When We Were Mates (Demetra and Emris) novel Chapter 144

Chapter 144

Alpha Emris.

Contd.

19

55 vouchers

When Honey said we needed distance from the training area, I assumed she meant the far edge of the pack grounds. Maybe the ridge. Somewhere inconvenient but manageable.

Not this.

We drove until the landscape stopped looking like anything I recognised, until the pack house disappeared entirely behind the tree line and then behind the hills beyond that, and when I step out of the car and turn around there is nothing.

Not even birds.

“Right.” Honey plants her feet like a drill sergeant. “Here’s what we’re doing, Alpha. You see what Antonio and Josh are holding?”

I look. Both instructors are holding what appear, at first glance, to be long metallic rods… somewhere between a staff and a baton, roughly the length of a forearm.

“Those are called Bolts. They’re engineered specifically to replicate the velocity and force distribution of a Lycan’s strike. Which means when that thing connects with you, your body receives the same signal it would in a real fight.” She looks at me steadily. “There will be punches in this contest, Alpha. A lot of them. We need your body to know what’s coming before it arrives, which means Antonio and Josh are going to hit you with those rods until the sensation stops being a surprise.”

I take a breath.

Think about the fact that I have three days, no alternatives, and no one else I trust enough to hand this training. I think about the Black Covenant pack. I think about what losing means and I take my shirt off at

once.

The moment the fabric, Honey makes a short, bright laugh like the game just became real to her. Like she’d been waiting to see whether I’d hesitate.

I throw the shirt onto the rocks.

“Wait.” I raise a finger. “Have you ever actually hit anyone with those things before?”

“We’ve only tested them on – well. Robots, technically—”

“What?”

“You’re a Trybrid, Alpha Emris.” She snaps her fingers toward Antonio without looking away from me. “You’ll be fine.”

Antonio steps to my left. He’s built solidly through the chest, a full moustache, and hasn’t spoken once since we left the pack house. On my right, Jason who is younger–looking has a face that defaults to something close

15:55 Tue, May 19

Chapter 144

to a smile, and he’s been chuckling to himself at irregular intervals ever since we got in the car.

I roll my shoulders. Look at Honey…and nod.

The Bolt connects with my back!

The world whites out as I feel my wolf lunge like it’s about to get out of this body!

19

55 vouchers

It’s pain…. catastrophic pain….as if…as if a building has been dropped on my spine from a significant height. I feel pain through muscle, through tissue, through bone, and I feel one knee hitting the ground. It rattled my skeleton; it shifted my organs!

But that makes no SENSE!

I fought that bastard Lake. I took his punches. And I swear to the moons, he did not throw a punch as heavy as

this!

This is something from outside the known scale. This is what it would feel like if something vast and wrong came up out of the earth and hit you with the first solid object it found, with no understanding of and no interest in what you’re made of.

I look up at Honey from my knee.

She looks back at me with an expression that is almost apologetic. Almost.

“Oops…I may have undersold it. It’s worse than a Lycan’s punch, isn’t it? Honestly, I wouldn’t know, I’ve never been hit by one. But judging by your face-” she nods to the two instructors to “continue.”

TO CONTINUE!?

I get a moment to look at the rod properly as Antonio adjusts his grip for the next strike. They’re not ordinary metal. There’s a core inside…I can see a thin line of silver running through the center like a vein. At the tips, small prongs glow faintly blue.

“ARGHHG!”

The velocity channels through the point of contact and goes into my joints and into the shoulder socket as if electricity being poured into the marrow. My ulna screams. My radius shudders. I feel microfractures spiderwebbing through the bone with every blow. My nerves are on fire and frozen at the same time as the hits come from both sides now, pounding into me like I’m a stake being driven into the earth.

My spine arches and I swear I can feel each vertebra compress. The hits land between my shoulder blades, over my kidneys, along the curve of my ribs.

I double over, retching the red bull in the midst of hits as the bolts sink into my abdomen. Everything is wrong, and still they don’t stop.

Even my teeth are rattling from the root and I cannot tell which direction my hands are.

The next twenty minutes are a curriculum in damage.

15:55 Tue, May 19

Chapter 144

55 vouchers

I try to keep up with the volume…my wolf pushes regeneration as fast as it can cycle with sweat dripping down from my body as I feel individual ribs and I have never in my life been able to felt individual ribs.

Honey raises her hand.

