Chapter 4

My father's fist hammered against my door hard enough to rattle the frame.

"Lola! You're going to be late!"

I shot upright, heart slamming, half convinced for one confused breath that I was still back at Grandma Ruth's cottage. The unfamiliar ceiling above me set me straight fast.

"Why did nobody wake me up earlier?" I was already on my feet, yanking clothes out of a bag I'd never bothered to finish unpacking.

"Colt's got early patrol!" Dad's voice came muffled through the door. "Move it!"

I threw on a black sports bra and leggings, one leg still half in, dragged a brush through my hair exactly once, and took the stairs two at a time, nearly flattening Grandma Ruth on the landing.

"Break my hip on these stairs, and I will come back and haunt you." She didn't even look up from the stove, elbow deep in batter.

The training grounds sat a short run behind what used to be the Hale pack house, and I hit the tree line at a dead sprint, lungs already burning, legs pumping hard enough that the ground blurred beneath me.

I skidded to a stop at the edge of the clearing and understood, in one glance, exactly why the whole territory spoke this new Alpha's name the way they did. Forty wolves at least, already moving through drills in tight, brutal unison, fists and forearms snapping through the air with a precision that had nothing to do with luck.

Someone cleared their throat directly behind me. I spun too fast and nearly walked chest first into a wall of a man.

Except the wall had a face, and the face had honey brown eyes locked on mine, giving away exactly nothing.

"You were told ten." His voice matched the one from the mind link exactly, low, even, completely unbothered by the fact that I was still gasping for air in front of him.

"And I'm here." I threw a glance at the sun as it might vouch for me.

"You're breathing like you ran the last half mile. That tells me you weren't ready ten minutes ago." One dark eyebrow lifted, a thin scar cutting through it that I hadn't noticed until this second, and hated that I noticed now. "I don't repeat instructions, Nora Bishop."

"Good thing you only had to say it once, then."

Something flickered behind his eyes, quick, unreadable, gone before I could name it. I decided I liked putting it there.

"Alpha Kade Ashwood." He said it like I hadn't already guessed. "Your new training lead."

"Figured. The whole territory seems very impressed with you."

"And you're not?"

"I met you thirty seconds ago. Ask me again after training." I shrugged, aiming for careless, mostly landing it, hands shoved into my jacket pockets so he wouldn't see them shake.

He studied me long enough that my skin prickled under it, then turned and addressed the clearing without raising his voice more than it needed to carry.

"Everyone, listen up." Forty heads swung our way at once, mine included, whether I wanted the attention or not. "Nora Bishop arrived without a partner today. I'll be taking that spot myself."

My stomach dropped straight through the soles of my shoes.

"You don't have to do that." The words came out too fast.

"I know." He rolled his shoulders, loose, easy, like a man settling in to enjoy himself. "I'm choosing to."

I'd trained with Chris a full year. I thought I understood what it meant to fight someone faster than me. I didn't. Not really. Not until Ash came at me like a storm the second the clearing dissolved into motion around us.

Every strike was measured, nothing wasted, like he'd already calculated three moves past whatever I tried next. I ducked one hit, rolled under his arm, dropped low and came up under his guard the way I used to on Chris, and he adjusted so smoothly I barely registered being read before my back slammed into the dirt, air punched clean out of my lungs.

"Again." He held a hand down. I ignored it and pushed myself up on my own.

A dozen more rounds went the same way. I landed exactly one real hit the whole session, my knuckles catching his jaw hard enough to turn his head half an inch, absorbed like a leaf landing on stone.

"You're fast." He wasn't even breathing hard while I stood doubled over, hands braced on my knees, sucking air like I'd run a full territory loop. "Faster than most people your size have any business being."

"Thanks. Chris would be so proud." My lungs burned raw with every word.

"Who's Chris?"

"Nobody you'd know." I straightened up, wiped sweat off my forehead, and forced my spine to hold despite every muscle in my body begging to sit down. "You hit like you're trying to kill people, by the way."

"I'm preparing you for people who will try to kill you. There's a difference. Not much of one." Flat. No humor anywhere in it. Something about how completely absent the joke was made me believe him more than a laugh ever could have, and something else, something smaller and more unwelcome, made me wonder exactly who he thought might come for me, and why he seemed so certain someone would.

"Comforting," I muttered.

The corner of his mouth twitched. Almost.

"You'll be paired with me again tomorrow." He was already turning back to the clearing, and I opened my mouth to argue and found nothing at all waiting there to say. Later I would wonder why I hadn't tried harder. At the time I told myself it was exhaustion. I have since learned to be more honest with myself than that.

I hit the porch steps at home twenty minutes later and dropped onto them like a sack of stones, every muscle in my body filing a formal complaint at once.

"How'd it go?" Colt leaned in the doorway, smirking in a way that told me he already knew exactly whose partner I'd been.

"He hits like a storm and talks like he's reading off a manual." I winced, peeling my shoes off one at a time. "Also, apparently I'm his partner again tomorrow."

Colt's smirk stretched wider. "That's new. He usually rotates."

"Lucky me." I let my head thud back against the porch post and shut my eyes, already dreading the sunrise crawling up over the tree line, and turning that one detail over anyway, the same way I couldn't help touching a bruise to see if it still hurt. He usually rotates. He hadn't rotated with me.