“What for?”
“Purely as part of your ongoing medical assessment. Nothing to worry about.”
Ash rolled her eyes when Kelton turned his back, but made no further comment. She thought that this whole situation was getting out of hand. Sure, she’d had a really shitty time of it out there at the hands of the enemy, but she was getting over that now. But, Kelton was still clearly determined to wrap her up in cotton wool. It wasn’t fair. She was ready to train. The bruises had faded to mere shadows and the nightmares that stalked her sleep were starting to recede. This waiting around and ‘observing’ others getting on with what she should have been doing was wearing very thin.
“Have you been keeping up with your exercises?”
“Every single day.” Aisline grinned, happy that they were actually letting her do something. They had given her a range of exercises to do on a daily basis to keep her limber, but that wasn’t enough for her. She had taken to adding in a few exercises of her own, just to keep in shape. She knew that getting back to full training was going to be pure torture, so she was simply giving herself a bit of a head start.
It was funny to think that less than a year ago that she was more than content to sit on the sofa, eating Pringles, drinking gallons of Pepsi and chilling out doing nothing but watching DVDs with her friends. Who would have thought that she would have ever been the least bit health conscious? Sure, she still didn’t really stick to any kind of strict diet or regime and still enjoyed all of the things that she loved, but now she worked hard to make sure that whatever she consumed wasn’t to the detriment of her health. Ash grinned to herself thinking how she voluntarily kept herself fit and it was laughable how annoyed she was that they wouldn’t let her do more of it.
“Keep it up.” Kelton nodded briefly before walking to the centre of the room to demonstrate what he wanted the guys to do.
Ash didn’t have much of a choice but to walk over to where Trey was getting the new boy warmed up. The shifter didn’t look very impressed to be here at all. Not that she could blame him in the slightest. The mark had appeared on him and there was nothing that he could have done to fight it. She’d been there, done that. She knew, or at least had some idea, of the kind of thoughts that were going through his head.
The boy didn’t look happy about it, but he followed Trey’s instructions and copied the moves he demonstrated as they got the blood pumping around their bodies. The raw power of Caleb’s body was obvious; the bulging muscles, the taut bronzed skin. Aisline would have had to be blind not to notice how drop dead gorgeous he was. The main downside to his looks was the grim expression on his face. He didn’t want to be here and he clearly wasn’t afraid to let everyone know it.
Kelton was busy barking orders and the guys rushed to get their gloves on. The room was already feeling hot. All those male bodies produced a hell of a lot of heat when they got down to training. Aisline hadn’t really felt it before, because she’d been part of it. Now that she was on the outside looking in, the air was cloying. Heat caressed her skin, but the stink of the place was almost unbearable.
“Right.” Said Trey. “Have you had any kind of training before?”
“No. Not really.” Caleb muttered at the floor, not liking to admit that he was at a disadvantage
Trey moved to stand next to him, showing him how to get into his stance, how to effectively distribute his weight and where to how his fists in his guards. Caleb grudgingly thought that Trey actually seemed like a pretty decent guy for a vamp. At least he wasn’t being condescending. If he had been working with someone who tried to make him feel like shit because he wasn’t one of them, no amount of training would have made the slightest difference – he would have put them on their asses without a second thought. Caleb may not have had any formal training, but he’d grown up in a pack of shifters and could street fight with the best of them.
As much as he hated to admit it, he actually enjoyed the training session. Trey and Dylan didn’t seem to treat him any differently to the rest of the guys which made things much easier. He had no real preconceived ideas of what the fangers would be like when he came here, but he still hadn’t relished the thought of being surrounded by them day and night. It wasn’t something he’d given much thought to when he had been growing up, but they weren’t that bad. Not at all. In fact, they kind of reminded him of some of the guys he’d grown up with. So, yeah, things could have been a lot worse.
