Blood On The Training Grounds

Amber's POV

The morning air was sharp with the scent of sweat and steel. Training days always stirred something satisfying in me. Watching wolves bleed and bruise reminded me of what power truly was, violence polished into loyalty. Men learned quickly when they were beaten into submission.

And today, submission was exactly what I intended Edrian to learn.

He had been standing at the edge of the grounds like a lost pup, eyes too wide, body too soft, his every breath a reminder that he did not belong here. Not in the palace, not in Xander’s orbit and definately not in my future throne.

A slave pretending to be something more.

The insult of it made my teeth ache.

The moment Edrian step foot into Darkmooncrest, I already knew Xander's mate was here even before Xander himself. I am that powerful.

The other night, I had sent my servant to summon him and made sure he heard me in Xander’s bed. Louder than necessary, nails raking against sheets, voice lilting in sweet, filthy praise. I knew he lingered outside the door. I knew the sound would slice him open and yet this morning, there he stood, still whole, still breathing, still allowed to stand where I could see him.

It was intolerable.

I had whispered to a few of the trainees boys hungry for favor, eager to impress me. Nothing traced back to me, of course. Wolves like them never asked why when the powerful Beta-born witch fiancée of the Crown Prince smiled and suggested that a lesson be taught.

So when Edrian stepped onto the grounds, I leaned back on the shaded pavilion bench, crossed my legs, and waited.

The first blow came fast. A shoulder slammed into his side. He staggered. 

A laugh rippled across the circle of men. Then another struck him, a fist to the ribs. His breath wheezed, body folding. He tried to push through them, but they boxed him in, snarling like jackals.

“Slave thinks he’s royal now,” one sneered.

“Should’ve stayed on your knees,” another barked before striking his face.

Blood sprayed and Edrian hit the dirt.

Delicious.

I let my lips curve into a smile, slow and venomous. No one looked at me, but they didn’t need to. I could already feel victory coiling tight around my throat like a necklace. 

Let him crawl, let him bleed. When Xander arrived, he’d see the truth that his so-called mate was a weak, pathetic, and unworthy wolf.

But then… something changed.

The ground itself seemed to hum. A low vibration, it was faint at first, then building, pounding in my chest like war drums.

Edrian lifted his head.

And his eyes—

Gods. His eyes were not his own.

The brown eyes I had grown to ignore as tired was swept away, devoured, all in a single gulp, by molten silver shot through with the thread of a predator. His lip twitched back not in pain, but in something dangerous and savage. His body trembled, his skin was wrinkled...then torn.

Before my eyes, his wolf burst free.

Not the scrawny, half-broken creature I had imagined he would carry inside. 

No.  This was a huge creature with a pelt as black as midnight, and a faint streak of silver running through his back. His teeth were quick and long and sharp as daggers. And his snarl! ghosts high, his snarl numbed the marrow in my bones.

The trainees stumbled back, too slow. 

Edrian’s wolf lunged. 

A boy shouted as his chest was torn open and the blood spurred onto the ground. One was struck down to the ground so hard his ribs snapped like kindling.

I half stood out of my seat with a shaking hand that I closed into fists. I felt fear... real icy fear...going along my spine. 

I hated it. Hated him.

I understood the truth, as I have never known it before. Edrian wasn’t weak, he wasn’t harmless.

He was powerful.

And power threatened me.

“No…” my nails tearing crescent holes in my palm, I said. “This can’t be…”

“EDRIAN!”

The voice boomed across the field, thunderous and raw.

Xander.

He stormed onto the grounds with eyes blazing gold, Feris bleeding through his skin. The sight of him was enough to make the trainees grovel where they lay, but it wasn’t them he went to.

It was Edrian.

The black wolf was snarling and his fur was bristling as blood was streaming down his muzzle. The fierce anger leapt his chest, but as Xander came closer something changed. 

The wolf whimpered, and groaned, as a dog before his Alpha.

“Mine,” Feris snarled, his voice more beast than man. His hands, clawed now, seized one of the attackers by the throat and slammed him into the dirt so hard the ground cracked. 

“You dare touch what’s mine?”

The boy gurgled, choking, face turning red.

“Xander...” My voice broke sharp across the grounds before I could think. 

Too loud. Too panicked.

His head rose toward me with wild eyes. I thought at one frightening moment he would tear me apart as well.

Instead he threw the boy over, and he cried out and ran.

“Go,” Xander spat to the others, “before I finish what he started.”

The trainees fled, dragging the injured with them, their faces pale, eyes wide.

Edrian’s wolf trembled, ears pinned. 

His eyes never turned away from Xander, the mate-bond between them so strong in that moment I could sense it, a bond of fire and light that held them together. 

The shape of the wolf melted away, bit by bit, painfully, and in another moment Edrian was crouching naked in the dirt, with blood on his lips, his chest heaving.

Xander cuddled next to him with a clenched jaw and threw his cloak over the shoulders of the boy.

Not me. Not his fiancée. Him.

Always him.

My stomach twisted with rage. My throat burned with bile.

He looked at Edrian like he had never once looked at me.

Protective. Possessive. Consumed.

And in that instant, the hatred burned so fiercely in me that it was blinding. The hatred of the bond, the hatred of the boy, the hatred of how fate had taken what belonged to me.

I would not let him win.

I would not let a slave steal my throne.

And if I had to dismember Edrian, limb by limb, I would.

I smiled and hid the venom beneath my lips and got out of the pavilion.

"Stunning," I said in a sweet voice, but my voice almost broke. “But dangerous. That is a wolf that ought to be kept on a leash."

Xander raised his eyes to mine...shrewd, blazing, and hard.

“Careful, Amber,” he growled, voice low, lethal. “The next time you speak of him like that… you may find yourself wearing the leash.”

The blood that flowed in my veins became ice.

And it was the first time in my life when I was not sure whether I could win.