He circled to stand in front of Xan, pinning the other man with a cool, silvery gaze. “Nobody stays in my camp without proving they can hold their own. Nobody stays in my camp without showing they know how to handle themselves, without showing they know how to take orders. That includes training—you either spar with Captain Caar, as ordered, or you get the hell out.”
“I don’t believe in harming women,” Xan growled.
“It’s not about harming women.” Syn moved between them and gave Kalen a narrow look. He inclined his head and fell back, letting her handle it. There was one thing she could rely on to chase away the chill, and that was anger. Right now, it flooded her, and she welcomed it—welcomed it and channeled it.
Giving Xan a pointed stare, she said, “I’m not calling you on the floor to get hurt, Xan. Trust me, I don’t like pain, although I am used to it. But this isn’t about hurting me, hurting women. It’s called training—we all do it.”
“Then train women against women. Females are naturally weaker than males—the risk for injury to the woman is too high, even in training.”
“So this is about having a level playing field?” Syn snorted. “Sure, because we’re fighting a war where there’s always an excess of fairness.”
Xan stared at her, his black gaze unflinching. “I do not raise my hand to women.”
Syn smirked. “That’s a way of thinking that could end up with you getting hurt—in a serious way.” She glanced past him and her smile took on a decidedly devilish twist. “Bron, you’re out. Elina. Coryan.”
Elina Corsairs, long and lean, came at him from his right, a blur of movement. She was all speed and grace, and as he moved to deflect her attack, the other woman came up behind him.
Coryan Holder stood at six feet and her body was nearly as broad as Xan’s. As he backed away from Elina, Coryan caught him in a wrestler’s hold and wrenched him off his feet. He went down, and as one, the three women in the circle moved on him.
Elina ended up on her ass first. She would have moved back in but Syn caught her eye and shook her head.
Now facing Coryan and Syn, Xan grimaced. He looked between the two women, his gaze measuring.
Finally. Syn knew what sort of picture they presented. Coryan had the muscle mass to rival a man’s and her face was scarred, hardened from battle and years of a harsh life. Syn had faced that same hard life, and many of the same battles, but she was slender, not particularly tall and she looked . . . well, soft.
He’d go for Coryan next, she figured. Eliminate what he perceived as the biggest threat.
This wasn’t a new scenario for her. Too many of the men who wanted to join the rebellion showed up with preconceived notions—they were fighting a war against those that preyed on their females, and having those females involved directly in the fight went against their baser instincts.
He feinted toward Coryan but at the last minute, he changed direction. Moving too damn fast, he came for Syn. Only one thing saved her—he wasn’t used to fighting somebody half his size. She darted away, relying on her flexibility and years of experience to evade him. It was close, though. She felt the disturbance in the air ripple against her flesh. He didn’t waste any time and came at her again, harder. Faster.
Syn took his legs out from under him, but he was prepared this time, and when he went down, so did she. Trapped under his bigger body, she sucked air into her lungs.
Heat.
Once more, touching him flooded her with heat, heat that suffused every fiber of her being, chasing away the chill. For the briefest moment, they were close, close as lovers, and she let herself revel in that heat, let herself feel his strength, feel all of him. But not enough . . . nowhere near enough.
Through their clothes, she could feel the heavy thud of his heart, beating so close to hers.
Then he spoke, and the spell shattered.
“This isn’t a fair fight,” he said in a monotone.
Working her hands in between them, she jabbed at his neck. He went red and gasped for air. As he went to shove away from her, she caught him between his legs with her knee.
It was utterly silent, save for the strange, choked sound he made deep in his throat as he rolled to the side. Syn came to her feet and stood over him.
“You’re damn right it’s not a fair fight,” she told him. “But then again, you can’t win a war, you can’t survive, if you’re busy complaining about a fair fight.”
She moved to the edge of the circle, watching Xan from under her lashes. He recovered quick, rolling to his feet and watching her with a mix of disbelief and anger. The anger melted away, replaced by that same measuring gaze he’d focused on every other fighter he’d met in the circle.
About damn time.
“When I was ten, my mother was taken from me—she’d hidden me with my older brother, told him to keep me quiet, no matter what. I couldn’t do a damn thing to help her. All I could do was listen, helpless, as five Sirvani dragged her away from me. I never saw her again.” A knot tried to form in her throat, but she ignored it. “My father had died the year before in a raid. My brother died two years later on a scouting mission. I was just a child and I was alone. There’s nothing fair in that. But complaining about it didn’t bring them back.”
“Fighting an unfair fight will not bring them back,” he said.
“No. But it might help another girl—it has helped other girls, other boys. Innocent children. The women of this world can’t sit by the wayside, letting the men fight. If we want safety, we have to fight for it. It’s about survival, not fairness. I didn’t learn how to survive by only fighting the battles I could win. I learned how to survive by fighting the battles I couldn’t win.”
He inclined his head. “Point taken.”
Kalen stood at her back. Bron was at her right. Elina and Coryan waited patiently at her left.