Aisline hated not joining in with the rest of the guys, but watching Caleb working up a sweat? It was almost worth missing out on the training. Kelton had come over several time and seemed pleased with the progress he was making. He was a natural at this and it was easy for any of them to see that he was going to be a hell of a fighter and a welcome addition to their warrior ranks. At the moment, if she was honest, he had a whole lot of power and not a lot of style or direction, but Aisline knew that would come with time and the right training. Hell, look at her for example. When she had first come to the academy, she hadn’t ever lifted a hand to anyone in her life and yet, the sparring had come naturally to her. She simply had to learn how to direct what her body wanted to do. Caleb had a few advantages over her already so it wouldn’t be long before he was up to standard with the rest of them.
Walking out of the sparring room, the guys were all in high spirits. Kelton had praised more than one of them during the session and that was a rare thing, making them beam with renewed enthusiasm. Ash smiled as she walked, feeding off their buzz.
“So, are you some kind of assistant or something?”
She swung her head around to see Caleb walking next to her. At first, she wasn’t sure that it was him that had spoken, or if he was even speaking to her, because he continued to walk with his face forward and stern. It wasn’t until he glanced over at her as he obviously waited for an answer that she knew for sure.
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, you seem to know what you’re doing.”
Aisline grinned. “Of course I know what I’m doing.” She swept her hair to the side to reveal the warrior mark on her temple.
Caleb stopped dead and stared. With her hair down and flowing around her face like that, he hadn’t even noticed the mark before. It was strange to see it on his own face, let alone on a girl. “You’re the warrior? The female warrior?”
“The one and only.” Aisline laughed. She probably should have been offended by his reaction and probably would have been if it had been anyone else, but for some reason, she knew that Caleb was merely shocked and not being rude, just because she was a girl. It wasn’t a sexist thing. “You didn’t think that I got all these bruises cleaning, did you?” She was actually quite shocked herself, being able to joke about her ordeal like that. Again, it was probably because it was Caleb and he had no real idea of what she’d been through.
“Holy shit!”
Aisline laughed again. “So, how did you find it?”
“It was okay, I guess.” He shrugged and tried to look cool. “So, why aren’t you training?”
Aisline cocked an eyebrow at him. So he really didn’t know anything about what happened to her. That was a good thing. She could sweep over it, like it was no big deal. The last thing she needed was the new guy treating her like bone china, like the rest of them. It was nice for someone to treat her like everything was normal for a change.
“I got into a bit of trouble out in the field. I’ll be back training as soon as the doctor gives me the go-ahead.”
Caleb nodded, seemingly impressed. They didn’t say anything else as they walked to the stairs. Even if she hadn’t been working up a sweat with the rest of them, Ash still wanted a shower before grabbing something to eat.
Caleb nodded to her as they entered the dining hall at the same time, still seemingly impressed by her brush with death. They didn’t say anything else, but after grabbing a mountain of food, Aisline made sure that he took a seat at the table she shared with trey and the gang. The younger shifter was sat on
the next table over and he grinned like a Cheshire cat when he saw Caleb.
“That’s my little brother, Rees.” Caleb said quietly and Aisline smiled over at him.
He wasn’t sure about the rest of them yet but he exchanged polite manly nods with Trey and Dylan. Rees didn’t seem to have that kind of problem and could clearly be heard laughing and joking with the guys at his table, seeming to fit in with this lot straight away.
In a way, Caleb envied him. Rees had always been such an easy going kid and always looked on the bright side of life, never letting anything get him down. This change of pace didn’t faze him at all. He didn’t see any problem with coming here and starting a whole new life. It was all one big adventure to him. Caleb was relived, in that big brotherly way, to see him still smiling. It would have killed him to see the vamps put out that bright spark in him. Luckily, Rees was loving it.
They had always been as different as night and day when they’d been growing up. Caleb had to be the responsible one and sometimes that really burned him. Their father died just after Rees was born in a horrific car accident and Caleb had become the man of the house. It was a responsibility that he didn’t want and hadn’t been ready for. As they grew up, their mother depended on him more and more. It wasn’t like he would have ever turned his back on his family and even though the pack pulled together as a whole, the main responsibility had fallen on his shoulders. His main mission in life was to make sure that Rees had the kind of childhood that he had missed out on.
