Reject me twice (Kira and Theron) novel Chapter 90

I decide to test Ciri with the one thing that’s hardest to fake: combat.

Documents can be planted, and answers can be curated. But fighting is muscle memory carved into bone through years of repetition, and when the pressure rises high enough, the body answers before the mind can edit.

I find Ciri in the corridor outside Senna’s office and keep my tone casual. “Standard protocol for newcomers — we assess physical capabilities before finalizing pack assignments. Training yard, one hour, nothing personal.”

She nods with the careful neutrality of someone who knows she’s being evaluated and has already decided how much to show. “Of course, Alpha Nightshade.”

The training yard is empty when she arrives — I cleared it deliberately. She’s dressed practically, braid pulled tight, sleeves rolled above the healing bandage. Her pocket knife is absent for the first time since she arrived.

“Basic combinations to start,” I tell her, tossing a sparring staff across the yard. She catches it one-handed — clean, reflexive, her grip settling without adjustment. The grip of someone who has held a weapon thousands of times. “Show me what you’ve got.”

The first rounds confirm what I suspected. She holds back — telegraphing strikes early, letting openings close that a trained fighter would exploit.

“You’re pulling your strikes,” I say between exchanges.

“I’m being careful with my arm. The wound isn’t fully healed.”

“Your arm is fine. You caught that staff one-handed without wincing. Try again — and this time, don’t insult me by fighting at half speed.”

Something flickers behind her eyes. I increase the pressure — faster combinations, tighter footwork. Her body adjusts, stance widening, weight dropping lower: better but still edited.

I throw a feint that shouldn’t fool anyone with real training — an obvious shoulder drop telegraphing a right strike. Except I reverse mid-motion into a left hook at her ribs.

Ciri’s body answers before her mind can intervene.

She slips the feint with a hip rotation, redirects my momentum along the staff’s shaft, and lands a counter-strike to my ribs that drives the air from my lungs.

The strike is precise — angled upward beneath the floating rib, controlled force that hurts without damaging.

I know that technique: textbook eastern military, drilled through hundreds of repetitions, not something a drifter picks up scrapping with rogues.

She catches herself and steps back.

“Lucky instinct,” she says.

I straighten, rubbing my ribs where the strike landed. The bruise will be impressive by morning. “That technique is regional, Ciri. It’s specific and taught in academies, not picked up on the road.”

“I’ve trained with a lot of different wolves over the years. Things blend together after a while — you absorb techniques without knowing where they came from.”

“An academy-grade military technique from casual training with transient wolves?”

“I’m a quick learner.” Her chin lifts slightly — the first flash of defiance I’ve seen from her. “And you’re a harder sparring partner than I expected, Alpha. My body reacted to a genuine threat. I didn’t have time to choose something less impressive.”

The honesty in that last sentence catches me off guard. It’s the most unguarded thing she’s said since she arrived — an admission that she was choosing to be less impressive, wrapped in a justification that almost makes it sound reasonable.

“Where did you train, Ciri? Give me the real answer, not the version where everything blurs together.”

Senna leans over her shoulder. “We’ve maintained that route for three seasons without incident.”

“It doesn’t guarantee a fourth. The route passes through open terrain with no natural narrow points for defense and no alternative paths within a week’s travel. A single hostile force could sever it and starve Shadowpine into submission without ever breaching the walls.”

Senna turns to me with an expression caught between admiration and suspicion. “She’s right. That’s better analysis than half the senior pack, and she identified it in forty minutes.”

“Noted.”

Late in the afternoon, as we review alliance correspondence, Ciri asks a question that makes me go still.

“The coordination with the Silver Throne’s intelligence network — does that extend to mutual defense obligations, or is it limited to information sharing? If Shadowpine’s alliance includes military commitment, the provision chain vulnerability becomes strategic rather than logistical. An enemy cutting that grain route would compromise your ability to honor a military obligation to the crown.”

The room goes quiet. A lone wolf should not know what alliances Shadowpine has. She should not know it involves intelligence coordination, and she should not be analyzing strategic intersections with this fluency.

I let the silence stretch. Then I look at Ciri and let her see that I noticed.

“That’s a sophisticated question for someone who spent the last three months drifting between camps.”

Her composure doesn’t crack. Her posture remains steady, her expression attentive, her hands still on the ledger, but her pulse does — I can hear it from across the room, the sudden acceleration of a heart that knows it has been seen.