Isla’s POV~
“Physically, on average, yes,” Slade said.
His voice was rough.
“We are bigger.
We have more muscle mass.
That is biology.”
He looked over at the woman who had pinned the man to the ground.
She was wiping sweat from her forehead.
“But that doesn’t mean they’re useless,” he said.
He looked back at me.
His eyes dropped to my lips, then back to my eyes.
“Strength isn’t just about how much you can bench press, Isla.
It’s about will.
It’s about the will to survive.”
He reached out.
I flinched.
He paused, then kept going.
He tucked a wet strand of hair behind my ear.
“In battle, everyone has a role.
Males are typically frontline.
Brute strength.
Aggression.”
He pointed a clawed finger at a massive wolf who had just body-slammed another into the dirt.
The impact shook the ground.
“But females?” Slade turned his head.
He looked at me.
His eyes were dark.
“Females are faster.
More agile.
Better at strategy and precision strikes.”
“In a real fight, you want a balanced force,” Slade continued.
His voice got rougher.
“Males break through defenses.
Females exploit weaknesses.
Males draw attention and females strike from the shadows.”
He stepped even closer to me.
“Let’s take it like this,” he said, leaning down so his breath hit my ear.
“Males are hammers.
Females are knives.”
I blinked.
The concept landed in my brain.
Oh.
So he was serious?
I looked at the women again.
This psychotic, violent, dangerous man…
he thought women were important?
He thought they were strong?
What the hell.
My whole life, I had been taught the opposite.
My father taught me that women were soft.
That we were things to be used, broken, and discarded.
That strength was a male trait.
But here, Slade was telling me that a knife was more dangerous than a hammer if you knew where to cut.
Brock, who had been standing silently behind us, stepped forward.
“Every wolf in this pack gets training,” Brock said.
“Regardless of gender.
It’s mandatory.”
I watched a woman near the water trough.
She had a baby carrier strapped to her chest.
The baby was sleeping, bouncing gently with her movements.
She wasn’t resting.
She was doing pull-ups on a horizontal bar, her legs kicking out to avoid hitting the baby. This chapter was copied from g.com without permission.
“Even the mothers?” I asked.
Brock followed my gaze.
He didn’t even blink.
“Especially the mothers,” he said.
He watched the woman pull herself up, her muscles, straining, the baby secure against her.
“They’re protecting the next generation,” Brock continued.
“They need to be strong enough to carry the future while killing for it.”
“But… my old Pack didn’t—”
I cut myself off.
A memory hit me.
I recalled the way my father’s belt sounded when it landed on my body.
I was always terrified.
Slade looked down at me.
He didn’t look annoyed.
“Your old Pack was backward and abusive,” he said bluntly.
I closed my mouth.
I couldn’t argue with that.
I couldn’t find a single word to defend the people who had starved me and beaten me for years.
“There’s our girl!”
Colt appeared out of nowhere.
One second the air was empty, the next he was there, sliding an arm around my shoulders.
His skin was warm through my hoodie.
I didn’t shrug him off.
“Giving her the grand tour?” Colt asked Brock, his tone was teasing.
Brock walked a few paces ahead, his hands clasped behind his back.
He didn’t turn around.
“Showing her what a real pack looks like.”
We started walking again.
The training yard was huge.
As we moved toward the edge, near the tree line, I saw a group of younger wolves.
They looked like teenagers.
They were laughing.
Two of them were wrestling in the grass, but it wasn’t vicious.
It was a play.
One pinned the other, and they both rolled over, grinning.
They weren’t afraid.
I stopped breathing for a second.
I stared at a girl with braids who was sparring with a boy.
She kicked his legs out from under him, and he laughed, dusting off his pants.
“You’re staring,” Colt observed.
He leaned in, his voice dropping.
“They’re not scared,” I said quietly.
“Why would they be?” Colt asked.
I looked at him.
He seemed genuinely confused.
“At my old pack, everyone was always… tense,” I said, trying to explain the feeling in my chest.
“Afraid.
Looking over their shoulders.
Waiting for the next hit.”
Colt’s arm tightened around my shoulders, protectively.
“We don’t tolerate bullying in this pack,” Colt said, but his voice had lost its playfulness.
It was hard.
“Anyone who abuses their power gets dealt with.
Harshly.”
I stopped walking.
I pulled out from under Colt’s arm, just enough to turn and look at them.
Brock had stopped.
Slade was there, leaning against a tree, watching me with those dark eyes.
He had come out of the administration building, a stack of files in his hand.
He dropped them when he saw me looking.
“You don’t tolerate bullying,” I repeated slowly.
“No,” Brock said.
“Zero tolerance policy,” Slade added.
He was picking at a piece of dried blood on his knuckle.
“Anyone who hurts the weak gets punished,” Maddox said softly.
He stepped closer, his hands up.
I laughed.
It wasn’t a happy sound.
It hurt my ribs.
“That’s rich,” I said.
My voice shook, vibrating with a rage I hadn’t let myself feel in years.
“You made my life hell.
Humiliated me.
Hurt me.
Broke me.
And now you’re telling me you don’t tolerate bullying?”
The silence that followed was heavy.
Maddox was the first to move.
He stepped forward, right into my space.
He didn’t touch me, but he was close enough that I could smell him.
“You’re right,” he said.
I blinked.
I waited for the ‘but’.
I waited for the excuse.
“You’re absolutely right,” Maddox said again.
He looked at me, really looked at me, and his eyes were full of a misery that matched my own.
“We were bullies.
And we were cruel.”
He paused.
He took a deep breath, and his chest heaved.
“I’m sorry.”
I held my breath.
I didn’t know what to do with that.
He had apologized before, again and again.
But this felt different.
This felt like a confession.
Maddox looked down at his boots, then back at me.
“I started it.
The bullying.
The torment.
It was my fault.
I thought—”
He stopped.
His jaw clenched tight, the muscles jumping.
He looked like he was in pain.
“I thought you were something you weren’t,” he said, his voice rough.
“And instead of asking, instead of talking to you, I—”
“You destroyed me,” I interrupted coldly.
Maddox flinched like I’d hit him.
“Yes.” he sighed.
He ran a hand through his hair, messing it up.
“I asked my brothers to help.
I told them you’d betrayed me.
That you were…
that you’d hurt me.”
He looked up at me, his eyes wet.
“I lied,” he whispered.
“I lied to them to make them hate you, because I was too much of a coward to just talk to you.”