Chapter 126 - Inseparable

Nash

It felt like someone had hijacked my life. I had been plucked out of my own world, a world which had never been very predictable, but at least I had a certain amount of control over my own circumstances. And I had been dumped into this one, which like a fun house of distorted mirrors. In this world there weren’t snipers or landmines, but there were mate-bonds, psychic connections, magic dreams.

It all left me feeling dizzy. Daphne’s suggestion that I go train with the Royal defense force was a brilliant one. At least I knew what I was about in a training ring. I didn’t even mind setting my alarm for four-thirty the next morning so that I could be awake, dressed and ready when a staff member knocked lightly on my door and led me through the château to the barracks on the north side.

The grounds were bathed in a pinkish pre-dawn light. About a hundred young men and women were assembled on what looked like a soccer field. They wore uniform navy-blue tank-tops and gym shorts. Some of them were already seated in the dew-damp grass doing stretches and calisthenics. I felt a hundred sets of eyes follow me as I joined their group and stood a little aside. A few latecomers were still straggling in.

A man and a woman appeared at precisely five AM with clipboards, and started shouting instructions to the group. “Four laps around the field to warm up. Garshon, sit out the run, Marcelle and Pierce, double laps. Go!” The woman blew a whistle, and everyone moved enmasse to the out-of-bounds line and started to jog. There were a couple of audible groans, from Marcelle and Pierce I assumed, and one young woman with a brace on her knee remained behind.

The group set a brisk pace. A few show-boaters sprinted ahead, but most of the young werewolves were smart enough to keep it steady. I stayed with the pack, enjoying the burn in my muscles and the stripped feeling of the cold morning air in my lungs.

We had just circled the field for the second time when something pink caught my eye. Not soft, pastel pink, but obnoxious florescent pink. Although she was some distance off, and I wasn’t blessed with werewolf super-vision, there could be no doubt that Pilar Larkin had decided to join us. There could also be no doubt that her skin-tight sports bra and bike shorts were meant to catch the eye of a certain Alpha King.

Too bad Louis wasn’t there.

It looked like the trainers were having some harsh words with her for being late, and I wished I could hear well enough to eavesdrop. After a moment, she went over and started to jog. Not the normal jog of a training athelete, but some weird, slow, bopsy gait that made her boobs and her ponytail bounce around. She was wasting energy, she would never finish the training if she kept up with that b.ullshit.

I pulled my eyes away from that monstrocity and stayed focused on my own body.

After the fourth lap, we all pulled up in front of the trainers again, and they began to split the group. “Squad one, we are headed to the woods. Squad two, weight room. Squad three and four, sparring. Turner and Larkin, you’ll join up with squad four.” The woman squinted at me and pointed to a group that was forming on the field.

“Two lines, face off. Don’t worry who your partner is, you are going to rotate through the line.”

I turned and faced my first partner, a young man with a narrow face and an enormous Adam's apple. It bobbed up and down nervously as he faced me. “I never sparred with a human.”

“Ground rules! Absolutely no shifting. Pin and tap-out, or go to the whistle.” the male trainer bellowed. The female trainer had left with the first group to go do some specialized training in the woods.

“I’m Turner,” I said, offering my partner a fist.

He hesitated and then bumped his knuckles against mine. “Ross.”

The whistle blew, and all around us, pairs of young werewolves began to fight. Ross took up a boxer’s stance, but I spread my legs, bent my knees and lowered my body weight closer to the ground. The trainer had said pin and tap-out, not knock out. I easily dodged his first punches, which were slow, awkward hooks.

The kid was totally green. I almost felt bad as I rushed him, slipped my leg behind his, and used an arm bar to flip him onto his back. He hit the grass with a thud that probably knocked the wind out of him, but to his credit, he rolled away before I could pin him. I caught his leg, took a weak kick to my hip, and quickly straddled his body, pressing my knee into his groin and my hands into a strangle hold, putting just enough pressure to let him know that if I wanted to, I could choke him out.

Ross tapped out.

I jumped off him and offered him a hand-up. “Hey, you’re good,” he said, with a new measure of respect in his voice.

“Nah, you went easy on me.” I clapped him on the back and went looking for my next partner. The whistle blew at four minute intervals, and if one partner hadn’t claimed victory in that time, they just shook hands and moved on to the next.

I was on my ninth partner when I came face to face with Pilar Larkin. Her hot-pink aerobics outfit was covered in grass stains, particularly across her ass. Her perky ponytail looked like it had been jerked to one side, and bits of hair were now flying all around her face like medusa’s snakes, and there was a red spot on her cheekbone that would probably darken into a bruise later.

“Miss Larkin,” I politely offered my fist, just as I had the other fighters. She sniffed, ignored my hand, and made an attempt to smooth back her hair.

“Mr. Turner,” she used that voice on me that she was always using on King Louis. Low and sultry, “You wouldn’t hit a woman, would you?”

“Sweetheart, when we are out on the battlefield, you aren’t a man or a woman, you are just the enemy.”