But she didn’t look at any of them. She took three steps, placing her body once more inside the circle.
“Let’s try this again,” she said, staring at Xan and nothing else. “We do this my way, or you leave. The next time I tell you to step into the circle and fight a woman, what are you going to do?”
A faint smile curled his lips just before he attacked.
He won, but that was little surprise. Just getting him to square off with her in the ring was enough of a victory for her. Nobody needed to know she got a little added bonus—for the few brief moments they sparred, she stopped feeling so damned cold.
“She’s a ballbuster.”
As he looked up, two men settled down across from him. One was Bron, but Xan couldn’t remember the other warrior’s name. He’d fought him briefly in the circle before Bron had stepped in.
“I beg your pardon?” he said, cocking a brow and looking from one to the other.
“The captain. She’s a ballbuster.” Bron grinned at him.
Xan now knew that from experience—he was damn near certain he had bruises in a very sensitive part of his anatomy.
“You’re smarter than some of us.” Bron picked up his fork and took a quick bite before continuing. “The first time I left the circle after she really came after me, I practically crawled out.”
A reluctant smile curled Xan’s mouth. “I must admit, I’m relieved to know I’m not the only man she’s put on the ground before.”
“Far from it. You did better than some of us, too. You didn’t just give her a run for her money. Hell, you beat her. Not too many people I can say that about.” The other man popped a forkful of food into his mouth and washed it down with a gulp of water. “She’s got a habit of putting men on their asses two or three times a day, minimum. It’s kind of her hobby.”
“Her hobby?”
“Yep. I’m Lothen, by the way. Just in case she scrambled your brains as well as smashing your balls. Friends usually call me Lo.”
“Actually, it’s what everybody calls him. His friends don’t call him much of anything—he doesn’t have any.” Bron smirked at the other man.
“She’s one of his favorites. Puts him on the ground about once a week.”
“It’s the only way she can put her hands on me without Janis getting pissy,” Lo said around a mouth full of food.
“You wish.” Bron braced his elbows on the table and stared at Xan with curious eyes.
Actually, he was looking at his covered eye—what remained of it. “Mind if I ask what happened?”
Xan ran his finger over the patch and murmured, “My misbegotten youth.”
“You did that when you were a kid?”
“I was technically a child, yes.” Ten—to be exact. He’d been ten years old when it happened. The same age Syn had been when she lost her mother. He frowned and rubbed the heel of his hand over his heart. She’d been just a young thing, and left all alone . . .
“Technically. Misbegotten. You talk like some sort of university professor. What exactly do you do, other than kick ass and piss off the captain?” Lo took another swig of water and grinned at Xan.
“Did I piss her off?” Xan asked, forcing himself to concentrate on the conversation instead of her. It was hard, though. In those brief moments before she’d all but unmanned him, he had been painfully aware of how perfect her body felt under his. Soft . . . delicate . . . but still so strong.
“Nah, probably not. I bet she loves it when a new recruit makes her reiterate herself in the circle,” Bron drawled.
“You know, at this point, she’s probably used to it,” Lo said with a shrug.
“Used to having her authority questioned? Yeah, I bet that goes over swimmingly.”
While the two of them nattered on at each other, Xan found himself staring at his plate and scowling. No leader liked being questioned—they gave orders and orders were to be followed. Living in a war zone made it even more crucial for orders to be followed. When they weren’t, when they were routinely questioned, it made the leader seem weak.
Syn was anything but weak.
And yet . . .
She wasn’t an easy woman to find.
Xan had spent much of his free time learning the layout of the camp. But he might as well be chasing his own shadow, in circles, for all the good it did him. He’d had absolutely no luck finding Syn. He’d spent his morning in weapons training and he hadn’t seen her once. The afternoon was spent in the work detail orientation. After it was discovered he had a skill for weapons, he was placed on that detail, which seemed to involve everything from repair to designing new weapons.
Of course, he could expect to be repairing weapons for a good long while, since he was the newest one in. He’d have to work his way up to actually helping design them, even if he could wrap his mind around the complicated technology.
Every spare moment he had, he had been looking for Syn. With no luck.
When he heard a voice behind him, he was hard-pressed not to swear. He pretended obliviousness, but that did no good, either. Vena fell in step next to him, walking so close that her hand brushed against his, walking so close that if he wished, he could see clear down the veed front of her black cavinir tunic. The clothes she wore clung to her curves like a lover.
“Hey . . . you must be off in your own little world,” she said, trailing one fingertip down his arm. “I called you two or three times and you didn’t even hear me.”
“My mind is elsewhere.”
“I can tell.” She shot him what he assumed was meant to be a coy look, glancing at him from under her lashes as she trailed her tongue along her lower lip. “Are you feeling well? I saw what happened in the circle. I couldn’t believe what that woman did. She doesn’t exactly have what I’d call leader qualities.”
Guilt pricked at him and he grimaced inwardly. He really did need to find Syn and offer an apology.
