Chapter 102 Combat Training
Malia's POV
If you have gotten this far, just be aware that things are going to get waaayy messier than they already are.
Supernatural Combat Applications holds its class in the lower level of the athletic center — a windowless space with padded flooring and paneled walls, which impeccably smells of sweat and hostility. It is required for all sophomores, and is supposed to instruct us on how to use our powers on the defensive without losing control.
Control. The irony is not wasted on me.
I'm late. Again.
I slip in through the door as silently as I can, but Coach Herriman—a huge bear shifter with a voice like gravel—spots me right away.
"Reed. Nice of you to join us." His tone drips with anything but nice. "Pair up. We're going to do some controlled combat work today."
My stomach drops. Of course we are.
The class has already been divided into pairs. I look for a friendly face in the crowd.
Aiden is in the far corner with Marcus, a wolf from his pack. Rowan and Cian are not in this part. I'm by myself.
"Reed, you're with Chesfield."
My head snaps to the voice. Coach Herriman motions to a girl standing near the equipment lockers, arms crossed, her face unreadable.
Victoria Chesfield.
Fuck. Victoria was everything I was not—a full-blooded wolf, alpha lineage, family name that opened doors I would never even get to see. We’ve never talked to one another, but I know she’s looked at me in classes we share. Heard her laugh when Charlotte relocated to another seat. Noticed how she whispers to her friends when I walk by.
She doesn’t like me. The feeling's mutual.
“Partner up,” Coach barks. “It’s quite simple: controlled strikes, no lethal force, tap out if you want to. It’s about technique and self-control, not overpowering.”
Victoria strides up to me like a woman who never doubted her place in the world. She’s tall -- taller than I am by at least three inches -- dark haired with a severe ponytail, and eyes that look at me as though I’m some kind of problem to be solved.
"Try to keep up,” she says, voice dripping with false sweetness.
I don't answer. Just go up to the center of the mat and try not to notice how my hands are trembling already.
Not now. Please not now. Coach blows the whistle.
Victoria waste no time.
She comes at me fast — faster than I’d expected — and her first strike is aimed at my midsection. I barely block it, forearm meeting forearm with a snap that jumps up to my shoulder.
“Slow,” she remarks, as she circles. “Should have known better from someone dating an alphablood.”
The jab lands exactly where he wants. I clench my jaw.
She strikes again—this time a feint to my left followed by a fire punch to my right ribs. It connects. Hard. Pain blossoms on my side,seizing my breath. and stealing my breath.
I stagger back, looking to reset, look for my feet.
Victoria doesn’t let me. She presses forward—strike after strike, each one precise and controlled and designed to hurt just enough.
A blow to my shoulder. My thigh. My stomach. I try to counter but she’s too fast, too well-schooled. Everything that I'll do, she has already foreseen, has already faced, is already punishing me for thinking so much.
"Come on, hybrid," she jeers, pressing another blow to my ribs—same spot as before. "What have you got?"
Other students are competing around us. I get controlled play, technical precision, exact what this work out is anticipated to be.
Ours doesn’t show up like that.
Victoria kicks my leg just before I come forward. I pull myself together, at the last moment, hands on the mat, pain shoots through my knee.
I’m angry, and that brightens hot in my chest. I ignore the pain and hoist myself up and—at length—I succeed in landing a punch. Her shoulder is where my fist makes contact, knocking her back a little way.
Her eyes flash green. "Oh, so you do know how to fight."
She comes at me with more force now. No more testing.This is not a game. Genuine punches that I hardly defend against, that cause bruises causing my biceps whenever I push them around. A shot to my jaw makes my head snap to the side. I can taste blood.
Another to my stomach and I double over.
She sweeps my leg and I fall flat on my back, coming down with sufficient power to let wind out of my lungs.
Laughter drifts from some corner of the room. Can't tell if they were laughing at me, but who cares. It all converges on the image of
Victoria looming over me with a cold, triumphant look. “Stay down,” she says quietly. 'It's... easier for all of us.”
Something switches in me.
But I don’t go down.