Pilar took a swing for my head, and then followed it with a jab to my ribs. As I suspected, she wasn’t some helpless girly-girl like she was pretending to be. She was an Alpha’s daughter, and she had been trained to fight. She wasn’t the best, but she probably had more experience than most of the young wolves out on the field. Her biggest problem was that she was out of shape. She clearly didn’t train regularly.

“You don’t belong here,” she hissed when I clipped her shoulder and drove her backwards a few steps.

“Neither do you,” I reminded her. I faked a right and then went in for her torso, landing another hard punch to her liver.

She hissed between her teeth and covered her torso with one arm. “You are a human.”

She spit out the word human like it was dirty. I took advantage of her lowered arm, caught her by the neck, turned her, and kicked her behind her knees, forcing her to kneel on the grass in front of me. If I had wanted to, I could have broken her neck with my bare hands. Or, if I’d had a blade, I could have slit her throat. As it was, I just kept her in a headlock while she thrashed and struggled, refusing to tap out.

When the whistle blew, I released her, and stepped back. The fight was over. But Pilar took advantage of my relaxed stance to drive a fist into my groin hard enough to make little black stars dance in front of my eyes. I hissed out a breath and doubled over, while the trainer blew furiously on his whistle and stomped his way over to us.

“Miss Larkin, the round is over!”

She climbed to her feet and gave the trainer a flirty look, “Sorry Mr. Berry, I didn’t hear the whistle.”

“The hell you didn’t. If you are going to train with us, you follow the rules!”

“You’re just coddling him because he’s a human! You wouldn’t want to break the King’s special pet!” She spat back.

I straightened slowly. My nuts were still throbbing, but I wasn’t going to let a b.itch like Pilar Larkin take me down with a cheap shot.

“The way I saw it, Nash had you pinned fair and square,” The King’s baritone cut between us like a knife. I hadn’t realized he had arrived at the field, and I felt my cheeks burn. If he’d been there in time to see Pilar in a headlock, then he’d also seen me let down my guard and take the hit, and that bothered me.

I didn’t want to look weak in front of Louis.

At the sight of the king, everyone stood at attention and put their hand over their hearts; everyone but me. Even Pilar made a half-hearted salute. “Excellent work today!” Louis said, addressing the group. “You are excused!”

The members of squad four hurriedly collected their gear and exited the field, making their way to the locker rooms, which were located in the indoor training gym, a separate building to the side of the training field.

Pilar started back toward the palace, but the king stopped her, holding his arm across her path without actually touching her. “Miss Larkin, I granted your asylum here as a favor to your father, but as long as you stay here, you are under my law. Blatant disrespect towards myself, my people, or any of my guests will not be tolerated. Do I make myself clear?”

There was something in the intensity of his gaze that was almost frightening. I was immediately mindful that Louis Levesque had a reputation as a mad king. Given the way Pilar shivered, I think she was also reminded that he could be a dangerous foe. “My apologies, Louis. I got carried away.”

“Indeed.” He dropped his arm and allowed her to pass, and then he turned to me.

Louis didn’t look like a king. He had on a pair of khaki slacks and a short-sleeved button-down shirt, with a pair of sunglasses obscuring his eyes. He pulled them off now and gazed at me with genuine concern. “Are you alright? Do you need to go to the infirmary?”

Although a bag of ice might have been nice, I shook my head. ‘I’m fine, Sir.”

Something glittered in his eyes when I called him Sir. He looked away immediately, and I saw his lips press together. He turned to the trainer, Berry. “Tomorrow, move him up to squad three.”

“Yes, Your Highness.”

Louis gave the man a curt nod and then gestured that I should accompany him back to the door. I saw the blond woman hovering near the entrance with her clipboard. His assistant gave me a funny look before she fell in step at his left hand.

“Downgrade Miss Larkin’s security pass,” Louis told his assistant, “Visitor C status.”

Leanne nodded and scribbled a note on her clipboard. “Right away.”

“Has Professor Sevigny arrived?”

“Yes, her car just passed the second gate.”

“Punctual. Excellent. You’ll set up the meeting in the blue room?”

“As you wish.”

Louis stopped abruptly and turned to me. “This is the Alpha wing” he gestured down a hallway that was starting to look familiar. “No doubt you’ll want to shower and freshen up before breakfast.” He offered me a small smile, a hesitant curving of his lips, and just for a moment, let his hand rest on my shoulder.

An intense feeling of comfort and wellness swept through me, the electric tingle spread through my body, until even my aching privates ceased to feel pain. He quickly realized his mistake and withdrew his hand. “See you at breakfast then.” He ducked his head and hurried down the corridor with his assistant.

Leanne glanced back at me just once, her mouth sagging open and her eyebrows raised. She snapped her mouth closed and whipped her head around front as she continued to jog to keep up with Louis’s long stride.

I had an unreal desire to go after them. It almost felt like a hand was pushing the small of my back, urging me in that direction. Resisting it made me feel dizzy.

“F.ucking fun house,” I said, as I turned down the corridor to find my own room.