“Actually, she handled it exactly as I would have,” he said, not bothering to glance at Vena. “She is in charge of training the new recruits, evaluating their skill with combat. I came to join an army, and I know how the chain of command works. I was given an order, and I didn’t adhere to it. Had it been somebody under my command, I would have done the same thing she did—showed the fool the error of their ways.”
Vena rolled her eyes. “It’s not like you abandoned your post or something, Xan. You just didn’t want to get rough with a woman . . . It’s admirable.”
“There is nothing admirable about disrespecting a comrade in arms.” Never mind the fact that he was having a difficult time thinking of that particular woman as a comrade in arms . . . He kept thinking of her in his arms. Kept remembering how soft, how strong, she felt under him—right before she rammed his balls somewhere in the vicinity of his throat.
Just in front of them, he caught sight of a familiar dark head. He glanced at Vena and said, “If you’d excuse me, there’s something I need to take care of.”
He left the other woman standing behind him, her eyes drilling holes in his back. He could sense the heat in that gaze but brushed it off. The woman behind him didn’t matter.
It was the woman in front of him that held his attention. He caught up with Syn just before she would have disappeared into one of the low, squat buildings that made up the bulk of their camp.
“Captain, may I have a word with you?”
“Not a good time—I’m supposed to be clear on the other side of camp, twenty minutes ago.” She glanced at him and shook her head. She ducked into the building, using her foot to hold the door open as she grabbed a battered leather pouch from a table near the door. She slipped her head through the strap and adjusted it so it lay crosswise between her small breasts.
Xan fought the urge to stare at that strap of leather with a bit of wistful envy. He won—barely. But he couldn’t stop himself from thinking about laying his head there, resting it just there, in the shallow valley between those slight curves.
You are not helping matters, he told himself.
Syn closed the door behind him and started back down the hard-packed, earthen pathway. Considering how small she was, she walked awfully damn fast.
“It will not take long. I just want to apologize.” He fell into step next to her, only to stop when she did.
Syn turned and studied his face with narrowed eyes. Her gaze lingered on his patch and he was appalled to realize he was close to fidgeting—this close to reaching up and adjusting the black material that hid the scarred ruin of his eye.
“Apologize for what?” she asked bluntly.
“For earlier.” She knew damn well what he was apologizing for—he could see it in her green-gold eyes. “As uncomfortable as I am sparring with a female, you are in charge and I should have shown more respect for that fact.”
Syn pursed her lips and continued to study him. He had utterly no idea what she was thinking about—that catlike gaze revealed nothing. Then abruptly, she gave a single nod of her head and said, “Fine. Apology accepted. Now . . . if you’ll excuse me, I’m needed elsewhere.”
Without waiting for a response, she turned around and strode away.
Actually, Syn wasn’t needed elsewhere. She had told a friend she might come by for a drink. She desperately needed to unwind, to relax. To forget for even five minutes that she was a captain in an army where half her friends had died, where more yet would die before things were finished.
She wanted to share some laughs with a friend and forget that she was Captain Laisyn Caar. More, she wanted to forget she was basically a powerless witch. It was too much like being a toothless, clawless predator.
She wanted to forget she was the highest-ranking female in the rebel army, a female who regularly had to prove her authority over those under her.
She wanted to forget all of that and just be Syn. Even if it was just for a while.
But it wasn’t like she had orders to be somewhere. Still, she strode away from him as quickly as she could. Standing this close to him did some seriously weird things to her body.
From the time he’d said her name, she’d felt warm. As he’d walked beside her, she’d felt a silken, li
quid heat settle low in her belly.
As much as she enjoyed how he managed to melt the ice inside her chest, she had come to realize it wasn’t wise to enjoy it. It wasn’t wise to enjoy anything about him. Not the way he made her heart race, not the way her skin flushed when he was near. Not the way she found herself thinking about him, far too often.
Simply standing close to him was a lesson in arousal, and it was a lesson she really didn’t have the time or the inclination to learn.
Somebody who could affect her like that was best kept off-limits. On the rare occasion when she needed some sort of physical release from the tension, she preferred to do it with somebody who knew her, somebody she knew and trusted . . . somebody she could keep at a safe distance even as they . . . released tension.
Reaching the bend in the path, she glanced back.
He was still standing there.
Watching her.
Her heartbeat sped up even more, and her knees went a little weak. Damn it.
“I don’t need this,” she muttered under her breath. “I really, really don’t need this.”
Deep inside, there was a voice whispering, Maybe it’s exactly what you do need. He could make you forget all about being Captain Laisyn Caar.
Yes. He could.
One hundred percent, completely and fully.
That was why she needed to keep him at a distance.
But even as she insisted on that, she was having a hard time entirely believing it, and her body longed for his warmth.
THREE
Hunger gnawed at him.
Dais had left most of his meager belongings stashed while he took down the buck. He’d been forced to abandon his gear in his haste to get away from whoever had been searching for him. All he carried now were his weapons, his empty canteen and a sodden pouch with rations that hadn’t held up well after his trek down the river.
“Will nothing go my way?” he muttered.
Veil of Shadows Page 4
