CHAPTER ONE
Sweat was dripping down my brow in spades, my right bicep ached, and my legs felt like they could give out at any moment, but I had to concentrate—had to pull through.
From across the mostly empty room, Aiden stared at me, his head low, eyes on me, his hair also wet with sweat. At least I’d given him a workout, too. He didn’t think I had it in me, neither did Leo, but I hadn’t given up yet, and I wasn’t going to. I was going to show the two of them just what I was made of.
“Had enough?” I asked Aiden.
“Me?” he asked, “I was about to ask you the same thing.”
“What makes you think I’ve had enough?”
“Are you both going to trash-talk each other all day, or are you actually going to keep working on your combat skills?” Leo asked.
I glared at him. “Why don’t you step in for him and we’ll see?”
“I could, but I want you to become as sharp as a sword’s edge; I don’t want to break the sword entirely.”
“Sounds like an excuse to me.”
“Enough,” he barked. “Go again, and this time don’t hold back, either of you.”
I turned my eyes on Aiden again and grinned. “Ready?” I asked.
“How about I let you come to me this time?”
“Alright, but it’s your funeral.”
Aiden shifted into a defensive position, his shirtless body rippling with power, and strength, muscles tensing, ready for my advance. Dante had showed me how to subtly enhance my own strength and reflexes by literally improving my muscle mass and the power in my joints. It wasn’t a permanent boost to my strength, but it was something I could do in the short term. Putting one foot in front of the other, I walked a step, then another, picking up the pace, moving faster and faster, until finally I was running, sprinting, and screaming the hesitation out of my lungs.
I threw myself at him, leaping through the air and winding back my arm. When my fist came down, Aiden blocked it and side-stepped, causing me to stagger forward, away from him. I whipped around and went for another punch, but Aiden, quick as he was, managed to put enough distance between us that my fist cut harmlessly through the air in front of him.
Before I could throw another punch, Aiden was on the offensive, advancing on me and throwing punch after punch in my direction, but I was just as quick as he was, and was easily able to keep out of his way. This was why we were both so tired. Neither of us had managed to land more than a couple of blows on the other during the course of the past hour, but Leo was insistent that one of us must come out the clear winner of this little sparring match, and it had to be me.
Deciding that a full-on attack wasn’t going to work, I spun around on my heel and made a break for the far wall, recalling a tactic I had used once, in the gymnasium back in Germany. Aiden, however, having been present that day, decided to stand his ground and not chase me across the room. He watched from where he stood, shoulders heaving, jaw clenched tightly.
A warm, feeling coiled in the pit of my stomach at the sight of him, this powerful man, glaring at me like some ancient gladiator might stare down a lion, waiting for it to come to him, instead of charging into its mouth headlong. He’d been clever enough not to take the bait, and now he was going to wait there for me to spend my own energy in getting to him.
“I’m getting bored,” Leo bellowed.
“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said, “I missed the part where we were doing this to amuse you.
“You’re meant to be besting each other in single combat, not staring at each other from opposite sides of this room.”
“God-dammit,” Aiden said, having had enough from Leo, and he started to advance. I readied myself for him, balling my hands into fists, and taking a sideways stance.
Aiden picked up the pace until he was running, and when he got close enough, he put his dukes up and started swinging at me. I dodged left to avoid a jab, then blocked a right hook with my right arm, and went to knee him in the stomach, but his stomach was as hard as the rock of Gibraltar, and despite the amount of power I had put into the attack, I had barely winded him.
I stared at him, eyes wide, and watched as he grabbed my arm, whipped me around, and threw me like a rag doll to the floor. I hit the ground hard with the back of my head, rolled, and stopped a few feet away from where I had been standing a moment ago. My head was throbbing, as was my arm, and now my ribs and back, too. I had fallen hard, and didn’t have it in me to get up.
“Oh my God… Lilith?” Aiden asked.
I didn’t reply. Didn’t even move, except to clutch my ribs, hugging myself tightly. Aiden then ran up to me, threw himself on his knees, and tried to pull me around, only as he went to turn me around, I sprang up, threw myself on him, and pressed my claws against his neck. Using claws, or powers, wasn’t part of the rules, but I wanted to win, and there was no way I was going to beat Aiden in a clean fight without getting a little dirty.
