Page 89 of Shadow Bonds

“What you did with the general.” I heard it’s going to take him months to recover from what they did, even with the healing devices they have on hand.

“The general is lucky he’s still alive,” Malakai grits out.

“How do you get away with it?” I ask them and they look at me like they haven’t got a clue what I’m talking about.

“I get yanked into isolation for punching a girl in the face and you literally rip the camp apart, tear the hearts out of two other Shadows, and break nearly every bone in the general’s body.”

“Who did you punch?” Malakai asks, finally looking intrigued instead of angry.

Knox frowns. “Yeah, why are we only hearing about this now?”

I sigh. “That’s not the point. The point is that you all?—”

“They’re afraid of us,” Theon says, making me pause. He turns to me in his bed. “They sent us to the Void so often that the energy inside it melded with our own. They have no other punishment that they can enforce.”

I blanch and accidentally drop my shield. “Was that an option?” I glance between them all. “Sending you to the Void?”

Theon’s eyes soften. “No. They stopped sending us when we really came into our powers. It can’t harm us anymore.”

I lie back down and stare up at the black cloth. “Promise? I don’t want any of you to ever have to go back to that place.”

Silence spans out between us, and I’m too afraid to look at any of them to see their expressions. I now know what the old Sena did, and I need them to know that’s not something this Sena would ever do to them.

“Promise,” Cyrus says, and I nod, finally starting to feel a sliver of relief.

The threat hanging over my head from Sena’s family slowly loosens and falls away.

They lied. They had to have. And now I don’t have to give a shit about them or their threats.

“The academy is not for the weak,” Theon says, drawing my attention. “It’s barbaric and cruel. They encourage fights between the Shadows. Encourage animosity, hoping it will bring out the strong and squash out the weak. If you’re weak, you’re dead. That goes for females too.” He raises a brow. “If you think the females have it hard, you should see what they put the males through when they start here.”

And they have no other choice. A heavy weight sits on my chest thinking about what they’ve gone through.

“Stop worrying and get some sleep,” Knox says, and I hear him moving around in his bed. “We’re back in the academy tomorrow and you still have an obstacle course to pass if you want any of those privileges.”

Malakai chuckles. “And now with no instructor,wewill be the ones to train you.”

I narrow my eyes on him. “You wouldn’t happen to know what happened to Instructor Dick, would you?”

“Not a clue,” he says with a savage smile. And I don’t believe a word of it.

CHAPTER 27

“If you don’t complete this course in ten minutes or less, your mates will not be allowed to compete in the war games.”

The sun beats down my back as the Shadow instructor’s words play over and over in my head as I push my body to keep moving through the assault course.

Apparently being mates makes us a team. And as a team we all have to pass our trials and tests.

But I know it’s really payback for what they did to General Reed. And even though they annoy the hell out of me, I can’t take another thing away from them. Not when it was technically my fault they went after the general.

I’ve slacked on my training the last while, but I know I can do this. It’s just ten minutes, and I can already do it in twelve. If I keep practicing every day and build up my endurance, I can cut it down to ten easily.

At least that’s what I tell myself the third go around. But I still can’t get it down even half a minute.

It’s not crawling through the trip wires, nets, and tunnels that’s holding me back. Or balancing on the stepping stones and balance beam. Or climbing the sloped and high walls.

It’s the jungle ropes after the two-meter-deep pit of water and mud that always slows me down.