Page 49 of Through Battle and Blades (The Wolf Queen 2)

“C’mon, lass!” Gael shouted, real urgency in his voice. “You took my bloody brother down last night. You can take Selene.”

But it was the other taking of Weyland that I’d done, over and over throughout the night, that had me moving like an old woman. No fucking before battle again, I swore to myself as Selene nicked my thigh when I didn’t shuffle away fast enough. I growled at that, something rising inside me as a result, but it didn’t bring with it a golden light. Rather it was red-hot and immediate.

The other side of my soul, she rose up, glared through my eyes at the Maiden and then bared our fangs.

“Nice display,” Selene said with a smirk. “But you’ll need to do more than show your teeth. You’re a mess this morning.”

I was.

“I can’t see any sign of an alpha here.”

I wasn’t.

“I see a woman who, if she’s not bloody careful, will spend her time drowning in dick, and then come to the duelling grounds to be slaughtered.”

I stiffened at that and, just then, Selene’s mocking smile became quite a different one, Aurora’s face transposed over hers. She let her shield sag, not even doing me the courtesy of treating me as a threat, adding further insult to injury when she tossed the shield away and held her arms out wide.

“You want me? Come and get me,” she said.

I lunged then, but my body wasn’t performing the way it should. Whatever I’d drunk last night, it seemed to have divorced me from that strange sense I carried with me of how to move and what to do. My wolf snarled, somehow even more irritated than me and that’s when it happened.

My vision went red, my body turned to fire, but these were not the sweet flames Weyland had fanned last night. This was the destructive conflagration that tore through old wood forests, destroying everything in its path, and, right now, its focus was Selene. My strikes were wild, sloppy, with instinct pushing my limbs, not my brain. No, that was sitting there in my skull, quietly horrified at what the hell I was doing, even as my wolf exulted. Selene went skipping backwards at our wild attack, not in any real danger due to my lack of finesse, but if my sword had connected with her? The momentum behind it was forcing it to slice through the air with an audible whoosh, stirring something within.

Temper those flames, Gael said, but not from the sidelines. No, his voice was a whisper inside my ear, then a cool hand directing my arm. You know better than to go mad on the training ground. You’re fast and skilled enough to remind Selene who is alpha. Let’s do this.

I paused for a second, just staring at a concerned Selene before I took a breath and collected myself. I heard the chatter in the courtyard, the women of the citadel obviously having a washing day because the sun was shining. White sheets flapped in the breeze from where they were pegged on the line, as did shirts, skirts, trews and blouses. The women chattered amongst themselves and their voice felt like they multiplied in my head, others coming from somewhere to join them.

I lifted my sword in salute to Selene, indicating that we would start this bout again and she nodded, doing the same. We flicked the blades away and then we began.

Circle, circle, circle, my feet shuffled through the sand, always shifting. The speed, the surety had made a welcome return and my body felt like it was mine again. No, it was more than that. There was no burn in my thighs, no ache in my back as every muscle was used, keeping my body a moving target, one that dodged and blocked all of Selene’s attacks, parrying with ease. But that wasn’t all.

I felt like I could see her now, what she was doing and what she was going to do, Gael’s more removed view of the proceedings adding to my own. Lethargy was shoved to one side and I felt a kind of mental clarity I’d never really experienced before, my mind as sharp as my sword. Between us, we caught the tiny little movements that telegraphed what Selene was about to do. The tiny lift of her shoulder before she struck, the slight twist of her ribcage in preparation. We were there before she even slashed out at me, so that we were already parrying her blow and then responding with our own.

The first time I saw blood appear on her skin, my mouth watered. The second, my fangs snicked down. The third and the fourth came in rapid succession, her face falling as I slashed lightning fast, one long shallow cut, then another across each bicep.

“Darcy…” she said in warning, but her voice shook when she said it, so it wasn’t very convincing at all. We kept dealing a flurry of blows, forcing her back.

“Darcy!” The sound of her yelp was sweet, so sweet, especially when it was followed by a stumble, her footing failing and only her formidable reflexes stopping her from falling before us.

“Darcy, for fuck’s sake!”

We ended up with me standing over her, while she was forced half on her knees, her sword shaking as she struggled to hold me off.

“You win, alpha,” she said, staring intently into my eyes.

She was willing me to come back, to be the girl again. To be biddable and reasonable, and part of me resisted it with every breath. Yesss… came a creaky voice in my head and I was shown how this would go.

Selene would fall before me, her throat slit, her body falling limply to the sand as all the blood inside her pumped frantically out. The light would die in her eyes and they would become cloudy and staring, as her skin turned white, then bluish. She would be gone and I would remain. I heard a raven’s caw as imagined all of that.

I dropped my sword at that, thrusting the point into the sand and stepping away, my hands trembling. When I looked up, I found I had an audience. Not just Gael, though he rushed closer, his hands feeling right, so right when they landed on my skin, tugging me against his chest. But as his nose quested in my hair, his lips finding his mating mark and Weyland’s, I saw that at least some of the ladies had left their washday chores and had come over.

Annis stepped forward then, a spokesperson for the group.

“You beat down one of the queen’s Wolf Maidens,” she said with an attitude of awe. Her eyes travelled around the group standing on the outskirts of the training grounds. “Do you think you could teach some of us to be handy with a sword?”

I let out a little snort, not of amusement, but of shock and some part horror. I felt completely out of control right now, the same kind of violent tide Weyland had roused in me last night here now. But this part of me bayed for blood, not seed. Then, as I glanced at each one of the women, seeing pinched expressions of fear and need, I realised something. They felt just as out of control.

The Reavers had taken away from them that sense of wellbeing and safety we all needed in order to thrive, and nothing would bring that back until either every Reaver was dead, or the women felt competent enough to defend themselves.

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