Betrayal - The Matlock Pack: Book Two

Chapter 19 - Kadin

Wednesday 10 February

~*Kadin*~

“Okay, can I call a time out?” I put my hands together to tap out a ‘T’, then placed my fists on my hips.

Nat pulled her right cross mere millimetres from my chin before she straightened up. “Wow. You didn’t even try to block that. You trust me that much?”

I waved my hand in the air to dismiss her concern. “I knew you’d stop.”

She c****d her eyebrow, clearly not believing me. “Damn reckless fool…” She wandered over to her bag to grab some water. She popped the top and downed a couple of mouthfuls before she realised I wasn’t saying anything, even though I was the one to call pause. “What’s on your mind?”

I watched her fidget with the bottle top for a moment. “You seem calmer today.”

Her eyebrows rose so high on her furrowed brow they nearly went into her hairline. “What?”

I chuckled at her reaction. “You’re calmer today.”

“Yeah, I heard you the first time. I just don’t know why you’re saying it.”

“Uh… Because you’re calmer today?”

“Oh, for f**k’s sake, Kadin. Out with it. You know how much I hate it when you do this.” She dropped her bottle back in her bag and headed back to the mat.

I rolled my eyes at her, knowing full well that she’d see it and it would rile her. I wanted to rile her. “You’re more calculated this morning. And I can’t figure out why.” And it was freaking me out.

“I’m more calculated?” She bounced on the spot to keep her body warmed up.

“Yeah.”

“In what way?”

I chewed my bottom lip. “All the other times we’ve sparred, it’s felt like you’re running off raw emotion. But today…”

“Today I’m not?”

“Today, it’s like you’re playing chess.”

Nat laughed. “I’m pretty sure that this mat isn’t a chessboard, but what do I know? I have no clue how to play the game.” She motioned me forward to join her on the mat.

“Really?” I stepped up but didn’t get into position. “I’ll have to teach you.”

She shrugged noncommittally. “Never really had the time.” She took a step towards me. “Come on. We’ve still got half an hour left before lunch. I want to see how many more times I can get you on your back.”

I burst out laughing. “Only if you buy me dinner first, Nat.”

She frowned and when she realised what she’d said, her cheeks pinked from embarrassment. “Oh, f**k off.”

A sudden thought popped into my mind. Huh. It was worth a shot to see if it distracted her. I lowered into a defensive crouch and motioned her forward.

As expected, Nat wasted no time in attacking. It hadn’t taken long for her to get used to attacking me, but I noticed she still automatically went into defensive mode when she was sparring with someone she wasn’t used to. She went with her typical one-two-three combo, which I parried easily. “Speaking of dates…” I followed through with an uppercut that she dodged.

“We weren’t, but go on.” She let loose on a right hook, then a left cross.

I skipped back to avoid both. “I see you getting cosy in class with Mac. Anything there?” I telegraphed a right jab but pulled it at the last second and instead swept my left leg to see if I could knock her to the ground.

To my utter astonishment, it worked. Double huh. Turns out I actually could distract her. You learn something new every day.

“This is a new viewpoint.” She blinked up at me from her position on the mat, then wrinkled her nose. “I don’t like it.”

“Best get used to it, lovely.” I chuckled at the glare she pointed in my direction before I offered a hand to pull her up. “So, there is something going on between you and Mac. Pray, do tell!”

She swallowed nervously. “He… Uh…”

“Spit it out, woman!” It was my turn to bounce on the spot while I watched her squirm.

“He asked me out yesterday.”

I knew it! “Details please.” I motioned her forward.

“It’s nothing. I haven’t given him a response yet.” She took an enormous step into my space and tried to hit me with a right cross to my stomach.

I dodged out of the way easily. “You’re telegraphing, Nat. Watch yourself.” I retaliated with an uppercut, which she barely missed. “And you’re distracted.” Maybe I’d found her secret weakness—Mac. “Why haven’t you responded?”

She advanced on me with three consecutive jabs to my solar plexus. I blocked the first two, but she caught me on the third. “I don’t know.”

I raised an eyebrow as I rubbed my chest to ease the sting of her punch. “It couldn’t have anything to do with Bells, could it?” I went to advance on her with a rapid-fire combo, but I stopped short when I saw the scowl on her face. I dropped my fists to my waist. “Wait. Really?”

The scowl deepened. “I don’t want to talk about him.”

I frowned. “Why not?”

“Because he’s an arse.”

I tipped my head to the side and studied her. “Uh… No, he isn’t.” Where was this coming from?

Nat stepped back from me and looked at me like I’d just killed her puppy. “Uh… Yeah, he is.” She gave me a calculated look. “Why the hell are you defending him? I would have thought I could at least count on you to agree with me.”

