Chapter 11

Dante POV

The training grounds here were very expansive, tons of fancy equipment and courses but I preferred the old fashioned way. I found the sparring grounds outside of the gym and set up for the warriors who would be arriving any minute. I thought it odd Anna wasn’t here yet. I told her 5:30 because I wanted to speak with her before the soldiers started arriving at 6:00. I planned on working them hard so I let them sleep in a little this morning. Normal training would begin at 5:30 sharp. I hope she prepared her warriors for me. I will not go easy on them. After a while warriors started showing up, I noticed Anna’s gamma and beta were here but no Anna. Romulus growled in my head “she does not respect us, she’s already blown off our training!” I try to calm him “maybe something with the packs have come up, let’s give her the benefit of the doubt. I walk over to her Beta, I think her name is Delilah, “Beta Delilah, where is your alpha?” She looks up at me with a clear look of annoyance. “ITS. DAHLIA. Y’know like the flower.” She rolls her eyes “and I don’t know, she’s not answering any of our mindlinks. She didn’t sleep at the pack house last night.” She says flatly. For some reason that agitated me and I couldn’t put my finger on it. I was even more annoyed that I even cared to be annoyed! This was stupid. I look over to her Gamma Marcus, “you’re up first, let’s go.” He was barely wrapping his hands before he looked up at me in shock. “Y-you want me to spar with YOU?” He says in disbelief. I let out a menacing laugh “don’t worry sunshine, you’re not special. Everyone here will get a piece of me.” I wink at him and he gets up in a fluster to follow me to the sparring circle. “Everyone pair up! We’re going to do some basic defensive maneuvers to start. Try to keep up. Nobody stops until I say so.” I belt to the rest of the warriors. “I will work with every single one of you one on one. Oh, and one last thing… don’t take this personal” I say as I look at Marcus and get into my fighting stance. He looks at me confused “take what perso…” before he can get his words out I round house kick him in the jaw and he goes flying to the ground. He hold his jaw and groans in pain. “Rule number 1, never let your guard down.” I say as I go to help him up off the ground. Marcus slaps my hand away and gets up, a bit of anger flashing in his eyes. His wolf is close to the surface. “Keep your wolf in check, sparring for them will come later.” He gets in a defensive stance and I throw a quick combo of jabs and crosses. He blocks or dodges every one of them. “Good. That’s good, keep it up.” We spar for about 30 minutes before I switch Marcus out for another warrior. Before I know it it’s 8:30 and still no Anna. This is pissing me off. I approach Marcus as he spars with another warrior. “Oh no, not again, there’s no way you made your rounds that fast!” He says nervously. I would laugh but I’m in no mood for humor. “Mindlink your alpha and tell her I’ll be sparring with you all on rotation until she gets here. Your rest is in her hands. We stop when she stops us not a minute before.” I see some annoyance and some panic in his eyes before they gloss over and I know he’s mind linking Anna. We continue sparring on rotation as I promised until Anna comes running from the pack house looking frazzled, carrying a pack of waters for the warriors no doubt. She’s wearing black capris leggings that hug her nicely and a forest green sports bra, my favorite color. Her hair is in a long braid hanging over her left shoulder. She was glistening with sweat, she probably ran all the way here. I shake it off and continue sparing with the warrior in front of me, we’re in our wolf forms now. Romulus is having a great time. He growls and snaps his jowls at the warrior in front of him then attacks pinning the wolf and tossing him hard into a tree snapping his leg. The warriors wolf whimpers in pain but he gets up. “ENOUGH, SHIFT NOW.” The warrior in front of me and the rest of the training grounds all shift simultaneously while holding their heads low to the ground. Anna must be using her alpha aura to hold them in place. Very impressive. Then I hear her “DANTE SHIFT NOW.” Romulus looks at her and cocks his head to the side then snickers. She rolls her eyes “SHIFT PLEASE.” She says with agitation. I shift to appease her. I walk in her direction to gather my shorts and her reaction has a smirk playing on the corners of my mouth. Is she checking me out? ““Alpha Major, how nice of you to join us. Im afraid you’re a bit late, training started at 5:30am. Is nearly 10am. We were just wrapping up the last bit of our training. Your warriors learned a very valuable lesson today though.” She folds her arms across her chest and they push her breasts up for a nice view. I stare for a short moment “in battle, your Alpha won’t always be there to save you. When you’re on the battlefield you’re on your own.” I turned to walk away from her when she says “wow, whatever happened to you must have really messed you up good.” Romulus immediately gets angry, wanting to push forward. I remind him she doesn’t know about our past. I turn my head to look over my shoulder at her and throw her a threatening growl before I leave the training grounds. I walk back to the pack house to shower, seething in anger. What an entitled spoiled brat. I overheard her telling Dahlia she forgot about training because she was with her mate. What kind of Alpha let’s their pack hang like that. After my shower I’m still not cooled off and decide to let Romulus go for a run in the woods. We’re running through the forest, jumping off of logs, and bouncing off of trees. Running like our life depends on it when we catch a scent. It smells familiar so we follow it and it leads us to a stream where a brown wolf is laying down. We step out from the brush and step on a twig alerting the wolf to our presence “good job rom” I say to him. He rolls his eyes inwardly. The wolf turns around in a defensive stance. “It’s Amara, Anna’s wolf” Romulus says. Suddenly her comment earlier comes back to me and I let out a menacing growl but Amara isn’t phased at all. She dips her head low and wags her tail. Is she trying to…play… with us. Romulus cocks his head and walks past her to get a drink from the stream. Suddenly Amara pounces on my back and pushes me into the stream. Romulus immediately gets out of the stream and shakes, he pounces on Amara and growls in her face angrily. And then…. She…. She licked his face. We both say their stunned for a moment before Anna shifted back. I quickly followed suit and we began dressing. “I’m sorry… I uh… shouldn’t have…” she cuts me off “Don’t! It’s fine. Let’s just pretend it didn’t happen: I don’t know what got into Amara just now.” She continues to get dressed. In the awkward silence I say “Amara is a beautiful wolf.” Really? That’s the best thing you could come up with. I scold myself. “Uhhh thanks. I’ve got to get back to the pack house. See you at training tomorrow.” She says. I sneer in response “if you even bother to show up.” She throws a look over her shoulder as she’s leaving “5:30 sharp! See you Alpha” She darts off leaving me more confused than before, what is it about that girl.