Training Lessons

~Lyra's POV~

Dane didn't believe in warm-ups the way most trainers did.

His version of a warm-up was thirty minutes of footwork drills that left your calves burning and your ankles questioning every decision you'd ever made. Then, if he felt generous, he'd let you catch your breath for sixty seconds before the real work started.

I had been at it for a week now. I was not yet at the point where I stopped hating the first thirty minutes.

"You're dropping your left shoulder," he said, circling me at an unhurried pace, hands clasped behind his back.

"Every time you set your feet, left shoulder drops. It's a tell."

"I know."

"Then fix it."

"I'm trying."

"Trying is what you do when you're not sure you can. Fix it."

I reset my stance. Squared both shoulders. He came at me from the right, a fast controlled strike aimed at my ribs, and I blocked it, stepped left, kept my shoulder up. He came again. I blocked again. He feinted high, went low, and I caught it on my forearm instead of my side, which was better than yesterday.

"Better," he said. Not warmly. Just accurately.

We ran the drill again. And again. He didn't count repetitions out loud. He just kept going until he decided to stop, which was a method I was beginning to think was designed specifically to make you stop thinking and just move.

Then Kaela surged.

No warning. No slow build. She just came forward all at once, hard and sudden, like a door kicked open from the inside. I felt my hands change before I understood what was happening. The nails went first, darkening fast at the tips, the beds of my fingers going tight. Then the knuckles, a grinding restructure that started at the first joint and crawled toward my wrist, and the pain came with it, sharp and total, nothing like the training bruises.

I dropped.

One knee hit the dirt, then both hands, and I held that position while my body argued with itself loudly and without any concern for my dignity. The partial shift stuttered and pulled back in pieces, nails fading, joints resettling wrong before they finally resettled right. By the time it was done I was breathing through my teeth and the yard was very quiet.

Dane crouched down beside me. He didn't offer a hand. He just settled into a crouch and looked at me with his head slightly tilted.

"That's the most alive I've seen you look since you got here," he said.

I looked up at him. "That is a terrible thing to say to someone who just hit the ground."

"It's a true thing." He studied my hands, the way a craftsman looks at a tool that's just done something unexpected. "How far did it get?"

"Knuckles. Maybe halfway to the wrist on the right."

He nodded slowly. "You're further along than I expected."

"Is that good?"

"It means Kaela has been waiting a long time and she's done being patient." He stood and looked down at me. "It also means the next attempt will probably hurt more."

I pushed myself upright. My hands were shaking slightly, which I ignored. "Encouraging."

"I don't do encouraging. I do accurate." He stepped back to his mark. "Again."

"I just fell."

"I know." He didn't move. "Again."

------

I was still sweaty and bruised when I came through the main hall.

I had meant to go straight upstairs, shower, change, and get back to the notes I'd been keeping on the gate log anomaly. I was not paying attention to the hall the way I should have been, which was a mistake I would not repeat.

He was standing near the far end, beside my father, both of them holding what looked like trade documents. Two Silverfang warriors stood a few paces behind, the formal posture of diplomatic escort. Xavier was dressed for a political visit, no weapons visible, nothing aggressive in his presentation. Just the Alpha King of the Silverfang Pack, conducting business at a neighbouring estate like it was entirely routine.

I stopped walking before I'd made the conscious decision to stop.

He looked at me.

One second. Maybe one and a half. Long enough that it registered and short enough that you couldn't call it anything definitive. His expression didn't change. He just looked, the way he'd looked at me across the ball room, like he was noting a fact rather than performing a reaction.

"Miss Ashwood," he said.

"Alpha Reed," I responded.

I kept walking.

I heard my father say something behind me, and then Xavier's voice, quiet enough that it was clearly meant to reach Arden and perhaps just barely reach me: "Your daughter has an unusual way of moving through a room."

And my father's answer, easy and unbothered: "She always has."

I took the stairs at a normal pace and did not look back.

In my room, with the door closed and the noise of the hall below me reduced to a low murmur, I stood at the window and looked out at the east yard. My hands had stopped shaking. The residual ache from the partial shift was already fading to something dull and manageable.

He noticed.

Good…. Let him.

------

That evening, Papa called me to his study.

He was behind his desk again when I came in, but this time he was standing, which I had learned to read correctly. Something had unsettled him. Not upset him. Just moved the ground.

"How was the trade meeting?" I asked, sitting down.

"Productive." He picked up a pen and set it down again without using it. "Xavier Reed is not a man who travels for trade documents. Those things are handled by proxies."

"I know."

"So you understand he had a different reason for being here today."

"I have a theory," I said.

Papa looked at me. "So do I." He didn't push on it, which meant he'd filed his theory and wasn't ready to lay it on the table yet. That was fine. Neither was I.

"I wanted to tell you something," I said. "One of his warriors. During the estate tour. He spent time near the eastern boundary fence."

Papa went still. Not dramatically. Just a complete, quiet stillness, the kind that means something has connected to something else he was already thinking about.

"Which stretch?" he asked.

"The far eastern corner. Near the old drainage line."

He was quiet for a long moment. Long enough that I sat forward slightly. "Papa."

"That's not the first time someone has been interested in that fence line," he said.

I waited.

He picked up the pen again, turned it once between his fingers.

"Months ago, before you came home, one of our border patrols found fresh prints along that stretch. Not rogue. Too deliberate, too measured. Someone who knew how to move without leaving much behind but wasn't quite careful enough." He set the pen down. "I didn't report it to the wider pack because I didn't know what it meant yet."

"And now?"

He looked at me. "Now I have the gate log anomaly from yesterday, a Nightshade beta lingering near the east wing, and today a Silverfang warrior showing interest in the exact stretch of fence where those prints were found." He leaned back slowly. "That's a pattern, Lyra."

"Yes," I said. "It is."

"The question is whether they're connected or whether two separate parties have independently decided our eastern border is worth watching."

"Either answer is a problem," I said.

"Either answer is a problem," he agreed.

We sat with that for a moment. The study was quiet. Outside, the estate had gone to its evening rhythm, the distant sound of the patrol rotation, the lights coming on in the training block.

"I want to walk that fence line tomorrow morning," I said. "Before training. I want to see it myself."

Papa studied my face for a moment. Then he nodded once. "Take Dane with you."

"I will."

I stood to leave.

"Lyra." He stopped me before I reached the door, and when I turned, his expression had something careful in it, something he was choosing how to carry. "Be watchful of who you trust inside these walls right now. The gate log told us something important."

"I know, Papa," I said. "I've been watching since yesterday."

He nodded. I left.

The east wing corridor was quiet when I passed through it on the way to my room. I paused at the window that overlooked the boundary fence, the one I'd been standing at when I first noticed the beta lingering. The fence line was dark now, just shadow and treeline.

But someone had been watching it. More than once. From both inside and out.

I stood there for a long moment.

Then I went to my desk and added a new page to my notes.