Chapter 140 - Inseparable

Nash

It seemed like Louis was making a habit of showing up at the early morning training sessions. Given the way the young soldiers looked at him, and then looked at each other, I knew it wasn’t a regular occurrence. They still whispered and speculated that it was Pilar Larkin who had attracted the King to the training grounds.

I was pretty sure that wasn’t it. But it felt a little egomaniacal to assume that he was on the field because of me.

However, after our first dual ended up leaving Daphne with bumps and bruises, we were both very careful never to pair up with each other for anything more than the most basic drills. Neither one of us wanted to risk hurting her, or God-forbid, the baby.

But, if I was totally honest, I didn’t just avoid him for Daphne’s sake. What had happened between us had shaken me. I wanted to forget about that brief moment, but I couldn’t. It kept me up at night, remembering how it had felt, that jolt of pure, unadulterated power. The hum of excitement passing between us like a high voltage power line.

The raw desire.

I tried to put it out of my mind, to put it in a neat box labeled “the heat of the moment” and duct tape it shut. But it escaped every time we made eye contact. Every time we accidentally touched, it burst from the box like a noisy gremlin, waving its arms, jumping up and down with an evil grin calling, “Hey! Look at me!”

And if that wasn’t distracting enough, now I had to plan a date with Daphne. I wasn’t a man who dated. In my experience, dating had only been a time-wasting prelude to sex. I could count on one hand the number of deliberate dates I had been on in my life, and most of those were in my younger years. Before I enlisted, definitely before that fateful fatal mission.

I was probably over thinking it. I just needed to ask around, find a decent restaurant, and take her out. Except she had added the caveat that this date should reflect me, reflect who I am, so she could get to know the real me.

Hell, if she knew the “real” me, she’d probably run for the hills, and take the baby and Louis with her.

For sure, the real me wasn’t a wine-and-dine kind of guy. But I bet Louis was. I bet he knew exactly how to charm and entertain a woman. Louis was a chair-pulling, door-opening, knuckle-kissing gentleman of the highest order. I looked at him now, just a few yards away, going through basic blocking techniques with a young woman. The girl, who didn’t look like she was much older than twenty, was watching him with starry eyes and pure adoration written all over her face.

“I should ask him for advice,” I muttered out loud as I adopted a fighting stance and faced my partner.

The drill was basic, but there was a lot to be said about working on beginner moves, perfecting them, refining them, teaching them. It puts the moves in your head and into your body, so that in the heat of the moment you can react quickly, relying on pure muscle memory to make the block without thinking through it in your brain.

At that moment, the young female trainer who took groups into the woods to practice shifting exercises and wolf-on-wolf combat emerged from the trees just to the left of the field. I knew she had just shifted, because she wore nothing but a thin tank top with no and a pair of draw-string sweats.

Several pairs of lustful eyes followed her across the field, or more specifically, followed her breasts, which were barely concealed by the thin fabric. Once I might have been intrigued by the way her dark nipples were practically poking through, but now I found her mammary glands about as interesting as a cow’s udder. If they weren’t Daphne’s beautiful breasts, I just wasn’t interested.

Instead, I felt a weird surge of jealousy as she jogged right up to the king, her unrestrained chest practically jumping out of the tank top with each stride. She stopped right in front of him, and I wondered if he was staring at her nipples too. That was just plain disturbing, being jealous, not for the woman, but for the man.

I stepped away from my partner, and moved a little closer, just in time to hear the woman say, “We encountered a black bear, Sir. You instructed us to inform you immediately if there were any sightings.”

Louis was immediately on alert, as was I. Without thought, I closed the gap and stood beside him, eager to hear what the instructor had to say.

“We were playing war games outside the north wall, when Angelina spotted it,” she continued.

“Is it a shifter?”

“I’m not really sure, your Highness. We didn’t get close enough to really tell.”

“Male or Female?”

“It appeared to be a large female.”

“How did she behave?”

“Um, I’m not an expert or anything, but it appeared to be acting, well, like a natural bear. It stopped for a moment, seemed to be watching us, trying to figure out what we were doing, then it turned and lumbered away. Not too fast, just like it wanted to put distance between us.”

“Did you get a good look at its face?” I interrupted.

The woman eyed me suspiciously and clamped her mouth shut, as she suddenly realized she might be divulging sensitive information to a civilian.

“It’s okay,” Louis urged her. “You can speak freely.”

“I didn’t get a good look at its face,” She finally admitted. By the time it was brought to my attention, it was leaving, and I saw just its hind quarters disappearing into the woods.”

“The bear we are looking for has a scar,” I lifted my hand and used three fingers to draw lines down the side of my face. “Very distinctive.”

The instructor gave me a doubtful look, like she couldn’t figure out how I was a part of the “we” looking for the bear shifter.

“Thank you for the report, Marvy. Bring the squad inside the walls for now, and let's stay clear of the North wood until my scouts have checked it out.”

Her eyes widened a little. “But, your Majesty, it’s just a bear. We can handle it.”

Louis looked at her very sternly. “It might be just a bear as you say,” he chastised her. “After all, we see local wildlife in the woods every day. But if it is the bear shifter we are searching for, she is very unpredictable. And if you find her in her human form, she should be considered armed and dangerous.”

The young woman dropped her eyes, “Yes sir, I understand. I’ll go back and round them up immediately.” She turned and sprinted back to the woods. Even before she hit the tree line she was tugging her tank top over her head, tossing it carelessly into the grass. Her shorts followed quickly, and almost before I could register that she was naked, she had crouched forward and the air seemed to shift and vibrate around her. Within seconds the woman was gone, and a dark grey wolf took her place, moving swiftly.

I shook my head. It never ceased to amaze me, how they could change forms so quickly, so effortlessly.

Louis turned to me, his face etched with worry. “Do you think she's the one?”

“It’s hard to say,” I scanned the woods behind the training field, even though I knew they were inside the Royal Pack’s walls. There were no bears hiding in those trees. “Like you said, there’s plenty of wild bears out there.”

“I don’t like it,” Louis said, rubbing his sternum. “I’ve got a bad feeling about this bear.”

I felt it too, like an ache just behind my breastbone. It felt a little bit like heartburn, and I would have dismissed it, if I hadn’t noticed Louis’s hand on his own chest.

It seemed unlikely that Kodi could have found us there, but I couldn’t forget that Kodi was a trained assassin. The discomfort lingered. “Yeah, me too,” I said, dropping my hand. “I’d like to go check it out.”

Louis shook his head. “No, Nash. I’ll send out my scouts. They can quickly search the area in their wolf-forms. If it is Kodi, we wouldn’t want her to see you. That would be like waving a red flag in front of an angry bull.”