I snorted. “Just because I dumped him doesn’t mean I hate him.” I jumped up and down on the spot, somewhat impatient that we weren’t sparring, but this conversation was far too interesting for me to walk away.

“Then why did you dump him?”

I stopped bouncing and let out a deep sigh as my hands dropped limply to my sides. “That wasn’t my choice.” I turned away from her and went to sit down at the edge of the mat.

There was a weighted pause, where I could almost hear her thinking. “Spence?” she asked softly from behind me.

Turning around, I settled myself on the bench and tapped my nose, then pointed at her.

“Hm,” she said, following me over to the bench, but stayed standing in front of me. “There’s someone we can all agree is an arse.”

I let out a snuffling chuckle in agreement, then let the silence fall between us again. I had found her weakness, and she had found mine. Brilliant.

Nat lowered herself on to the edge of the mat in front of me. “I don’t know, Kadin. I haven’t said I’d go on a date with Mac because it feels too soon after him.” She almost spat out the word. “But Mac makes me feel so much calmer.” She sighed and leaned back on her hands. “Maybe that’s what you were picking up on this morning?”

“Maybe,” I muttered. I thought back over our sparring sessions from the start of the course. Nat had been a whirlwind of anger whenever she really let loose. I didn’t mind because I learnt a ton from her, but there was always an overwhelming sense of chaotic energy there. You never knew what she was going to do next, because I didn’t think she even knew. This morning the energy was still there, but the chaos wasn’t as in your face as it had been. Like I’d told her earlier, her moves were far more calculated than I’d ever seen before.

It terrified me and intrigued me in equal measure. A chaotic Nat was hard enough to contend with; a calculating Nat was going to be next to impossible.

“I think you should accept Mac’s invitation,” I said, leaning forward to rest my elbows on my knees. “You seem to enjoy his company in class, but spending time with him outside of class is different.”

She snickered. “True. We were chatting at The Gap after you all left. You know, the night you all got attacked…”

“Yeah, don’t remind me,” I mumbled. That particular experience still pissed me off. I despised the fact that I hadn’t fought better. And to think that two people I’d grown up with had been behind it? Infuriating. No wonder Bells had been so out of it recently.

“… and we seemed to get along great, but there seemed to be this shadow of sorts hanging over us that was different to what we’re like in class. Like we couldn’t talk freely, you know?” She nibbled her bottom lip as she thought. “It only appeared after he showed up.” A frown crossed her features as her eyes darkened in anger.

I scratched the back of my neck in thought. “Nat, I’m gonna ask you something that you’re gonna hate, but I need to know. I think it could help you decide what you want to do.” I watched her eyes brighten and get curious.

“Okay…?”

I took a deep breath. “What exactly happened between you and Bells?” She scowled at me and opened her mouth to say something before I cut her off. “Don’t tell me ‘nothing’. ‘Nothing’ wouldn’t present as a f**k-ton of vitriol.”

She closed her mouth and raised an eyebrow at me in query.

“Yes, I know how to use the word ‘vitriol’.” I waved my hand in the air. “Moving on. Answer the question, please.”

Nat pressed her lips together in annoyance but said nothing.

“Oh, for f**k’s sake, Nat!” I threw my hands up in the air, then got up off the bench and started pacing back and forth. “Fine. Let’s see how much I can figure out on my own.”

She remained frozen, only watching me pace with her eyes.

“I’m assuming he dumped you, because you’re pissed at him, but he’s not pissed at you.” I paused my pacing to look at her for confirmation.

She nodded cautiously and c****d her head to the side to see what else I would say.

“Okay.” My fingers started fidgeting as I resumed my wanderings. “You two seemed to be fine before New Year’s, so it must have been something that happened after then…” I stopped and stared at her with wide eyes. “You were in that coma. Did he dump you when you were in the coma?!”

She huffed. “Not exactly.”

I watched her in silence for what felt like an hour. “Not exactly?? So? How?!”

She closed her eyes in resignation and let out a very long sigh. “He dumped me on New Year’s Eve just before the midnight fireworks.”

I frowned at her. “But that’s when you got beaten, right? I found you not long after then.”

“Yup.”

“f**k, dude. You had a really shitty New Year’s Eve, didn’t you?”

She opened her eyes a crack and stared at me in exasperation.

“Yeah, okay, fair point.” I smirked at her. “But why did he dump you? That’s the part I can’t figure out.” I tugged my earlobe in irritation. “Because he certainly doesn’t act like he wanted to. He’s been watching you like a lost puppy ever since we started training.”

