Chapter 134 - Inseparable

Nash

Even at five in the morning, the day was already hot and muggy. I felt sorry for the squad that was going to be sent out into the wilderness to train, because the mosquitoes in Canada were next-level. Out in the field they weren’t so bad, but in the trees and the underbrush they were like dive-bombing pterodactyls ready to suck you dry.

Daphne had been a genius to suggest I join Louis’s military training program. The challenge and the physical exertion were a welcome distraction to my complicated relationship problems.

Louis had moved me up to a more experienced group of trainees, men and women who had the skills to really test my mettle. We did free-style mixed martial arts, hand-to-hand combat, weapons training, and yes, even firearms training. I knew that traditionally, werewolves don’t fight with weapons, but Louis had the idea that werewolves wouldn’t always be fighting werewolves, and that werewolves wouldn’t always fight fair, so his pack and his people needed to be prepared for modern warfare tactics. Especially as the shifter communities were more and more open and integrated, and the government was watching them with suspicion.

Smart guy, King Louis.

Unfortunately, Pilar Larkin managed to get herself promoted to my group as well. To be fair, her fighting skills were adequate, she could keep up. But her pretentious and entitled attitude and copious amount of whining should have landed her in the brig. She showed up every morning in her pretty pastel yoga-outfits and perfectly-applied make-up. I felt bad for the laundress who had to get the dirt, grass, sweat and blood stains out of those clothes at the end of the day.

On that particularly humid morning, our group was undertaking bo training. All the trainees had been provided toothpick bos, the lightweight training staff for novices. I had a heavy oak staff, but I had left it at my home in Rutberg. I decided it was to my advantage to pretend to be a novice and go through the basics with the rest of the group.

The instructor was a visiting Alpha named Shane. He looked like he might be an Islander, with his dark bronzed skin and black hair that he kept pulled back with a leather tie. I heard some whispers that he was the most sought-after trainer in the werewolf world, and Louis had paid big money to get him to come and work with the Royal pack.

Once the sun was over the ridge, the heat was truly oppressive, and most of the men, and even the women were stripping off their sweat-soaked, dark blue t-shirts.

“Let your body flow with the bo,” Shane called out. “It is not a thing you are holding in your hand, it is an extension of your body. Front thrust! Control, balance, flexibility! You are not chopping wood!” He walked up and down the line as he put us through the drills of basic stances, holds, and strikes.

“Dude, look, it’s the king!” The young man next to me hissed.

I didn’t need to look, I could feel him approaching. I willed myself to keep my eyes on Shane and my mind on the drills.

“He’s been showing up a lot lately,” the woman to my left whispered.

“I think it’s because of that Pilar chick,” the guy whispered back.

“She’s an alpha’s daughter, right? Maybe he’s got the hots for her.”

I scowled and executed the four-point strike.

“She is kind of hot,” the man conceded.

My bo slipped and cracked him in the thigh. “What the f.uck, man? Watch it?”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

We had caught the attention of the instructor, and he was giving us the stink eye. Today, unlike other days, Louis had come dressed like he was going to participate in training. He wore a pair of black cotton pants with a draw-string waist, and the same navy-blue t-shirt that the other cadets were wearing.

He stopped near Shane and stood like a soldier at ease, feet shoulder-width apart, hands clasped behind his back. He waited patiently for Shane to finish the combination he was trying to teach, and then stepped in to speak with him.

After a moment, they stepped apart. Louis picked up a bo and stepped into line like he was just another trainee. Shane took his position in front again. “Now, let’s try some light sparring. Emphasis on light, people. When I train with kids, we wrap pool noodles around our bo’s to pad them. But since you are all adults and hardened warriors, I trust that you can take a blow with a bare staff. That being said, use minimum force. Tap, and poke, make contact, but don’t leave a mark, got it?” There was a consensual nodding of heads in response. “Okay, partner up!”

“Hey, new guy!” a young woman raised one eyebrow and pointed at me with her staff.

