Training Ground Confessions
787 Words
Word spread fast at Blackthorn Academy, faster than in any pack hall I had ever lived in. By midday, half the courtyard already knew the Wolfe heir and the Ashworth heiress had been paired for the same combat training rotation.
I suspected Kade had arranged it. I had no proof, only the memory of a man who never let anything happen by accident.
The training instructor, a broad shouldered wolf named Garrick, paired us off with brisk efficiency and barked instructions about footwork and balance that I only half heard. My mind was still spinning from what Kade told me in the courtyard. Fated mates.
Unaccepted bond. A door still opened that, in my first life, had already been slammed shut before I ever arrived.
"You're distracted," Kade said, circling me slowly on the mat.
"I'm thinking."
"About what I told you." Not a question again. He seemed to prefer statements, the kind that forced honesty out of people simply by refusing to leave room for lies.
"You shouldn't have told me," I said. "We only met last night."
"I know." He stopped circling. "I don't know why I did."
For a moment, neither of us moved, the training field noise fading into the background, students shouting and grunting and slamming into mats somewhere far away from the small, tight space between us.
"Can I ask you something strange," he said.
"You already have."
The corner of his mouth almost lifted, almost, and it startled me how much that almost smile still had the power to hollow out my chest, even now, even knowing everything I knew about what he would become.
"Have we met before?" he asked. "Before last night, I mean. I keep feeling like I've seen you somewhere. In a dream, maybe."
My pulse spiked so hard I was certain he could hear it.
"That's a strange question," I said carefully.
"I told you it was strange."
I forced my expression into something neutral, something that gave him nothing. "Maybe you're just trying a new line on the girl your father wants you to marry."
Something flashed across his face, quick and sharp. "My father wants a lot of things. That doesn't mean I want them, too."
That surprised me. In my first life, Kade never once suggested he might want something different from what his father demanded. He simply obeyed, cold and efficient, right up until the night his obedience got me killed.
"What do you want then," I asked before I could stop myself.
He studied me for a long moment, longer than was comfortable, longer than two strangers who met the night before had any business studying each other.
"I don't know yet," he said. "But I think I want to find out."
Garrick's whistle cut through the moment, calling the group back for a sparring drill, and Kade stepped back, the careful distance returning to his posture like a mask sliding back into place.
We sparred for the next hour, trading blows that meant nothing and everything at once, and by the end of it, my whole body ached in ways that had nothing to do with bruises.
I told myself it was strategy. I told myself that getting close to Kade Wolfe was the smartest way to understand the threat waiting for me down the road, to learn every weakness before Isolde ever got the chance to use them against me.
I almost believed it.
Then, as the students filed off the training field toward the dining hall, I felt a hand close around my wrist and pull me sideways into the shadow of the stone archway.
Isolde Marsh stood in front of me, close enough that I could see the fine tremor in her jaw, the barely restrained fury behind her dark eyes.
"I know what you're doing," she hissed.
My blood ran cold. "Excuse me?"
"I saw you two on that mat. I saw the way he looked at you." Her grip tightened on my wrist, nails biting into skin. "He's mine. Fated. Bound by the moon goddess herself. Whatever little game you're playing, Ashworth, you're going to lose."
I met her gaze without flinching, though my heart was slamming against my ribs so hard I thought she might hear it too.
"I'm not playing any game," I said quietly.
Isolde's lips curled into something that was not quite a smile. "Good. Then you won't mind when I tell you exactly what I did to the last girl who tried to take what's mine."
Behind her, over her shoulder, I caught a glimpse of dark fabric disappearing around the corner of the courtyard, someone who had clearly been listening to every word.
And it was not Kade.
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