Chapter 2 Kier

The training yard always smelled like pine resin and sweat. Spring had come late, green only beginning to lace the black bones of winter. The ring was encircled by wooden rails polished smooth by a hundred bored hands, and the ground held the stubborn cold, each kick sending up a ghost of powdered dirt.

Kier Blane carried the kind of presence that made people pause without realizing why. Even as a teenager, his shoulders were already broad with the promise of the Alpha he was destined to become, his movements sharp and deliberate like every step was claimed territory. His hair was dark, always falling just a little too wild across his forehead, and his eyes—gray shot through with steel—missed nothing. There was power in him, yes, but not just power. He had an ease that drew people in, a quiet magnetism that made pack members trust him instinctively.

Sable had grown up at his side, sparring with him in the training ring, stealing laughter between lessons, but even then she knew there was something different about him. Something dangerous. Something that made her wolf pace restlessly inside her chest, even when she pretended not to notice.

“Again,” Kier said, pacing opposite me. Around us, a half-ring of wolves pretended to stretch while not-so-subtlely watching. Jaxon leaned against a post, twirling a blunt practice knife and grinning like a fox. My father and the current Alpha, Tor, stood near the gate. Alina watched from her balcony, shawl around her shoulders despite the weak sun. I felt her eyes like luck.

We’d been at it a while, shifting between drills and freestyle, sweat stinging my eyes. Kier had the reach and the raw strength; I had the angles, the patience, and the mind my mother had honed for solving problems under pressure.

He feinted high; I refused the bait. He came in with a hook; I blocked and pivoted. He growled low—not angry, not yet—and his eyes flicked toward the watching warriors as if the weight of their gaze dragged on his limbs. I let him press, felt the force of him a beat too proud, the rhythm that said he’d forgotten this fight was about me as much as him.

“Left guard,” my mother called mildly from the shade of the fence. “Sable, check the left.”

I shifted my stance half a breath, and Kier saw it. His grin flashed. He took the opening he thought he’d made.

I gave it to him.

Sometimes a trap is beautiful. You build it out of your opponent’s certainty and your own stubborn refusal to hurry. I let him commit fully—shoulder, weight, intent—and then I wasn’t where he thought I’d be. I was low, center tight, one hand catching his momentum, the other sliding along his forearm to press and twist. His wrist opened, the practice blade skittered across the dirt, and the surprised O of his mouth was perfect.

I swept his leg. He hit the ground with a thud and a shudder of dust.

Silence took the yard the way a shadow does when a cloud eats the sun. Kier blinked up at me, breath huffing, chest heaving. I could have stepped back. I did not. I planted my foot gently—respectfully—on his sternum and lifted my chin one notch. The motion was small. Its meaning was not.

A beat. Two. Then the sound of Jaxon’s clap broke the spell. “That’s my sister,” he whooped, and the warriors’ chuckles rose around us like wind through needles.

Kier’s ears flushed. He wasn’t humiliated—the future Alpha wouldn’t let himself be—but he was chastened. His eyes cut to his mother’s balcony and back to me. Something that might have been respect, and might have been challenge, settled between us.

I stepped back and offered him my hand. After the briefest hesitation, he took it. His grip was strong and clean.

“Again?” he asked, mouth quirked.

“Your guard, then mine,” I said. “But you’re telegraphing your hooks.”

He snorted. “You’re infuriating.”

“So I’ve been told.”

Dad’s smile, when I glanced his way, was quick and private—pride zippered with worry. I pretended not to see the second part. Alina, above, pressed a palm to the rail and tipped her face toward the sun as if the sight of me had warmed it.

We ran it back. We fought harder, sharper, both of us shaking off the expectations of the ring until there was only the play of it—the clean mathematics of timing and space. For a handful of minutes, I forgot the calendar and the plan folded under my mattress, the cash I’d hidden in the hollow at the base of the old cedar. For a handful of minutes, I was only the girl my parents had raised: quick and steel.

“Enough,” Alpha Tor called finally, voice carrying. “Save something for tomorrow’s drills. Sable, well fought. Kier, mind your breath—your power’s running ahead of your lungs.”

“Yes, Alpha,” we said in unison.