Oops! My Twin Alphas Claimed Me

Chapter 13: Training Begins

Chapter 13: Training Begins

Thorne ran the morning sessions like a man determined to prove a point, though I still hadn't decided whether the point was that I belonged in that training yard or that I didn't.

Two weeks into it, my footwork had improved enough that I could last longer than a few seconds against a padded strike, and the warriors assigned to spar with me had stopped looking quite so nervous about accidentally hurting the Luna. Small victories. I collected them where I could.

The power was different. The power didn't care about small victories.

It came and went on its own schedule, flaring hot under my skin during moments of real fear or fury and going utterly silent the rest of the time, no matter how hard I reached for it. Thorne wanted consistency. Ryker wanted control. Ash wanted safety above all else. I wanted, more than anything, to stop feeling like a stranger in my own body.

"Again," Thorne said, circling me in the training yard, a wooden practice blade in each hand. "This time, actually try to call it instead of waiting for it to save you."

"I don't know how to call it," I said, frustration fraying the edges of my patience. "It's not like flexing a muscle, Beta Thorne. I don't even know what it is."

"Then we find out," he said, and came at me fast.

I'd sparred with him enough times now to read the shape of his attacks, but this one carried more force than our usual drills not enough to truly hurt me, I told myself, even as adrenaline spiked hard and sharp through my chest. I threw my arm up on instinct, bracing for impact.

The blade never landed.

Heat exploded from my palms in a wave I didn't control, didn't aim, didn't have the first idea how to shape. It hit Thorne square in the chest and threw him backward hard enough that he skidded across the packed dirt, crashing into the low fence at the yard's edge with a grunt of pain.

The yard went silent. Warriors who'd been sparring nearby froze mid-motion, staring.

"Thorne!" I ran to him before I'd even registered moving, horror rising thick and choking in my throat. He was pushing himself up already, wincing, one hand pressed to his ribs, but very clearly alive, very clearly not seriously hurt — which did nothing to slow the pounding terror in my chest.

"I'm fine," he grunted, waving off two warriors who moved to help him stand. "Winded. Nothing broken."

"I could have killed you," I said, voice shaking now that the adrenaline had nowhere left to go. My hands were still tingling, that same silver hum crawling under my skin like it wanted more, like throwing one grown Alpha into a fence had only whetted its appetite. "I don't know how to control this. What if it had been worse? What if next time it's not a fence you hit?"

"Elara." Ash's voice, calm and steady, cutting through the spiral before it could fully take hold. He must have been watching from the mansion, because he reached the yard fast, kneeling in front of me and taking both my still-tingling hands in his. "Look at me. Breathe."

"I hurt him," I said, the words cracking. "I didn't even mean to. It just — happened."

"He's standing," Ash said gently. "Bruised, maybe insulted that a Luna who's been training for two weeks got the better of him, but standing." A faint, deliberate attempt at lightness, meant to anchor me rather than dismiss what had happened. "This is exactly why we're training, Elara. Not because the power is wrong. Because it's strong, and strong things need somewhere safe to be strong. That's all this is."

Thorne, still catching his breath, limped closer, waving off further fussing from the gathered warriors. "The girl's right to be shaken," he said, gruff but not unkind. "But she's wrong about one thing." He looked at me directly, something almost like respect in his weathered face despite the ache he was clearly still nursing. "That wasn't uncontrolled rage. That was instinct protecting itself from what it read as a real threat. Which means it's not random. It's responsive. That's not nothing, Luna. That's a start."

"It's not enough of a start if I can't tell the difference between training and danger," I said. "What if I hurt someone who isn't wearing padding? What if next time it's Mia standing too close when I panic, or a child, or—"

"Then we make sure it never gets that far," Ryker's voice cut in, and I turned to find him striding across the yard, jaw tight with barely leashed anger not at me, I realized, but at the fear still shaking through my voice. He crouched in front of me, forcing my gaze up to his. "You didn't ask for this power, little omega. But you're not facing it alone. Every session, every flare, every mistake — we're right here. All of us."

"He's right," Thorne said, surprising me by agreeing with Ryker without a trace of his usual skepticism. "I've trained hundreds of warriors in my time. Every single one of them hurt someone by accident before they learned control. You're not broken for struggling with this. You'd be a fool not to be afraid of something this strong."

I looked between the three of them, Ash's steady patience, Ryker's fierce, protective certainty, Thorne's grudging, hard-won respect and slowly felt the worst of the panic loosen its grip on my chest.

"Again," I said finally, pushing myself back to standing on legs that still trembled slightly. "But maybe with a target that isn't a person this time."

Thorne's mouth twitched, the closest thing to a smile I'd seen from him yet. "Now that," he said, "is the smartest thing you've said all morning."

We worked the rest of the session with practice dummies instead, and though the power still refused to answer on command, something had shifted in the yard that day not just in what I could do, but in how the people around me had chosen to stand beside me instead of away from what I might become.