Page 43 of Broken Fate
Only to have them grab my foot mid-air, twist, and toss me through the air to bounce roughly across the ground.
“Don’t get cocky.”
I gathered myself, getting to my feet just in time to deflect a flurry of fists. The attack drove me back, keeping me on the defensive. My opponent didn’t let up, didn’t slow. Amber eyes gleamed with furious intent.
A blow slipped through my defenses, and I staggered back, taking another punch, this time to the gut, doubling me over. I twisted away from the knee that followed, managing to turn it into a grazing impact instead of a knockout. Skin split over my cheek as I reeled.
I kicked out the instant I steadied. The attack left me off-balance and open to a punishing kick if I missed, but my red-haired opponent didn’t see it coming. My foot took them in the gut, and they flew backward with awhooshof air from their lungs.
“Not cocky,” I said, stalking forward as blood dripped down my chin. I still smiled on my good side.
“It was cocky,” Andi said, shaking my kick off and setting herself. “You didn’t land it and got rocked instead. Save the trash-talking. It’s not worth it.”
“But it’s so fun,” I said with a grin, laughing off the pain Andi’s strikes had inflicted.
“Come on,” Andi growled and came at me again, closing fast. I dodged and blocked, putting all the training of the past month to good use.
She was fast and highly trained. It should have been a beatdown. Yet I somehow managed to deflect every attack and even inflicted a few blows of my own. My strikes were rough, rudimentary, and not executed to their fullest potential, but I hit like a hammer blow.
I slipped past Andi’s guard, and she spun away, her upper splitting over my knuckles as I lashed out at her face. When she didn’t immediately get back up, I paused.
“Are you okay?” I asked.
“Where did you learn that move?” Andi asked, spitting out blood.
My eyebrows rose at the sight of her. I had mangled her mouth. The bottom lip was already swelling as more blood poured through the ripped skin where my fist had impacted her.
“Oh, shit,” I said. “I didn’t mean—”
Andi waved it off, spitting again. The blood flow was already starting to slow, and I knew the wounds would soon heal, but I felt bad.
“Where did you learn that?”
“Learn what?” I asked. “You know I don’t know much yet. I just … acted.”
“You just acted,” Andi muttered, her words slightly hard to understand thanks to her swollen lips, starting to look like they’d both been stung repeatedly by bees.
“Yeah,” I said, shrugging. “I’m sorry, I don’t know.”
“You either have a natural talent at this, then, or there’s some Alpha blood inside you,” she declared. “Nobody should be this good, that fast.”
I stiffened. Alpha blood? I hoped not. Not after the truth about them had been revealed.
“Relax,” Andi said with a wave. “We don’t judge here. The Alphas are centuries old and very male. They get around. Their immortality has never carried over to any offspring, but being descended from an Alpha is not a black mark. Not here, at least. Especially if you use that to help us.”
“I guess.”
“Can I be next?”
We turned to see Clive enter the sparring pit, hopping down from the lip above. The pit was a circular depression in one of the caves, filled with a thick layer of moss harvested from a nearby bog to help cushion the impact of the fighting.
“Be my guest,” Andi said. “Give her a good beating.”
Clive took in Andi’s wounds, then glanced at me. “Now, I’m not sure I want to,” he said, doffing his shirt and loosening his arms.
I noted how his muscles rippled. In the month since I’d devoted myself to the rebellion, learning its training, the rules, and the way of life here in the cave complex, Clive and I had spent a lot of time together. He was training hard, too, and his body was starting to develop that thickness of extra muscle that came with adulthood. “Man-muscle” as he called it, extra proud of the bulk that would only grow with time.
It was impossible not to notice the changes in him. Even then, as we grappled and sparred, working up a sweat, bodies slamming into and onto one another as we wrestled, I realized I hadn’t thought of him as nerdy Clive in quite some time.
