Page 96 of With Fangs and Claws (The Wolf Queen 1)

Chapter 39

“You got caught up in it.”

My head jerked up, my body slowing belatedly as Selene stood in front of my path, her hands on her hips, a smile on her face. My focus narrowed down on that, the look of pride, of understanding. It was a gift I’d only ever received from Nordred and that realisation created a strange dissonance in me. To only ever have men approve of my actions alienated me from my own nature, so even though I’d barely shared two words with this woman, I found myself craving that approval.

“You find yourself going away in your head, yes?” she asked me, and I frowned slightly, remembering my father’s beatings and the way I’d coped with them. “You get caught up in what you are doing and forget about time, space, those around you?” I shook my head, still trying to put what she said together. “You’ve run around the training room more than twenty times and if I had to guess, you’d have kept going until I stopped you.”

She crossed her arms then, the slim muscles obvious.

“I can see why they sent you to me. If you’d grown up in Strelae, your parents would’ve had you sent to the temple before you were ten, I’d guess.” My eyebrows jerked up at that. “You’d have been training with us instead of some Granian lunk.”

“Nordred,” I said, words feeling weird in my mouth, but I forced them out. “Nordred trained me.”

Her eyes widened at that name, the way everyone’s did. I just waited for her to recover.

“The Nordred?”

I shrugged. “I’ve only ever known the one, so for me he is the Nordred.”

“Well, let's see what else this Nordred showed you. What have you learned to fight with?”

“Swords, bows.” I scratched a hand along my scalp. “I can fight with knives, but not as well.”

“Swords then,” she said, nodding to a rack of practise weapons and we walked over.

I watchedher strap on a small shield, then grip a sword, as I tossed up whether to do the same. Double wielding was often criticised for its lack of defensive capability, and Nordred had made that clear over and over on the training grounds, but here, maybe … I grabbed two swords almost defiantly and, sure enough, as I raised my gaze to meet hers, Selene shook her head.

“You’ve been taught some bad habits then,” she said. “But something tells me that only experience will make that clear. We’ll try things your way, then we’ll talk about much better strategies.” She smacked her sword against her shield. “Show me what you’ve got, wolf-girl.”

I stood there in direct defiance of her, of what I should be doing. Standing tall with my swords held out from my body, I provided the enemy with so, so many easy points of attack undefended and I did it because I knew I was either going to regret this at my leisure, or it’d pay off. Her eyes lit up immediately. She was an animal seeing its prey display a weakness and it made her hungry. I thought that would set her off balance, force an error, but as I raised my blades, ready to block her strike, I felt the sharp slice of the blunt blade across my bicep, making the muscle spasm in response, a hot flare of pain resulting.

“I told you I’d show you,” Selene said, then moved back. “Now, has the lesson been received or do you need me to go over this again?”

I hated her voice, the sneer there. The knowing edge that seemed to slice right through me. “Double wielding only works if you’re fast,” Nordred had said to me with a shake of his head, thinking that would be enough to dissuade me. Instead, I practised and practised and practised, the men chuckling all the while. It was their laughter I heard right now.

Faster…came the hiss within me. And I was.

One blade was up, blocking Selene’s before she’d even fully raised it, then I was stabbing out with the other, the blunt tip punching into her, forcing her to stumble back. My blades were up, ready for more, my heartbeat rattling frantically inside my head, but everything went still and quiet. Women all around the room stopped to take a look at what we were doing, to catch the way Selene reacted. Her short, sharp bark of a laugh seemed to settle things, as those other eyes slid away, people going back to their assigned activities.

“Interesting,” she said, then dragged her shield up, so it covered much of her body, providing me with far fewer targets. “Do that again.”

To do so I had to be even faster, to get around her before she struck me, and my muscles seemed to ratchet tighter in response. As soon as she nodded at me, I became a whirl of arms, legs and swords as I swung around and stabbed into her as she slashed out.

“See, that is the problem,” she said when we stopped. My sword point was at her throat, but hers was in my ribs. “It’s flashy and takes an amazing degree of skill, so it has my respect, but in a real fight, you need some kind of protection. My sword can’t do any serious damage here, but on the battlefield? We’re both dead, when it should only be me.”

I was surprised to see her toss aside the shield and grab another sword.

“But if you want to show me what you’re capable of, let’s both give it a try.”

She held her swords crossed in front of her and nodded while I did the same, and then we danced.

That seemedto be the only way to describe what we did. Our feet skated across the floor, barely resting for a second, neither of us giving ground or taking it. My blades met hers, and hers slashed out at me, but when we scored a hit, we didn’t pause to acknowledge that. It wasn’t the point here. What was? It was time to let that hunger that coiled inside me out, to let it run just as Selene had described, and we did.

“Peace! Peace!” she said finally, blocking my blades with hers and holding them there, resisting my attempts to free them. “Darcy, come back to here, to now.”

The alpha bark we heard so much about in Grania, it was a much more subtle thing than I’d been led to believe. Her tone was gentle, her words that too, but there was a steely thread within it which seemed to pull me back from wherever the hell I was. I blinked and looked around me, the girls brought here for training having left by now, the sun much lower in the sky, if the view through the windows were to be believed.

“I’m going to be aching in the morning,” Selene said, straightening up and replacing her blades in the rack, then swinging her arms around to loosen her shoulder joints. “I haven’t been pushed that hard for a bloody long time.”

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