Nat rolled her eyes. “He dumped me because of Alex.”

I stopped and stared at her, letting my jaw drop so low she could’ve driven a truck into my mouth. “What.”

“You don’t care about my male wolf.” She shrugged and let her head hang back so she could stare at the clear sky above. “It doesn’t mean everyone feels the same way. I see it every day during sparring or even just in class. I’m sure you’ve noticed it, too.”

“But…” I trailed off. “Bells wouldn’t do that. He’s not like that…” I felt my forehead furrow in confusion.

When her eyes found mine, there was ice in them. “He did that. He’s like that.”

I shook my head in denial. This wasn’t the Bells I knew. And if it was, why would he still be pining after her like he’d been doing since training began? “I feel like there’s something missing here…”

Nat immediately shifted her eyes away from mine.

“There is, isn’t there?” I stared at her. “What—”

“That’s not for me to share,” she said, cutting me off quickly. “But you’re clever, Kadin. I’m sure you could figure it out from what you’ve seen since training began and what happened the night they attacked you both.” She leaned her head to the side. “Or you could go directly to the source and ask him yourself.”

A few seconds went past before I started pacing again, my mind shifting into overdrive to try to read between her lines. It had to have something to do with Tatum and Zelda, that much was clear. I cast my memory back over training and how Bells had been in class. He’d been skittish for quite a while whenever he was sparring, and spent most of his class time staring wistfully at Nat.

Takeshi had said they’d targeted ‘Bells and several others’. I knew Nat was one of those ‘several others’, and she’d ended up in a coma from their attack.

Why had I never thought about what they’d done to Bells before our attack? And who else had been targeted??

“Okay…” I knitted my brows together as I thought. f**k… I was really going to need to spend some time thinking about this. “Um… Last question, I promise.”

Nat sighed impatiently. “What now?”

“If you’re so upset with him, why did you help him last week?” I was confused and let it show plainly on my face.

“I didn’t help him,” she snapped, her eyes narrowing at me. “I helped Owen.”

“Yeah, you did, but you also talked Bells down.” I shook my head as I remembered the scene. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Bells had been mauling Owen like a rabid wild animal; kicking, biting, and scratching any bit of Owen he could get access to. Nat hadn’t hesitated, jumping right into the middle of them and throwing both herself and Bells across the mat to land heavily a couple of metres away from Owen’s bruised and bloodied form. She had made Bells face away from Owen, not letting him see what he’d done before she talked him down from whatever rage had hold of him.

She only rolled away from him once she knew he’d relaxed, looking for me amongst the small crowd of onlookers and motioning with a tilt of her head that she wanted me to go to him and make sure he was okay.

No matter what she said, she still cared about him. “You still love him, don’t you?” I asked quietly.

Nat became incredibly still as she glared furiously at me, letting out a low growl. My eyes dropped to her fists, where her fingers were turning into claws.

“Holy mother-f*****g c**k-balls, Nat…” I breathed out in awe, my eyes as wide as saucers. I’d heard about this happening to wolves, but I’d never seen it in person before. “Your hands…”

She still had venom in her eyes as she followed my eyeline down to her hands. As soon as her eyes locked onto what I was seeing, she let out a slow breath. “Dad…” She held her clawed hands up in front of her face and stared at them with wonder on her face, a tear rolling down her cheek.

She moved her hands this way and that, studying the perfect balance between her wolf paw and her human hand. Her nails extended much further out from each finger than usual and were now as sharp as razor blades. She curled her claws into fists and held them close to her chest. “I never considered… I never thought I’d be able to do that…” Her watery eyes found mine, a sad smile on her face.

Nat left her left hand against her chest and brought her right hand out to study it again. A look of extreme concentration swept over her face as ever so slowly her right hand returned to its human state. She let out a startled laugh. “Wow…”

My eyes darted between her right hand and her left. One was now human; the other was still a claw. “How?!”

Nat let her eyes drift to mine, sparkling in the daylight from unshed tears. “My dad. He could do this. He called it ‘controlled transformation’.” She pulled her left hand out in front of her. “I never got a chance to ask him to train me, so I assumed I’d never be able to.” The claws slowly retreated and morphed back to nails, and her fingers reappeared.

I kneeled in front of her, holding both her hands in mine so I could stare at them. “Nat… This is insane!” My eyes were massive as I took in the implications of being able to partially transform. This was a talent that only a handful of people around the world could achieve, and one of them was sitting in front of me. “Can you teach me how to do that? Please?”

She laughed. “Sure.” She dragged a now very human finger along her lower eyelids to wipe away her tears.

“Just let me figure out how I did it myself first, okay?”