Page 105 of Phoenix Fall

Ten minutes into an excruciating introductory session by Amadeus on council policies and procedures, I felt as sorry for them as I did for myself. And I discovered that the humanoid component was indeed capable of overpowering the shifter one, smell-wise, when confined to an enclosed space, however large it may be. I couldn’t imagine what the shifter noses made of it all.

It didn’t bother Trix in the slightest. She snoozed all through class.

When the bell rang, there was a stampede for the exit. Hard to say whether they were running from Amadeus’s boring drone, or the stench.

“That’s an hour and a half of my life that I won’t get back,” I muttered to Mari.

“Well, it was good to rest up. Because now we have another run,” she pointed out.

I groaned. I might have healing ability, but my body was tired. Two daily runs, on top of the classes, were going to have me fitter than I’d ever been in my life.

If I survived it.

“You up for this, my friend?” I asked Trix. She waved her tail, but I thought it was out of loyalty to the cause rather than true enthusiasm.

We assembled out in front of the building. Sebastian took one look at the rather sorry lot of us, and his mouth pulled straight.

“Okay, recruits. In the interests of not having to scrape you all out of the dirt, I will have pity for just this one occurrence. No late run today.”

The entire group brightened.

“Instead, we will do some calisthenics to loosen you all up.”

Damn.

An hour later, I collapsed on the ground beside Matt. “Are we loose yet?”

“If you are asking if every muscle fibre has been pulled apart from the one next to it, the answer is yes,” Mari answered from where she sat on my left.

“After all that, I’m a shot duck,” complained Matt. He was flat out on my other side. Trix had taken it as an opportunity to lick his face. Which he was enduring rather than discouraging.

“You guys would never survive up north,” Aaron sneered from where he and Darius sat nearby. “There is no such thing as taking it easy.”

Both he and Darius had endured the day with a minimum of obvious fatigue, so perhaps there was something in what he said. But a muscle jumped in Matt’s jaw, and his eyes narrowed as he sat up, dislodging my dog.

“Try mustering a few thousand wild cattle with the sun sucking every bit of dew off your bleedin’ skin, you bludger.”

The last thing we needed was renewed warfare between him and Aaron, no matter how annoying the beta was. “Toughness comes in all sorts of ways,” I hurried to add. “We need to appreciate that if we are going to be a team.”

Matt was so tense his muscles were corded, and Aaron opened his mouth to say something pretty much guaranteed to make things worse—but Darius shot his beta a look, and his eyes gleamed.

Aaron closed his mouth.

Darius nodded to me. “That is a very accurate assessment, Babydoll,” he noted as he rose, and the two headed down the path to the forest—not toward the building.

I watched them go. What was Darius’s game? He was a bastard one minute, and the next—his team-building skills needed work, but that wasn’t the first time he’d pulled rank on his beta.

Talakai pushed himself to his feet and strode off without a single word to us. Disappointing, but I was starting to accept such things from the Dragonshifter. Even as I admired the breadth to his shoulders, and dramatic taper to his sculpted butt, I questioned whether I would ever manage to make him a functional part of the team.

With one hand tousling Trix’s disreputable fur, Matt’s brows lowered as he stared after the Dragon shifter. “Doesn’t that bloke ever get stonkered? I swear he could have kept going in our fight session forever. Just once, I’d like to hear him whine.”

“I suspect his magic potion is the crystal dust. How can we get our hands on some of it?” Mari asked as she labored to her feet.

“Maybe I should try it.” Matt rubbed a hand through his hair, reinstating the tufted signature look.

I sensed eyes on us and noticed Sebastian glancing our way as the class broke up. The instructor’s pale gaze locked with mine for just a moment before he turned and strode away.

I had to stop having these time-lapse moments. I rubbed a hand over my face, and when I dropped it, Matt was staring at me.

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