I’ve reached back with one hand to where something has shifted in my upper spine and I’m pressing my fingers into it to fix it back as there’s an audible crack. My left eye is swollen nearly shut and my lip is split in three places.

Honey watches me stand up straight…just a little and she opens her hand again.

The Bolts return at full force and this time there’s nowhere new to go… they’re revisiting damage, hitting bruised tissue and stressed joints that haven’t had time to close. Blood comes from my nose first as I wheeze.

It feels like my lungs are compressed and I’m drowning on dry land.

Blood pools in dark bruises across my torso and as I see it, I know it’s internal bleeding.

I don’t go down again.

I will not go down again.

By the time Honey raises both hands and holds them there, I am standing with my chest heaving in a way I cannot control, each breath a conscious negotiation between my body and its current structural state.

I am silently and furiously begging my wolf to move faster. Heal. Seal it. Close it. Whatever you need to do, do it now.

“Whoa. He’s quite strong.” Antonio. The bastard who hasn’t spoken a single word since he beat the crap out of me finally opens his mouth. He’s looking at me like I’m a science experiment that just exceeded expectations.

I have no breath left in me to even keep this going.

“He’s Trybrid. He was always going to have baseline strength.” Honey glances at her wrist, then back at me. “Give him ten minutes to rest. That’s the maximum regeneration window for his bloodline, yes?”

squint at her through my one good eye.

That’s when I see the boys taking their shirts off like there’s a second level to this that they’re about to show me. And what bothers me…what bothers me the fuck the most is the fact that she’s not explaining shit. She just keeps throwing new horrors at me without warning, without context, without giving me a chance to prepare my mind for what my body is about to endure.

Now I can’t even guess from the tip of my head or the tips of my fingers what she’s about to do to me next.

“What’s next?” I roll my elbow back into its socket while I wait for the answer.

“You’re still standing which tells me you’re ready for phase two. Antonio and Josh will continue with the Bolts and while they do that, I’m going to fight you. Thirty minutes, full contact. Ten minute rest. Then we go again.” She pauses. “We’ll run that cycle for the next six hours.”

15:55 Tue, May 19

Chapter 144

“WHAT.”

19

55 vouchers

“Don’t pout, your luna will take good care of you when we’re done. Plus, you’re gonna be much stronger than you were and she’s gonna see that when you both get busy-”

I shut my eyes in anger.

“No. Back up. You just said I’m going to fight you while these two continue hitting me with those things.”

“Correct.”

“Simultaneously?”

“That’s generally what while means, yes.”

I stare at her and the fucking lemon–yellow shoes she’s wearing!

“Do not spare me, Alpha Emris. I mean that. Try to land every punch. Try to break my face if you can find the angle. I am a she–wolf and your instinct is going to tell you to pull back… that will be your worst mistake out here, because I will not extend you the same courtesy. I haven’t once.”

All of a sudden, the timer on her wrist starts.

The Bolts begin again the moment Honey nods and everything my wolf, having just spent ten minutes rebuilding breaks back!

Then Honey steps into formation.

One second she’s standing with her hands loose at her sides and the next she’s the, punching the fuck out of

1. me.

My nose goes left. Not metaphorically and when I come back to center she’s already reset, reading me, waiting to see what I do with it.

A Bolt catches me across the left shoulder blade at the same moment Honey drives two fingers into my right ear. My knees bend fractionally and I straighten them by force of will.

Moons, she bets the shit out of me!

This is how the first ten minutes go. She is everywhere, finding angles I haven’t defended because I’m managing the Bolts at the same time and there are only so many directions a body can cover. She gets me above the eye and it splits, blood sheeting down into my lashes.

Every time I try to engage, to throw something back, the Bolts come from an angle I haven’t accounted for and break my weight transfer, and Honey is already somewhere else by the time I’ve corrected.

Fifteen minutes in, my cheekbone has swollen enough that the left side of my vision is partially occluded and my wolf keeps throwing everything it has at the regeneration cycle. Oh moons, this drill sergeant gags me in the throat-

Now I’m humiliated and I hate being humiliated.

15:55 Tue, May 19

Chapter 144

3 19

55 vouchers

That is what finally moves something. Honey is faster now, meaner but I block one. Two. Three. Throw a punch back and something takes over the more I focus past it…. as soon as I shut the pain out.

All of a sudden, the bolts start to feel like a charge!

Ħ