“Sure,” I moved a short distance across the field to stand across from her. She popped a plastic mouthguard into her mouth and gave me a lime-green smile.

“Let’s start by practicing the basics, get a taste of what it feels like to make contact, and to take a hit. In this first drill, no blocking. Let your opponent make the strike. Go!”

The woman, whose name was Shannon, worked with deep concentration. At first, she was afraid to touch me with the bo, and when she did, she usually apologized. “Sorry! Was that too hard?”

“No, you are fine. Just go with it Shannon, you won’t hurt me.”

By the time Shane called a stop, she was landing blows hard enough to sting, but she was moving with much more confidence and grace.

“Good job,” I smiled and offered her a fist bump just as Shane called out, “New partner!”

I felt the hairs on the back of my neck prickle as I turned and found Louis standing behind me expectantly. “Let’s see what you got, Nash Turner,” he said.

We started to circle each other, and then he stopped and held up a finger. “Damn, it’s sticky out here. Feels like you could cut the air like butter!” He set his bo down and peeled off his wet t-shirt and tossed it aside.

My mouth went a little dry. Louis was tall, maybe an inch taller than I was. His physique was muscular, but lean and cut, almost like he was a bit undernourished. He picked up his staff again and sank into a front stance, “Okay, let’s see what you got, kid.”

Kid, that rankled. There couldn’t have been more than ten or twelve years between us. I knew he was purposely trying to provoke me, so I grinned and took my own fighting position. “Okay, Old Man, try to keep up.”

I was just joking, but I saw the way his eyes sparkled, as if to say, challenge accepted.

“This time, try some blocking!” Shane called out.

We started out following instructions, going through the basic movements. It soon became obvious that the king was no beginner with the bo. And neither was I. I landed a strike to his ribs, which irritated him enough that he stopped pretending to practice basics and began spinning the staff around his body.

I responded, and soon we were in all-out battle, and the concept of “tap and poke” had gone out the window. The air between us seemed to crackle with electricity, as our light training bos cracked together again and again. He feinted an upper strike and landed a solid crack on the side of my head that made my ears ring. Somewhere off in the distance I heard Shane yell, “Hey! No head strikes!”

Time blurred, and Shane must have called a stop to the sparring exercise, but neither Louis nor I were ready to call it quits. His body was shiny with sweat, and my own perspiration was dripping down my brow and into my eyes, but still, we didn’t stop. I was peripherally aware that the other students had started to circle up around us, watching with curious eyes as we fought as if our life depended on it.

We fought like we were enemies. I landed a cheap shot on Louis’s knuckles, which should have caused him to jump back and at least shake it out. But he didn’t back off, he swung at my legs. I easily jumped over the attack and went for his neck in what I thought would be my kill-shot, but just as my feet hit the ground, and before I had fully regained my center of gravity, Louis managed to get his bo under mine, and he disarmed me, sending it spinning off into the circle of onlookers.

That might have been the point of surrender for someone else, but not for me. I ducked under another strike and dove for him, wrapping my hands around his waist and tackling him to the ground like I was playing a good-old game of American football. We hit the ground hard, my body on top of his.

Fighting with sticks was all nice and fine, but I’d quite forgotten what would happen when skin touched skin.

I might have knocked the wind out of him, but it was mutual, it felt like a shock wave passed through me, paralyzing my heart and lungs. My brain froze like a glitchy computer, and I could only stare at him, stare at the gold flecks in his brown eyes, feel his heart beating hard under mine. Everything else became completely irrelevant, the crowd of onlookers, the sun beating down on us, the smell of pulverized grass and earth, even the fact that Louis was a man seemed like a random and unimportant factoid.

He was mine.

I was mesmerized a moment too long. Louis sucked in a breath, and with a strength and grace that I hadn’t known he possessed, he rolled us over, straddled my hips, and locked his bo under my chin.

“Check mate,” Louis said quietly.