005.

Mira's POV

The crowd pulled back to give us space.

I rolled my neck and flexed my wrists. My ankle was still throbbing from the leopard fight. My forearm had a long red scrape from where I had hit the ground. I did not look at either injury. Looking at things made them hurt more.

Caden stood across from me and tied up his hair.

The instructor held his whistle close to his mouth. "You both know the rules."

Neither of us responded.

He blew the whistle. Caden shifted right away.

I was curious to see what he would shift into. The shift rolled through him like a tide. His body expanded. His shoulders pushed outward and his spine lengthened and from his back, rising and spreading in one slow continuous movement, came wings.

A winged lion stood across from me. Its head came up to my chest. Its mane was dense and dark. Its wings were half open, not fully extended, and even at half extension they reached further than my arms could span.

The crowd cheered harder than they did for the leopard.

I exhaled slowly through my nose.

Petra had never trained me for a winged lion. Nobody trained for winged lions because there were only a handful of people in the world who could shift into one. I had read about the winged lion in a combat manual once. They were Aerial capable. Enhanced strength in both the forelimbs and the jaw. The wings functioned as both weapon and shield depending on how they were angled. I had no idea how to handle this beast.

I was going to have to work this out as I went.

The lion moved first. A slow, measured approach, wings angled back, low to the ground.

I held my position.

It came closer. I watched the forelimbs. When a shifted opponent was going to strike, the weight shifted fractionally to the back legs first. Loading up.

There. The weight shifted.

I threw myself sideways as the forelimb came down. The wind of it moved past my face. I came up on the other side and drove both fists hard into the joint where the wing met the lion's back.

It shook its body and turned fast. Faster than I expected from something that size.

The wing came around like a door swinging shut and caught me across the shoulder. I stumbled as the impact rang through my whole arm.

I managed to remain on my feet.

The lion circled me. I turned with it, keeping my front toward it, watching the wings as much as the body. The wings were the variable I couldn't fully account for. They changed the geometry of every strike.

It lunged again. This time I did not dodge sideways. I went forward instead, inside the reach of the forelimb, and grabbed the mane with both hands and used my full body weight to pull its head down and to the left. It was the kind of move that only worked for a second. But a second was enough.

I drove my knee up hard into the side of its jaw.

The lion recoiled. Shook its head. I felt the vibration of it through the ground.

The crowd went quiet. Things weren't going as they expected.

I stepped back and reset. My shoulder was screaming from the wing strike. I kept it up anyway. Dropping it would show the weakness and I could not afford to show anything right now.

The lion looked at me.

Something had shifted in its posture. Subtle. The casual, testing quality of the first minutes was gone. It was paying attention now.

Good.

We went again. Three exchanges in quick succession. I took a hit on my ribs, the already tender ones from the train, and felt something white-hot move through my side. I absorbed it and kept moving. I landed two solid strikes to the lion's foreleg and one clean hit across the muzzle.

I was ahead.

I could feel it in the way the crowd was breathing. In the way the lion had stopped circling and started waiting. In the stillness that had settled over the hall like everyone had forgotten to exhale.

I knew what winning this meant. Not just today. Not just this crowd. Every Ironridge student who went home and told someone about the camp would carry this story with them. The Omega who came to Ironridge and fought Caden and did not fall down.

I moved in again.

The lion's wings spread to full extension for the first time. The shadow fell over me. I adjusted my footing.

Then from somewhere to my left a sharp sound cut through the noise of the crowd. A grunt of pain. Something falling. A cluster of students shifted, jostled and someone said a name.

"Liam. Liam, are you okay?"

I turned my head. One second. Less than one second.

The wing hit me like a wall.

Full extension, full force. It caught me across the chest and side and the ground came up fast. I fell very hard. The air left my body completely. I lay on my back, stared up at the sky and tried to remember how breathing worked.

The lion stood over me. One forelimb pressed down across my collarbone. Pinning me down.

I tried to push it off. My arms had nothing left in them. I felt the claw digging into my flesh.

Tears stung my eyes. There was no way out of this losing position. I had to surrender.

I raised a hand and the instructor blew the whistle.

I lay still for a moment. The hall echoed with applause. My ribs pulsed with every heartbeat. My shoulder felt messed up.

The forelimb lifted.

I heard the shift happen. Bones resettling. The quiet sounds of a body returning to itself.

I got up on my own. Slowly. I did not let anyone help me.

Caden stood where the lion had been. His hair had fallen forward across his face again. He was breathing harder than before. That was something. I had put him under pressure. Things might have been different if not for the distraction.

I straightened up and looked at him.

He looked back at me. I waited for him to say something. Do something. Maybe an acknowledgment. Even a nod.

He held my gaze for a long moment. Then his lips finally parted.

"Omegas belong in the peace zone," he said. "You should stay there!”