Aiden put his hands up and stared at me, wide eyed and scared that I was going to pierce his neck with my claws and let the blood spill out.
“Lilith?” he asked.
“This means I win, right?” I asked in return. I looked up at Leo. “Right?”
One of Leo’s eyebrows came up. “For pulling that? You’ve got to be kidding me.”
I got up and dusted myself down, allowing my claws to relax and turn into regular fingers again. “That’s unfair. How am I supposed to beat Aiden in a fist fight? The guy is six feet.”
“That doesn’t matter. The point of this exercise was to fight without resorting to your powers, which is something that could happen in the real world. You don’t know what kind of magic someone has, and if you’re ever in a situation where you can’t shape shift, you need to know your body is up to the challenge. Don’t think I didn’t notice your shape shifting. You fought dirty from the beginning, and for that reason you’re disqualified.”
“Bullshit, I’m disqualified! Disqualified from what? This is a sparring match.”
“I don’t care from what, the point is you cheated, and now you have to deal with the consequences.”
Aiden got to his feet and stood by my side, smirked, and looked over at Leo. “Damn right,” he said.
Leo scowled at Aiden. “Don’t look so damn smug,” Leo said, “She may have cheated with her powers, but you’re the idiot who fell for her wounded princess act. I don’t know which of you is more disappointing right now.”
Without saying another word, Leo barged past both of us and made his way out of the small, stony, basement room we had carved out to train our combat skills in. I allowed myself a second to exhale the breath I had held in my lungs when Leo left, and the door swung shut behind him. We’d gone through over an hour of intense training, and it had ended on a downer.
I looked over at Aiden and frowned. “Damn right?” I asked, shoving him, “Do you really want to be teacher’s pet that badly?”
“Hey, you’re the one who cheated.”
“Oh yeah? And what are you going to do about it?”
Aiden turned toward me, held my waist, and pulled me closer to his warm, sweaty body. “I could think of a few things I could do to you.”
“I guess I am feeling a little peckish after that session…” I tilted my head up toward him and found his lips with mine, kissing him lightly, “But I can’t stay.”
“No?”
“No, I’ve got things to do today. You do, too.”
“Is it about Dante?”
I shrugged. “No.”
He caressed my cheek. “Don’t lie to me… you can tell me if you’re nervous about seeing him again; he’ll be here in a few hours.”
“I don’t know what it is. Maybe it’s nerves, maybe it isn’t. He just…”
“He left, I know. But he had a job to do.”
“He didn’t just leave, like… he left. We’d spent that night together, and then he was gone in the morning.”
“Finding out where he’d gone from the Keeper probably didn’t help.”
“Fuck no. It’s like he ran away from me, and then I had to tell you guys what had happened, and how he had left, and I have all this stuff I wanna say to him when I see him, but I don’t know if I can do it.”
“Look, telling us was the smart thing to do. I know you were nervous about it, but Lilith… we all knew Dante was in this thing with us too. The only people who didn’t know it were you and him. I’m happy for you, we all are. What we want now is for the two of you to talk about it like adults, without anyone screaming at the other. Think you can do that?”
I sighed. “Yeah,” I said, “I think so.”
Aiden kissed me on my forehead. “That’s my girl.”
I smiled at that. “I’m gonna go back to my room and shower. You got plans tonight?”
He shrugged. “I’ll figure something out. I think Vik wants to go to the pub across the road. If you’re free, you’re welcome to join us.”
“Yeah, okay, maybe.”
We walked out of the room together, headed up the stairs holding hands, then split off and headed in different directions once we’d reached the ground floor—Aiden to his room, and me to mine. Walking around the Alexandria, my cheeks and chest flushed, sweat clinging to my already tight sports bra, it was easy to understand why most, if not all, of the guys wandering the halls may have had their eyes on me. I couldn’t say I didn’t welcome the attention, but I was starting to question how many of them saw more than what their eyes presented to them. I counted myself lucky to have found at least four men who did.
One of them, I knew, was in my bedroom right now, still fast asleep…