“What are you doing here?”
Fiona was walking over toward the practice field where I was training with my men.
I jogged to meet her at the edge of the field. All I could think about was the last time she came by here, when I had to save her from a javelin that had been tampered with mere seconds before it would have impaled her.
“Making sure you’re okay,” she said.
I looked back over at my shoulder. The soldiers were taking the opportunity of my distraction to give themselves a break.
I thought about commanding them to return to their exercises, but then looked at the man I’d been training a moment ago, who was giving me a curious expression. I’d been actively sparring with him when Fiona came walking up the stone pathway, at which point I’d run off without a word. The soldier looked away when I caught his eye, bowing his head slightly and jogging off to meet the rest of the pack at the back of the field.
As a general principle, I didn’t ask my men to do anything I wasn’t willing to do myself. That was true on the battlefield as much as it was in an everyday training session. If I got to take a break, so did they.
“How’s it feeling?” Fiona asked, jutting her chin at my body.
“Fine,” I said, shrugging.
She gave me a doubtful smile.
“Why aren’t you at your lesson?” A quick memory told me Fiona was supposed to be in another etiquette class this morning.
She laughed dryly. “Am I really supposed to keep following their schedule? Doing their little activities? After what the King just put us through?”
A sting of paranoia had me wanting to put my head on a swivel, looking for any nearby threat that might have overhead her speaking against the King. But it was only me and my men here in the West Wing. Still, I discreetly darted my eyes to the sides.
I lowered my own voice when I replied, hoping she would understand the need to follow my lead from now on. Keeping her voice down when saying such things.
Though I had to admit, it kind of turned me on. Her brazen disregard for the authority of the reigning King, knowing he was in fact a kind of enemy of mine, albeit one I had to live with and feign submission to – for now. She was fearless.
And flawless. Looking like a smoke show today, skin glowing, wearing a simple but striking lavender dress that fell to the floor.
She shook her head and narrowed her eyes. “What?”
I cleared my throat and said, “Nothing.” But I knew she could tell from the smile I was now trying to shake off that I was thinking about touching her.
“I’ll get out of your way,” Fiona said suddenly. I noticed her eyes flick to the side, looking over my shoulder. She flashed a polite, cheerless smile, quickly turned away, and disappeared up a staircase. I watched her walk away.
I heard snickering laughter behind me and wheeled around to see my soldiers all watching me with mocking smiles plastered across their faces.
My smile suddenly froze on my face, then melted away completely.
My feelings for Fiona were getting a little out of control.
“Something funny?” I asked sternly, crossing the length of the training field swiftly.
One soldier, a young man with short, dark hair, couldn’t resist daring to answer me with a sarcastic comment. “Not used to seeing you like that, Alpha,” he said, choking back a laugh. “The usually cold warrior…” he trailed off, but another voice finished his sentence from somewhere else in the group.
“…is now a Virgin Mary!”
I pushed through the group, sniffing out the speaker by smelling a tiny surge of fear in his sweat as I stared down each of them, one by one.
The guilty man cowered before me. I loomed over him, my broad chest casting a shadow over his entire body, and he dropped to his knees, starting to stammer.
“I— it’s just, that—”
“Silence,” I growled.
I turned and locked eyes with the other insubordinate fool, the young one who dared to speak against me first. He fell to his knees as well, hanging his head.
Then I started to look around at the rest of the men. Daring them to speak. They got the message and were on their knees a moment later in a wave that crashed to the ground all around me.
I sent the two young fools to run laps. “Until I tell you to stop,” I instructed them. Their eyes went round and they stole glances at each other. They knew that would not be any time soon.
I let the rest of them off, sending them away for the day. Kayden hung around after the rest of the men left, waiting to see if I had anything for him. Or maybe waiting to tell me something he had for me. I didn’t have the patience for conversation.
I did not have time to waste, either. Two days I had spent without a workout.
Well, I’d had some cardio in bed with Fiona.
I gritted my teeth against a smile that wanted to break through, and internally reprimanded myself for my sudden weakness for this silver-haired goddess that had thoroughly distracted me in only a manner of days.
We had a set of salmon ladders in the back of the training court, near stacks of heavy weights and other climbing equipment. I jumped up and began racing up and down the ladder, landing each bar smoothly and popping in and out of the rungs without skipping a beat.
Kayden appeared in the corner of my vision. He jumped up into the other salmon ladder at my right side and started climbing.
I didn’t take a break. Just pressed on, against the pain searing through my back, neck, shoulders, forearms, wrists, hands, even fingertips… punishing myself.
My beta kept up with me until he couldn’t anymore. Kayden’s bulging arms shook fiercely before his grip gave out and he fell to the ground, hitting the turf square on his side with a mild groan. I clutched the bar in a white-knuckle grip and forced myself up and down the ladder that became a more and more brutal instrument of self-torture with every clang of metal on metal, until the same thing happened to me.
Splayed on the ground, the both of us past the point of exhaustion, I let a question escape my lips. One I hadn’t let fully form in my own mind yet, let alone spoken to anyone else.
“Do you think she’s playing me, Kayden?”
He turned to look at me seriously and paused, thinking.
“No,” he said finally. Without any further explanation.
I wished I could believe him. But no one had ever succeeded in distracting me so thoroughly – not once in my lifetime. The insubordinate soldiers had to be punished as a matter of honor. I could not let them speak to me like that without making sure they never did it again.
But I was the one to blame for their disrespect. I had earned it. I could not let them know that I agreed, of course. But they had in fact witnessed a moment of weakness in me.
I rolled onto my side and gazed down to the other end of the field. The tall young man with short, dark hair was staggering through a lap. The shorter soldier was doubled over, vomiting.
Fiona was from a rival pack, after all. Our union was still suspicious to most who knew anything about it.
I’d even let slip to her once in the bedroom that I had considered killing her father. Fiona had not reacted at the time, though that was unsurprising. She never let go of her mask of neutral regality. That quality of hers was sexy. Almost irresistible to me, in fact. But it also meant that it was going to be hard to tell if she ever lied to me.
And, as the daughter of a man I’d sworn to kill, she had every reason to lie to me.
And enough power over me, already, to destroy me if she wanted.
