Page 12 of Betrayed Auctioned Mate

The rope snapped, and I plunged toward the river. The surface wasn’t frozen solid, but the water was sluggish, with cold ice crystals floating like half-melted slushie in summer. I saw the silver surface of the creek swinging up toward me out of the one place I had never bothered looking—below—and my mouth decided it would scream before I could even process what was happening around me.

I think of Ado’s mouth opening to speak to me, and it’s as if I’m falling toward the cold river again.

Chapter 6 - Ado

She moves like water—fluid, agile, but utterly uncontrolled. I watch because I have to, I tell myself. I almost believe it.

“Feet, feet, feet,” Aris shouts with his stolid, unyielding patience. “Feet apart, keep your torso rotated—no, again, again. Let’s go again.”

They both step back from one another. Keira breaks for the sidelines and bends to swipe up her water bottle, rubbing the inside of her wrist against her forehead. Her ferociously curly hair is raked back into a high ponytail. Her long neck shines with perspiration in the glow of the gym’s overhead lights.

“Tell me I’m making improvements here,” she groans. “I don’t care if it’s true or not, just tell me that.”

“You’re making improvements,” Aris parrots dryly. He bends to adjust his knee brace. “It’s only been a few hours, and your form’s already better than it was.”

“I’m gladyouthink that, because I feel like I’ve only gotten worse.”

Aris shakes his head. He’s like a shark scenting blood when he’s training people. He can tell in an instant that someone is talking just to prolong their break between drills.

“Again,” he says firmly.

Keira settles back into form in the center of their makeshift ring. They have laid out mats under their feet. The two of them aren’t yet sparring—Keira isn’t advanced enough to fight for real, and probably won’t be for a long time. She’s been out of action for years, and her body knows it. All of this feels new to her all over again.

I think back to how sparring with her used to be, all that time ago. What she lacked in strength, she made up for in speed and agility. Clearly, that much hasn’t changed. Her style has always been reactive, defensive, waiting on her enemy's movements to establish strategy. Sometimes, that kind of style is helpful. Other times, it can get you killed.

As I watch her raise her fists in front of her face to block, I think Keira probably knows that much. How could she not?

Aris swings for her throat. A fast, incapacitating move, but easy to intercept. It’s not his usual style, but if he was fighting in his usual style, she’d already be down for the count. Keira tilts her body hard left and blocks with the outside of her forearm. Her leg powers up toward Aris’ stomach, and he dodges it backward easily.

“Good,” he shouts. “Again!”

This time, Keira moves onto the offensive. When Aris jabs at her ribs, a move difficult to catalog from the side, she grabs for his wrist and tries to twist her body around the back of his to hold him still. Aris tears free. He has her on the ground within half a second. She grunts, then lies still, panting, gaze fixed on the ceiling.

“That was good,” Aris encourages her.

She makes a face. Even from here, against the wall, I can see the frustration in her eyes.

“It’s good progress.”

I only realized that was my voice a second later, when Aris and Keira turned to stare. I never meant to speak. What power does Keira have, that she can do this to me? Why is it that now that she’s back, I find myself blurting out sentences Inever planned? I wonder whether she knows she has that power. Whether she would care to know.

“It is,” Aris agrees haltingly, still looking curiously at me.

I clear my throat. “You’re not being trained to fight hand-to-hand on missions. You just need to be able to buy time if there’s ever a scuffle, or an abduction attempt, until one of us can get there. The longer you can draw out fights like that, the better your odds.”

Keira sits upright, hands falling into her lap. The gentle slope of her narrow shoulders is particularly steep now. I know implicitly that it’s going to be a long time until she believes in herself again. She remembers losing. She remembers what it cost her.

“Ado.” Aris beckons with one hand. “You try. I need to meet with Byron to discuss recent intelligence soon, but I think we’re making progress; I don’t want to interrupt Keira’s momentum.”

Both Keira and I begin speaking at once.

“No,”Keira says emphatically. “No, it’s fine; I think I need to stop anyway—I have documents Olivia and Byron sent over concerning the case that I need to review, and—"

At the same time, I find words pouring from my mouth, halting and stilted: “Not a good idea—you were—and she’s—"

Aris raises a hand to silence us both. I wonder what it must be like to be able to do that in a room. If I could, I’d have a lot more peace and quiet in my life.

“Just go until she can consistently stay on her feet for ten or fifteen seconds at a time,” he says. “And Ado, don’t go too hard.”

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