Ignoring every burning muscle, every pounding bruise, I force myself up. My wolf surges—not violently as before, but undeniably. Alert. Angry.
Victoria's smile twitches ever so slightly. "I told you to stay—"
I don't let her finish.
I slam – harder than I've ever slammed anything. I punch her in the sternum and I feel it: that power from yesterday, that wrongness wrapped up in my core, surge into the punch.
Victoria flies backward.
But the stumbles. Not falling. Flies.
She slams into a wall ten feet away, with a sickening thud, her body smashing reinforced concrete a few times until it cracks. She drops to the floor, gasping, eyes wide like she’s just had a stun gun to the face.
The room goes silent.
Everyone's staring. At Victoria slumped against the wall. At the fissure in the concrete. Look at me, right in the middle of the mat, hand still raised, my chest heaving. At the blood dripping from my nose.
I touch my upper lip. Fingers come away red. Bright, fresh red that shouldn’t be there, that I didn’t feel start.
The power is still there. Still surging. Still more, wanting more. My hands begin to glow – faint, but visible through the fluorescent lights.
No. Not here.
"Reed!" Coach Herriman's voice sliced through the quiet. "What the hell—"
I don’t wait to hear more than that. I run.
Past stunned classmates, past Victoria still fighting for breath, past the coach lunging toward me with a look of concern and mistrust on his face.
I push through the door and into the hallway, my vision already smudging along the edges. The power is building—too much, too fast, as if a dam is going to break.
I'm now bleeding from my nose in a steady flow, leaving a he trail of bloody drops on the floor as I walk.
My wolf is howling — not because it is triumphant, but because it is frightened. She feels it too. Feels how incorrect this is, how we have no control.
I burst out of the building’s exit, into the cold afternoon. Students turn to stare —at my bloody face, my glowing hands, the wild look in my eyes that I know without having to peek is flashing gold.
I run anyway.
Across the quad, past the library, toward the only place that even feels a little bit safe anymore—
The woods.
The trees greet me like old friends, and their shade hides me from prying eyes. I don’t stop running until my lungs are burning and my legs are ready to collapse.
Eventually I hunch over against a tree trunk, sliding down to sit in the soil and dried leaves, arms curled around my knees in that recognized stance of protection. The bleeding from my nose is slowing, but it hasn’t stopped. I dab at it with the sleeve of my shirt, setting rust-colored smudges on my jacket. I hurt her.
The thought bashes down like a physical punch. I slammed Victoria against a wall so hard it was enough to break concrete. With one punch. One.
That's not hybrid strength. That's not even normal alpha strength. That's something else entirely. Something wrong. My hands still glow faintly, the gold in them pulsing in time with my heartbeat as it races. I look at them as if they are not mine.
What’s happening to me?
The question keeps ringing in my mind, without any answer, fearful in what it might insinuate. My phone buzzes. Multiple notifications. I take it out, hands trembling, the shattered screen making things harder to see.
Coach Herriman: To my office, now. That’s not optional.
I don’t seem able to explain what I don’t understand. Can’t let them see what I’m becoming. Because the truth is becoming too much to hide: I’m not just having nightmares anymore. I’m not just imagining things that aren’t really there.
Something is changing at the very core of me. Growing. Spreading. Taking control. And I have no idea how to stop it. My nose starts bleeding again, fresh blood spilling onto my jeans. I lean back against the tree trunk and look up through the leaves to the glimpses of gray sky.
Somewhere off in the distance I hear voices. I’m sure they’re looking for me. Coach or campus security or maybe even the brothers.
I need to go back. Should face whatever repercussions are coming. Should try to explain the unexplainable.
But the power is still there, still humming beneath my skin, still waiting for another moment to break free and go out and hurt someone.
So instead I close my eyes, put my glowing hands on my face and let the tears fall in silence.
Just me and the wilds, I can let myself crack up and no one will see.
Where no one can see what I’m becoming.
Where for just a little while longer, I can pretend everything’s going to be all right.
Even though I know deep in that still-rational, still-clear part of me—that it is not.
Nothing is okay.
And it's only going to get worse.