My Fiance is Sleeping With My Step Sister

Chapter 53

I woke up sore in places I did not even know could ache. The training with Joey had pushed me harder than the night before and my muscles complained with every move. It felt good in a way, like proof that I was changing, growing into something that could stand beside Devon. Things had been good and quiet around the pack after Levi's threat.

We ate quickly in the quiet of our room. Devon watched me the whole time, his eyes never leaving my hands. They looked normal enough, but under the skin something restless lived. A heat that throbbed and hummed, like a small engine running just below the surface. I could feel it in my chest, like a coal that refused to cool.

Joey met us at the clearing, grinning like she already knew she would make me pay. “Today we work footwork,” she said, tossing me a practice stick. “You need balance if you’re going to keep that fire under control.”

“Footwork?” I repeated, but she already had my back. “Then I will learn footwork.”

We moved through the drills and I surprised myself. My feet found positions faster than before, my body answering instinctively. Still, every time Joey's staff hit mine, a spark would crawl across my skin. Nothing like before, nothing that lit anything aflame, but enough to make the hairs rise along my arms. Joey frowned once or twice and Devon’s jaw tightened more than once. They noticed. I noticed. And that made the sparks feel like they meant more.

“Slow down,” Joey snapped at one point, but there was no annoyance in her voice, only concern. She watched my hands as if reading them. “You are pushing. Not the right kind of push. Let it out smaller. Find the edges.”

I tried. I tried to think of a bowl holding water and not of the blaze inside me. I focused on the weight of my feet. Breathe in and out. The spark receded like a tide pulling back. My lungs burned but my hands stilled.

After the drills Devon paired me with a younger warrior for sparring. He was fast and eager and full of the kind of energy that made a person useful in a fight, but he was no match for Joey and he was not meant to be. He had been chosen because Devon wanted me to move with another. Because he wanted me to know the rhythm of others.

The first few exchanges went well. I kept my guard, found openings, used my momentum and watched his eyes. Then a shout from the edge of the clearing made the warrior flinch. A loose dog had run through and he stumbled. Instinct took over and I moved to help, to steady him, but the motion rubbed a spark across my palm. He hissed and jerked back, choking.

“Are you all right?” I asked, but he was already glancing at the others with suspicion. The way they looked at me, like someone who had seen a trick at a market, stabbed sharp and thin.

I wanted to say something, to tell them I did not mean it, but Devon stepped between us and the young warrior bowed out. Joey gave me a quick look and mouthed, "Keep breathing, keep the edges".

The practice finished. Warriors laughed and called to each other. There was a camaraderie I tried to feel part of, but it hovered just out of reach. I cleaned the sweat from my face, keeping my hands to myself so nothing else would catch whatever the sparks were.

When it ended I walked back to the pack house with Devon close enough to touch. He kept catching my eye and offering little smiles that did not reach all the way. I knew what he was thinking. He was measuring, counting, planning. He was considering patrols and shifts and who he could trust when the war came. He would not show it outwardly, but I could feel the wheels turning in him.

That night he called three warriors in private in the watch room. I overheard them talking as I passed the doorway. Devon’s voice was quiet and steady, but his words like cold iron. He spoke of patrol patterns and sentries and of doubling the watchers during the hours when moonlight hid the paths. He asked for loyalty and discretion. Two of the men bowed their heads and left. The third stayed a moment longer, his face taut, and then he too was gone. When Devon came back to the room, his hand found mine and squeezed.

“You heard,” he said, and I nodded against his palm.

“We will be ready,” he promised. The promise was not a soft one. It held the weight of a man who had already seen betrayal and knew its taste. “Keep training. Not just with Joey. I will have you training with the wolves I trust. You will learn to move as one of them.”

I looked up at him and saw something like pride in his eyes. It steadied me, but along with the pride came the ache of responsibility. We were building a wall around us, but the sparks still flitted at my skin like restless moths.

That evening, after the men left, I sat alone on the porch with a blanket over my knees. The stars hung cold above us and everything smelled like wet earth. I rubbed my palms together and tried to feel nothing, to beat the hum into silence. For a while it worked. The breeze cooled my skin and the heat receded.

Then a flicker like a thought danced across my fingers. Just a shimmer at first, then a warmth that ran up my arm, not burning but alive and insistent. I tightened my hands around the blanket so hard my knuckles went white. The sensation spread through me like proof: the change was not waiting for some grand sign. It was moving, inch by inch, beneath the surface.

Devon came out and sat beside me without a word. He did not need to ask. I leaned into him, letting the warmth from his body try to drown the other heat out. He held me until I stopped trembling.

“Soon?” he asked into my hair.

I did not know how to answer. I felt the power like a second heartbeat, steady and certain and frightening. I might not know when it would arrive, but I knew this: it was close. Closer than I wanted, and closer than I feared.

“Soon,” I said finally, and his mouth at the top of my head was a small, fierce vow.

We sat on the porch in the dark, two against the world, and the pack breathed around us, unaware yet of how things were shifting from the inside out.