“Before we begin, remember one thing.
Combat Fundamentals isn’t a class where you prove who’s the strongest.” The teacher’s voice rang out across the room.
“You’re not here to take your opponent down as fast as you can.
You’re here to learn how to control your own body when it wants to move faster than your mind does.
Understood?!”
Unlike the other classes, held outdoors or in cramped rooms with chalkboards, desks, and chairs, this one took place in a wide gymnasium.
The wooden floor bore years of scuffing from training, and the stone walls had been built high enough to swallow the sound of impact.
Xera walked beside Elara and gave her arm a gentle tug.
“Want to pair up with me?
I promise I won’t hurt you.”
Elara glanced over quickly, just to make sure Xera’s tone really was as friendly as it sounded.
It seemed moving into the Rhaen dorm had already earned her a new friend, and fast.
Elara nodded right away, without a second thought.
She trusted Xera far more than the other werewolf girls who still eyed her with something close to dislike, even now.
“Pair up!” the teacher barked, her voice loud enough to bounce off the stone walls.
Elara flinched slightly, though none of the other students so much as blinked.
“Let’s go,” Xera said, pulling her forward.
Before Xera and Elara could take a step, Kael caught them both by the arm.
“Elara’s with me.” Not a question.
Just a decision he’d already made.
Xera shot him a look of protest.
“I asked her first.
Go worry about your own training for the competition.”
The second Xera finished, Elara turned to Kael too.
“I’ll stick with Xera.
Relax, nobody’s bleeding today,” she said, casual, as if the topic of blood no longer fazed her at all.
“Rhaen, get back to your training!”
Elara jumped at the shout from behind her.
Yet again, no one else so much as reacted, as if that kind of volume was just part of the scenery here.
“Watch yourself if she gets hurt,” Kael warned Xera.
Xera only answered with a sly little smile.
“Don’t mind him.” Xera pulled Elara off to join the rest of the girls.
The teacher stood at the center of the arena and waited until every student found their place.
Once the chatter died down, she had them spread out, a few steps apart, feet shoulder width, knees bent slightly.
“We start today with three things.
Balance, reflexes, and defense,” the teacher said, her gaze sweeping the room, taking in each student in turn.
“You’ll learn to read the direction of an attack before it ever lands.”
“Don’t lean on strength.
Don’t wait to get hit before you move,” she went on, her voice climbing higher with every line.
“And above all, never break your stance just because you want to strike.”
She demonstrated a simple movement, shifting her weight from one foot to the other before stepping half a pace back.
“You’ll practice dodging without turning your body, eyes locked on your opponent the whole time, then returning to your original stance,” she explained, running through it once more, slower this time. Visit novelping . com for the full chapter.
“After that, we move to attack and defense drills in pairs,” she continued.
“Strikes only land on the target we’ve marked.
You need to be able to stop yourself before you lose control of it.”
Her eyes lingered a moment on a handful of students she recognized as seasoned fighters.
Kael was one of them.
“If any of you think this drill is too easy, don’t go looking for ways to make it harder,” she warned, aiming the words straight at them.
“Speed without control isn’t skill.
It’s just a quicker way to screw up.”
Once she was satisfied everyone understood, she raised a hand.
“Now.
One of you attacks, one defends.
No full-force hits,” she said firmly.
Xera leaned in and whispered to Elara, “I’ll defend.
You’ve got the movement down, right?”
Elara nodded.
She could still picture exactly what the teacher had just shown them.
Elara stepped forward, dropping her shoulders slightly, and threw a straight punch at Xera’s face as fast as she could manage.
Xera twisted just enough to the side, deflecting the strike with her forearm instead of blocking it head on.
She didn’t push back, only redirected the momentum, letting Elara’s own force carry her forward instead of absorbing it herself.
Elara stumbled, her balance gone right along with her target.
Just before the wooden floor rushed up to meet her, Kael’s hands were already there, catching her at the waist and pulling her upright in one clean motion, as though he’d measured the distance the moment she threw the punch.
Elara and Xera both turned at once.
But before either of them could get a word out, the teacher had already shouted.
“Rhaen, what exactly do you think you’re doing?!”
Elara pulled free of Kael’s grip.
Xera steadied her too, just in case.
“She was about to eat the floor!” Kael shot back, not backing down an inch.
The teacher closed the distance between them.
Her voice, already loud enough to carry across the whole gym, climbed even louder as she laid into Kael a second time.
“Get back to your partner!
Focus on your own training!”
Elara squeezed her eyes shut for a few seconds.
That kind of volume was nearly too much for her ordinary human ears.
She shoved Kael away.
“Go.
Focus, Kael.
Focus on your competition!” She threw her hands up, plainly annoyed.
In front of her, Xera was fighting to hold back a laugh at the sight of Kael getting scolded like a kid who wouldn’t behave.
“Your reflexes are slow!
You need to catch her faster if she’s going down!” Kael pointed a finger at Xera.
Now it was his turn to lecture, though Xera couldn’t have cared less.
Elara and Xera went back to the drill, running through the movement a few more times before switching.
Xera attacked.
Elara defended.
Elara tracked Xera’s movements as closely as she could, but before she managed to steady herself, the second strike came, a low kick aimed at her calf, meant to knock her off balance all over again.
Elara shifted her back foot and lifted her knee just enough to clear the hit, then landed lower than before, pressing her center of gravity down.
Impressed, Xera gave a small nod.
“Not bad.”
“Told you.
It’s not that I can’t do it.
I’m just not used to it yet.”
The next attack came before she could even finish the sentence.
A combination, an uppercut followed by a shoulder thrust to close the gap, forced her to block with her arm, but the shoulder came in too close to dodge.
She staggered half a step back, completely off balance.
The wooden floor felt closer than ever, and for the second time, before Elara could even feel the impact, another pair of hands was already there waiting, not catching her waist this time but bracing her back instead, as if he had already been moving before the shoulder strike ever landed.
Kael.
Again.
This time Elara didn’t even have a second to be surprised.
Kael’s reflexes were always faster than they had any right to be, as if he’d made a habit of tracking the movements of anyone training near him.
Elara pulled free of his grip with a groan.
“Ugh!
I told you, focus on your own training!” She raised her voice on purpose, irritated at having to be rescued in front of the whole class for the second time.
“I moved before I could think about it.
It’s instinct,” Kael said, unbothered.
“RHAEN!
ELARA!
BOTH OF YOU, OVER HERE!”
Elara shut her eyes for a moment, bracing for how much that was about to hurt her ears.
But this time, the shout never came.
Instead of the usual string of scolding for Kael’s antics, what she got was an eerie silence, a pause that stretched far too long to be just another routine reprimand.
“If my ears start bleeding, it’s on you,” Elara said, elbowing Kael in the side as hard as she could, half joking, half trying to shake off the dread creeping into her chest.
Kael didn’t even flinch.
Elara and Kael walked toward the teacher.
She could see the seriousness on the woman’s face as she spoke in low tones with another teacher, someone Elara didn’t recognize, her expression nothing like the booming voice that usually filled the gym.
This time she was barely above a whisper, and that alone was enough to slow Elara’s steps without her even meaning to.
“The intruder has been found.
Meet Magnus in his room immediately.”
Those two short sentences were enough to stop Elara cold, far more effective than any shout she’d heard all day.
Beside her, Kael tensed too.
His jaw locked tight.
He reached for Elara’s hand and gripped it hard, as if bracing to pull her away at a moment’s notice, then glanced back just to make sure she was still there before turning his focus to the teacher again.
Elara could see his jaw still clenched, and his eyes couldn’t lie.
Not to her.
Elara knew Kael was far more worried than she was.