6
Savannah’s POV
The afternoon sun cut into the training ground at a low angle, sharp enough to make every dust particle visible.
The air smelled like pine resin and earth and the particular kind of nervous energy that young wolves carry before a session starts.
They filed in one by one, their scents layering over each other, a crowded chord of pack markers and bloodlines.
I stood at the edge of the space and let the hollow in my chest do what it always did — a cold draft where Diana used to live.
Gone.
Just gone.
They thought I didn’t notice them looking.
“What’s her deal?” The whisper came from somewhere in the middle of the group.
“I can’t pick up anything off her.
Like, nothing.”
I straightened my spine and lifted my chin one degree.
Just one.
Enough.
“Hi!” A voice cut through the low murmuring like a window thrown open, and a girl with copper-bright hair came toward me at a pace that suggested she had no concept of social caution.
Her smile was enormous, the kind that takes over someone’s whole face.
“I’m Zoe!
Are you here for training too?”
I blinked.
That kind of unguarded warmth — I hadn’t seen it directed at me in a long time.
The last person who’d come at me like that, before the angle of everything changed, was Celeste.
“I’m one of the instructors,” I said.
Zoe’s eyes went wide.
“That is *so*—”
“Really.” A different voice, slow and deliberate, cut her off.
I turned.
Honey-gold hair with a streak of silver near the temple, designer training wear, a family crest embroidered at the ankle.
Blue Blood Pack.
I’d have recognized that particular combination of markers from twice the distance.
She circled me in a slow half-arc, and then made a show of sniffing the air, exaggerated and theatrical.
“A real wolf has a scent,” she said.
“Even the weakest ones.
You’ve got nothing.” She paused for effect, watching the crowd gather at her back.
“Are you actually human?
Did you just walk in here?”
I didn’t move.
I looked at her, kept my face still, and waited.
She wasn’t finished.
“I just think it’s worth asking, because if someone with no wolf is supposed to teach us combat—”
Then she shifted.
The sound of bones resetting in the afternoon quiet had a specific sharpness to it.
It always did.
In the space of two seconds, the girl was gone and a grey wolf was in her place — not small, not slow — and she lunged at me with her full weight behind it.
I stepped right.
Half a step.
That was all it took.
Her trajectory carried her past me, and I brought my hand down against the side of her neck as she went, using every ounce of her own momentum against her.
She hit the ground hard.
The impact sent a thud through the floor I could feel through my shoes.
I dropped to one knee, two fingers placed exactly at the junction between her neck and skull, and held the pressure there for three seconds.
Still.
Steady.
The fur receded.
She was human again, flat on her back in the dust, chest heaving, staring up at me.
Two of her packmates shifted and came at me at the same time.
I stood up, turned, and used the half-second they needed to close the distance to reset my weight.
When they arrived, I was already moving with them instead of against them.
One redirect, one pivot — they hit each other and went down in a heap.
The training ground went completely quiet.
I looked at the rest of them.
Nobody moved.
“Anyone else want to raise a concern about my qualifications?”
Nothing.
“Enough.”
The word wasn’t loud.
But the air in the entire training ground changed when it arrived, like a barometric drop before a storm.
Postures shifted.
The room organized itself.
Declan Voss walked in from the side entrance.
Dark hair, afternoon light catching the edges of it.
That particular way an Alpha moves — not hurried, not performing, just taking up the exact amount of space they’re entitled to and not one inch more.
His eyes swept the room, landed on the three wolves still picking themselves up off the ground, held there for one beat, and then moved to me.
He looked at me for just a moment longer than necessary.
“This is Savannah Cole,” he said, his voice carrying that flat, certain weight that Alpha voices do.
“Former professional fighter.
Your new combat instructor.
She has a significant amount to teach you.”
He looked at the three on the ground.
“Starting with humility.”
The session ended and the others cleared out fast, the way people do when they want to put distance between themselves and something embarrassing.
Zoe gave me a wide-eyed look on her way out that managed to communicate both *that was incredible* and *I’ll find you later* without a single word.
I almost smiled.
He asked me to come to his office after.
The room was large, orderly, a desk that had clearly belonged to someone before him and would belong to someone after.
He stood at the window with his back to me, the last of the sunset going orange and low behind the ridgeline.
“Your mother saved my life.”
The words landed heavy.
He said them like he’d been carrying them for a while.
“That was a long time ago,” I said.
“I’ve thought about how to—”
“You don’t need to.” I kept my voice even.
“Finn and I aren’t a debt you owe.
We’re not something you need to repay.”
Silence.
He turned around.
The fading light changed the color of his eyes — deeper, warmer, something in them I didn’t have a category for.
He looked at me the way someone looks at a word they almost recognize, trying to place it.
“You remind me of someone,” he said.
The words came out quiet, and I could hear that he hadn’t planned them.
Something in his voice shifted around them, like the sentence had arrived before he’d decided to say it.
I was already on my feet and moving toward the door.
“Good night, Voss.”