Souls Divided [Souls Series 1]

Chapter 3

She was still a hundred meters out when the training ground noticed her — not all of it, not at first, but enough. One by one, fighters peeled off to watch, and Rohan straightened last of all, unhurried, as he'd simply decided the moment had arrived rather than been called to it.

He did not come her way. He stood there in the middle of the training ground, with the crowd still around him, arms crossed and chin slightly raised. Like a king granting an audience.

So she paced her steps and made herself enjoy the walk. If they wanted a show, she'd give them a good one.

"Specialist Commander Alpha Rohan." She stopped a respectful distance out, chin level. "Weapons Specialist First Class Anya Inaresh, reporting."

Something flickered behind his eyes — annoyance, maybe, or just the effort of making sense of her. "Anya Inaresh. Granddaughter of Dame Aiko Inaresh. Sister of the late War General Adira Inaresh, right-hand to the Queen. Your commander speaks highly of you."

"She'd say that regardless. Family discount." Two could play that game… if he wanted to try and put her in her spot by implying her familial bonds were part of why she was here and not her exemplary service record, she would not argue and defend herself. She did not need to.

"We were expecting a complete convoy, specialist." His voice dropped half a register on the last word, and it wasn't a compliment. "You came alone."

"I came ahead. There's a difference."

"There is not, not out here at least, and you know it." He took a step closer, and the training ground went very quiet around them, a whole group of wolves suddenly very interested in the dirt at their feet. "You traveled alone. Through unsecured territory. With everything currently happening at the borders."

"I'm a weapons specialist. Nobody's getting close enough to try anything."

"Nobody's perfect."

"My aim is." She said easily, with no heat in it, because it was simply true, and true things didn't need selling. She held his stare and let herself enjoy, just slightly, how she was able to make his jaw tick.

He probably thought this was a military/war royalty's granddaughter throwing her weight around, testing how far the name Inaresh could carry her. Sweet, really, how wrong he was. If he only knew how little that name had ever bought her. And if he had done his homework and looked properly at all her service records, he should have known that. She had been made to prove herself twice, thrice over.

She watched three of his team go stand carefully and professionally behind him — they seemed to be expecting something and wanted to be prepared for it:

A woman, Anya could smell the pure wolfen beta blood in her, stood with her arms crossed, patient in a way that read as strategy rather than boredom. Seemed like she knew more of what was going on in front of her than her Alpha did. And being a proper Beta, which was very likely she was, she would have done her research. Interesting… had she briefed her Alpha and had he just half listened, or had she kept him out of the loop? She tried to hide a tiny smirk…. Ooh, she definitely knew about Anya’s qualifications and was just waiting for the inevitable confrontation. She probably did brief Rohan and he, as an alpha trusting his Beta completely, or as an Alpha that thought his Beta was too detailed in her prep, had remembered only the highlights. Her being war royalty, sort of, being the main one, it seemed. That redhead had a tiny devil on her shoulder, Anya liked that.

The lean one at the back was trying to feel her out. She could feel it and shut him down, a neat trick she had learned from Aster and something foxes, and thus kitsune, could do more easily than wolves. Took more effort than usual, which was unexpected, but as a Gamma that was part of a specialist team he would likely be very talented. Just for a millisecond she could see he was surprised, and then he pretended again to be his unbothered and relaxed self.

The last one looked slightly older, but with wolves you never really knew their age. He hadn't really bothered straightening up for her arrival, already looking like he'd seen this exact scene play out a dozen times before and knew how it ended. Gave Delta vibes, clearly the brawn of the group. Only it seemed like he thought Rohan would win the argument. Somehow, he reminded her of her grandfather… there was something strangely familiar about him. So, she dissected his smell and there it was… hidden – interesting because not many could do that – behind a dominant wolf smell there was some fox and some panther in his lineage for sure, maybe more, he had wanderer’s blood.

Four people. Set up like an Alpha unit. Clearly, this was the complete specialist team she was intended to join and had done her research about — as much as was possible at least. Strangely, a lot was sealed, more than with a standard specialist unit. For now, Anya wrote that off to them being the top-ranked team, maybe they had done special missions, maybe there was more… who knew. Anya was curious and meticulous by nature, she would find out.

But here they were: The rarest, hardest-earned positions in Solerith's entire military, standing on an unremarkable stretch of dirt like it was nothing. She got it — why he looked at her like she'd wandered into something without understanding what it actually was.

"While you're on my team… no, if you get to join my team…" he said with a pause, making sure she got the message that he was not happy at this very moment, "...there will not be a repeat of you deviating from agreed-upon plans. I don't care whose blood you carry." “And it’s likely the Pack Commander will also want a word with you about what you did. We take safety seriously here.”

"You do understand," he said, "what this unit is? What it takes to get a spot on it?"

"I understand I'm standing in one."

"That wasn't an answer."

"It wasn't a question I felt like flattering." She tilted her head slightly. "You want to ask if I earned this, Alpha. Ask it. I'd rather that than the implications you are now making towards me and my family."

For a second — barely long enough to be sure she hadn't imagined it — something shifted at the edges of his eyes. That pale green color he had, gone dark at the rim, seemed to deepen further, like ink dropped in water and then pulled back before it could spread. Gone before she could decide if it had been real.

She filed it away. Kept her spine straight. She knew it likely meant anger, his wolf scratching at the surface, but she would not show doubt. She would never be respected in this team if she did, and she knew it.

"Are you always this brazen? Even to your commanding officer?”

“I am a professional and I do know how to follow orders, if that is what you mean…” Anya made sure her tone implied that he again was making implied accusations, and she did not like it. “Yet I will never stand for when wrongs are being stated, especially concerning those I care about. And…” pausing for emphasis “as you have now made clear, you do not really consider me as part of your team, so I am under no obligation yet to placate or appease you.”

She let that sit a moment before finishing, evenly, no theatrics in it at all — which she hoped made it land harder than shouting would have.

"I know I earned this post, yet I refuse to be part of a team that has already decided, on baseless assumptions, that I haven't. If that's what this is, I'd rather go back to the barracks right now, where I am respected. And you can explain to the Queen and my grandmother yourself why the specialist they vouched for turned around and left before the day was through." She readjusted the strap on her shoulder of her weapons carrier to give it all more emphasis, to show that she could easily pack up and go again. “Or, if you’re lucky, I might even meet the convoy on my way back and convey the message myself.”

Nobody moved. Somewhere behind Rohan, she caught the faintest exhale from the older one, like someone watching a hand he hadn't expected to get played this early, but appreciated it anyway.

Rohan's jaw worked. Whatever answer he was building, this clearly wasn't the way he himself had envisioned the conversation would go. But he still wanted to win, that was certain. It was now just a question of how he was going to make his point and show her he was the Alpha — depending on how he would handle that, Anya would make her final decision.