Page 37 of The Tracker's Revenge
This should have sobered me up. I had no such training, nothing beyond a little kickboxing and a few lessons with Eric. But Red was chomping at the bit, eager to test herself against this bunch, against her half-sister.
“There are a couple of rules,” Olivia said, ticking them down with one hand. “No shifting and no lording.”
Lording,the act of alpha shifters showing their superiority and trying to dominate others through instincts that lesser kin couldn’t deny. Eric had used that name before, but I’d forgotten it.
This second rule should’ve been my second cue to decline such foolishness, but Red was beyond any reason, and as much as I thought I’d learned to control her, it turned out, I’d made little progress.
The next thing I knew, I was shaking my arms and circling around Olivia. She and I seemed well-matched in height and physique, much more than Lucia and Daniella were with me. My younger sister was taller, and although Daniella was my same height, she was slight, much thinner. She ate too many damn salads, I always told her. To which she argued that healers didn’t need muscles. She didn’t believe in exercise, not in the least.
Olivia crouched and started circling me, too. Everyone else stepped aside, forming a ring around us. She waited, a stupid little smirk on her face. My anger spiked, but I managed to keep my alpha powers contained, if only because I really wanted to put this haughty rich girl in her place in the proper way.
She feigned an attack, stamping a foot forward. I flinched, and she laughed, sending my anger way past the red zone. I launched without thinking. With ease, as if she were handling a child, Olivia gracefully stepped out of the way, took hold of my arm, and twisted it back. My elbow screamed in pain, ready to snap. I eased the pressure by falling to my knees.
“Phaw!” The wiry man exclaimed. “That was anticlimactic.”
He moved away and so did the others, returning to their sparring, their interest in me completely lost. Allison was the last to turn away, a half-sympathetic expression shaping her features.
Olivia let me go and took a step back, her smirk much deeper than it had been a second ago. I seethed with anger and trembled as I knelt on the polished floor.
You don’t have to take this,Red growled inside my head.You can command her. You can make her grovel at your feet.
A tingling feeling rushed through my body, and I rose to my feet in the blink of an eye. One moment, I was kneeling on the floor, and the next I was standing, swaying a little.
Olivia and Marcus’s eyes widened.
I shook my head, feeling dizzy. Since the day Red had been unleashed, I’d been able to move faster than any Stale, but this was something different. Eric had shown me he could move like this. He said it was something alphas could do—but not all of them, only the stronger ones.
I was so shocked by what I’d just done that my anger fizzled out and a smile stretched my lips. I glanced up. Olivia’s face was contorted as if she’d sucked on a giant lemon.
“Fleeting,” Marcus said, a note of wonder in his voice.
Olivia glared at him. He closed his mouth and tried to look unimpressed.
I cracked my neck and shook my hands, relaxing, my mind occupied by better things than anger. “I think... I think I’m in the wrong place. I won’t learn what I need here.”
“You’ve got nerve saying that after I put you on the ground in under five seconds,” Olivia sneered.
“That you did, but once I master the skills that matter, no amount ofmartial artswill be able to help you.”
She let out a little gasp of outrage, but I didn’t linger to take satisfaction in it. I had to get back to Eric. I had to apologize and let him turn me into the alpha I needed to be.
* * *
ERIC GLARED UP AT MEfrom the desk in his study. “It seems I might have made a mistake giving you the security code to get in.”
From Packmind, I had driven here directly, excited to tell him that I couldfleet, but maybe I’d caught him at a bad time. It didn’t matter. Once I told him what had happened he would jump for joy, or whatever Eric’s equivalent was.
“I did it,” I said.
He set his pen down and steepled his fingers, frowning.
“I did it. I was able to fleet.”
He made a sound in the back of his throat, picked his pen back up, and returned his attention to the journal in front of him.
Huh? Had he heard me?I was about to make a smartass comment about his need for a hearing aid, but instead, I bit my lower lip and thought better of it. It wouldn’t pay off to piss him off. So even though it went against my grain, I groveled.
“You were right. Going to Packmind was mostly a waste of time.”
