Page 73 of Bitten, Marked, Obsessed

She stands in the center of the clearing where I first trained Kendall—shoulders squared, gaze locked, tension humming through her like a blade pulled halfway from the sheath.

I circle her slow, watching every twitch of muscle. Every time she reacts to the shift in my breath or the subtle scrape of my boot in the dirt.

She’s not just fast.

She’santicipating.

“Again,” I say, low and sharp.

She lunges.

I dodge, barely. Not because I can’t keep up—but because I’m not here to win. I’m here tolearn.

She should be stumbling through this. Hesitating. Hell, even Kendall, for all her power, had tofightfor control in those early days.

But Adora?

Adora’s body already knows how to fight. And that’s what scares the shit out of me.

We break apart. She rolls her shoulder and grins like it’s a game she’s already winning.

“Was that a smile?” I ask. “Did I actually see teeth?”

“Don’t get used to it,” she says. “You’re still slow.”

I raise a brow. “Careful. I bite.”

“Yeah,” she mutters. “So I’ve heard.”

She’s testing me. Poking at a version of the past shethinksshe remembers. But I’m not playing that game. Not today.

I nod toward the walls. “Cool off. Take ten.”

She doesn’t argue. Just stalks off, stretching her neck, fingers still twitching like lightning wants out of her veins.

And I just watch.

She’s too coordinated. Too instinctive. Her senses are tuned to frequencies most new shifts can’t hear for months,if ever.

And the worst part?

She’s not even struggling.

That’s not just shifter. That’s blood. And I know whose. Because the way she moves—the control, the bite, the timing—I’ve seen it before.Inhim.

Mathis. My father.

I exhale hard, leaning on the heel of my palm against a scratched wall and staring down at the claw marks scarred into the cement. Not hers. Not mine. Old.

I remember the fight fifteen years ago. Mathis came back to the Hollow like a hurricane—wilder than usual, half-shifted, bleeding, eyes blazing. Muttering about betrayal, about a woman who left without a trace and tookwhat was his.

“She ran. Took the girl with her,” he’d growled to one of the elders. “I should’ve marked them both.”

I hadn’t understood then.

But now?

Now it fucking clicks.

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