Page 86 of White Wolf

Ivan snorted.

A quick glance at Nikita showed his face to be carefully guarded.

Kolya moved his knives into one hand and held the free one down to her. There was nothing kind in his expression, but he said, “Everyone falls a few times. Get back up.”

Pride wouldn’t allow her to quit, so she took his hand and let him pull her back up.

He stepped back and let her compose herself, dust off her pants, wipe the handle of her knife on her shirttail.

“Ready?” he asked.

“Yeah.”

He circled again, and this time she watched him, and not the flashing knife. Watched the way he walked on the balls of his feat, poised and ready. Noted the tension in his spine, and the looseness of his arms. He wasn’t just a fighter, she realized, as she saw the way his calves flexed inside his gaiters, the way he carried himself.

“You were a dancer,” she said, and knew it was true because he staggered to a sudden, clumsy halt.

“What?” he asked, flatly, but she saw his pulse beating in the big vein in his throat.

“You were,” she said. “You move like one.”

“And what were you? A whore? You move like one,” he shot back.

“Kolya,” Nikita said.

But Katya didn’t care. She’d struck a nerve, and she intended to keep plucking at it. “Farmer’s daughter, actually,” she said. “And I only spread my legs when you black-coated bastards forced them open. You can’t be a whore if you don’t get paid.”

“You could be a bad one.”

“Then maybe you shouldn’t have bothered.”

“It wasn’tme,” he said through his teeth.

“Just your friends, then.”

He lunged, but this time she’d been watching him, and she was ready.

She dodged – only to have him come at her from a different angle. She ducked, backpedaled. She kept her feet, but just barely. Hewasa dancer, she saw now, and a fine one at that. Lightning-quick and light on his feet, it took every ounce of concentration to watch his body and predict its moves. Inevitably, she forgot all about the knife.

She spun away from the slice of one, and stopped short when she felt the kiss of the other against her throat. She froze, breath catching.

She heard the soft sound of the other knife going into its sheath, and then his hand caught her arm, twisted it around behind her back. His breath rushed hot in her ear, voice tight with anger, but approving. “Better. Needs work.” Then he let her go.

Katya pressed a hand to her throat – not a scratch, only the wildly beating rhythm of her pulse. She sucked in a deep breath and realized, to her shame, that she’d dropped her own knife.

“Pick it up,” Kolya said. “We’ll go again.”

She took another steadying breath, and reached for it.

~*~

Sasha could hear the voices of his human pack members a long ways off, and the sound brought a smile to his face as he hiked the last distance up the hill to the pine-ringed clearing where they’d camped the night before. They’d said they would begin Katya’s combat training today, and clearly that was still in progress, if the barked instructions and sounds of effort were anything to go by.

“Again,” Kolya said. “Lower, there, yes.”

Feliks let out a grunt and Katya murmured something low and pleased with herself.

The wolves started to trot, tongues lolling, happy and relaxed as they started up the hill. All but the alpha female, who stayed close at Sasha’s hip.

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