooden practice sword like it was an extension of her own arm. "I'm Ilsa. I run training here. Dregor says you're supposed to learn to hold your own."

"I can hold my own," I said.

Ilsa raised an eyebrow, unconvinced, and handed me a sword anyway. "Let's see it, then."

I took the sword and let it feel unfamiliar in my hand, even though it wasn't. Back home, my father had put a blade in my hands before I could properly walk, and a bow not long after that. Crimson didn't have fancy war colleges or borrowed Frevnent steel, whatever Phiona liked to imply, but we knew how to fight, because we'd had to. I just didn't see any reason to let Silver Moon know that yet.

So I fumbled my first swing. Let it look clumsy, awkward, a girl who'd never held a real weapon in her life. Ilsa sighed like she'd expected exactly that and started walking me through the basics, patient in the tired way of someone repeating a lesson they'd given a hundred times before.

I was midway through pretending to struggle with my stance when Phiona arrived.

She came dressed for it, somehow — training clothes that still looked more like a costume than anything practical, hair pulled back but not a strand out of place. She surveyed the yard like she owned it, which, given her connection to Frevnent's weapons, she basically did.

"Look at that," she said, loud enough for everyone to hear. "The Crimson bride, holding a sword like it's a hot poker."

A few of the warriors laughed. I let them.

"I did hear Crimson doesn't train its women," Phiona went on, circling closer. "I suppose it's not really your fault. Nobody bothered to teach you."

"I suppose not," I said, keeping my voice small, my grip on the sword deliberately loose and wrong.

Phiona smiled, delighted, like a cat that had found something to bat around. "Why don't we make this interesting? A match. Nothing serious — just enough to see what Silver Moon actually married into." She looked around at the gathered warriors, playing to her audience now. "Unless you'd rather not embarrass yourself further."

"I don't mind," I said. "Though I should warn you, I really haven't done much of this."

"I'm sure," Phiona said, in a tone that made it clear she believed the opposite of nothing.

We squared off in the center of the yard, a small crowd forming around us now — warriors, kitchen staff who'd wandered out to watch, and to my mild dismay, Scott, leaning against a fence post with his arms crossed, grinning like he already knew something the rest of them didn't.

The first exchange, I let her land a hit. Let my footwork look sloppy, let her push me back a few steps, let the crowd murmur with the kind of satisfaction people get from watching exactly what they expected to happen.

Phiona grew bolder. Faster. Careless in the way people get when they think they've already won.

That was when I stopped pretending.

The second round, I didn't fumble. I let my body remember every lesson my father ever gave me, every hour spent in Crimson's training yard until my arms shook and my hands blistered and healed and blistered again. I moved the way I actually knew how to move — quick, precise, reading her weight before she'd even finished shifting it.

I disarmed her in four moves. Her sword hit the dirt, and the yard went dead silent.

"Beginner's luck," Phiona said, snatching the sword back up, color rising in her cheeks.

"Sure," I said. "Let's go again, if you'd like."

We went again. And again. Each round, I let her think she had an opening before I closed it. By the fourth match, sweat had soaked through her collar and her careful hair had come loose from its pins, and the crowd that had laughed at me twenty minutes ago had gone completely quiet, watching with something closer to disbelief.

Phiona's jaw tightened. I could see her doing the math, the same math I'd watched Parker do at dinner — recalculating exactly what kind of problem I was.

"Enough with wooden swords," she said, breathing hard. "Let's see what you can really do."

And then, without warning, she shifted.

It happened fast — the shudder, the c***k of bone rearranging, fur sweeping over skin, until a brown wolf stood where Phiona had been a second before, easily twice my size, teeth bared, eyes daring me to match her.

The crowd went electric. This was the real test, and everyone knew it. A duel of wolves meant something different than a duel of swords. It meant showing exactly what you were.

I felt the shift rise in me too — that old, familiar pull under my skin, the wolf that lived just beneath the surface of everything I was. I could have let it out. Some small, furious part of me wanted to, wanted to show every single person in that yard exactly what they were underestimating.

I thought of my father's voice instead. Low, urgent, the way he used to sound only when he was truly afraid. No matter what happens, Evelyn. No matter who challenges you. You do not show them what you are.

I didn't know why, not really, not back then. I only knew that fear like that didn't come from nowhere.

So I let the pull pass. Let my shoulders drop instead, my chin tip down, my whole posture arrange itself into something that looked, to everyone watching, exactly like defeat.

"I think that's enough for today," I said, setting my sword down.

Phiona shifted back, smug now, breathing hard but victorious. "Can't keep up, Crimson girl?"

I looked at her — at the loose hair, the torn collar, the four rounds she'd lost before finally reaching for the one advantage she thought I couldn't match. And I smiled, slow and easy, like I had all the time in the world.

"I beat you four times with a stick," I said. "You needed to grow claws just to feel better about yourself. I think we both know who couldn't keep up."

A few of the warriors laughed — real laughter this time, not the kind aimed at me. Phiona's face went red, and she turned on her heel and stalked off without another word, leaving her borrowed dignity somewhere behind her in the dirt.

Scott pushed off the fence post, still grinning, and fell into step beside me as I headed back toward the house.

"Four rounds," he said. "With a stick, like you said. That was almost too easy."

"I don't know what you mean."

"Sure you don't." He glanced sideways at me, something sharper than his usual teasing in his eyes now. "You didn't shift, though. Interesting choice, when you clearly had her beat either way."

I kept my face carefully blank. "I didn't feel like it."

"Mm." He didn't push further, but I could tell the thought had lodged somewhere behind his eyes, filed away for later, the same way Parker had filed away everything about me at dinner. "Well. However you did it, you made her look like a fool in front of half the training yard. That's going to be all anyone talks about by dinner."

"Good," I said, and meant it.

But underneath the satisfaction, something else sat heavier in my chest — the memory of my father's voice, the pull I'd swallowed back down, the question I still didn't have an answer to.

What exactly was I so afraid of everyone finding out?