That was another reason coming here had angered him. He had no choice in the matter. He had to leave. He had to leave his mother to fend for herself. Sure, he knew that she would be looked after, but it had been his responsibility for so long that it felt wrong to pass it on to someone else.
Everyone thought that Caleb was some out of control hard ass, but the truth was all he lived for was taking care of his family. He had no life of his own. They were everything to him. Here, at the academy, he was drowning. This was the first time that he had to look out for himself.
No one really understood what kind of life he had. Patrick tried to help out as much as he could, but he was the Alpha and had more duties to attend to than just his family. He had tried to send in as much help as he could when Caleb was younger, but as he got older, more and more fell to him. Now that he was at the academy, it was just the two of them, but it was like Rees didn’t need him looking out for him. Not that he would have any choice in the matter. Caleb was going to do more than keep an eye out for him. Rees was a trusting kid and there was no way that he would let any of these fangers take advantage of that fact. They’d be eating through a straw if they tried to pull any of that shit.
The rest of the guys at the table tried to pull him into conversation time and time again, but Caleb wasn’t ready for that level of bonding just yet. He knew that he seemed stand offish, but he had too much on his mind. He ate quietly and glanced over to see Rees having a good old time, picking up his plate as he followed the guys in his training class out of the dining hall.
“You’ll settle in in no time, if you let yourself.”
He glanced up to look at Aisline. She was something else altogether. The only female warrior in the Lamia history. And she was one of the most beautiful girls he had ever set eyes on. He’d thought that Kayleigh had been supremely gorgeous when he’d first walked into the vamp’s academy, but she had nothing on Aisline. That long dark blonde hair seemed to change colour in different lighting from light to dark, waving around her face and down over her shoulder enticingly, with eyes that expressed every single emotion that she was feeling and a body to die for. She was the kind of girl that you only ever saw in the movies or airbrushed in magazines.
“I’m not so sure about that.”
“You will. It’ll just take some time.”
Caleb went back to finishing off his food silently. He didn’t need pity from any of them. He’d been through worse than this before and he knew that it would take a lot longer than just one morning for him to settle into his new life, no matter how successful that morning had been. These weren’t his people and he wasn’t sure that he would ever come around to their way of thinking, or ever feel one of them. That damned mark meant that he would be bound to protect the Lamia Matris, whether he liked it or not. There was no choice. This was his life, whether he liked it or not.
This was his life now and he had to get used to it.
Life blows.
Chapter Fourteen
Jackson woke up with a blinding headache. Denver had been constantly been chewing his ear off with continuous complaints. It was back-breaking work but Jackson knew that there was little point in complaining about it. Kelton wouldn’t let them walk away from this and every time Denver opened up his whining mouth, Master Warrior Dixon piled even more pressure on them.
It wasn’t actually half as bad as Denver was making out. It was hard work, but rewarding. Plus, at least now they had some help with the construction in the form of some of the other trainees and warriors. It was incredible how fast it was getting put together and it was easy to see now that it was taking shape that it was going to be awesome when it was finished and a real challenge for the trainees. It was good to feel that they were part of something so productive.
He’d slept like the dead over the last few nights. Even Trey talking to him couldn’t keep his eyes open a second longer, no matter how bad he felt about it. Jackson had tried hard to listen, honestly he did, but exhaustion had taken him over time and time again. He’d heard Trey saying something about new recruits, but he didn’t have a clue what was going on and he couldn’t stay awake long enough to find out.
It was odd being out of the loop with the other guys. Boys could be as bad for the gossip as the girls that he’d grown up with and it was weird not to know what was going on out there. Jackson had hardly any contact with anyone who wasn’t working on the construction of the agility course, even down to not talking to his family as much as usual. There just wasn’t time for it. Plus, his mother and sisters just got concerned by how tired he sounded, so Jackson wanted to wait until things were back to normal to talk to them so as not to worry them.
Jackson wasn’t going to find anything out today, either. His bones ached nearly as bad as his head, which was saying something, but he still had to get back out in the cold and get on with it.
He couldn’t wait to get back to normal training. It would almost feel like relaxing compared to the work he was currently doing. But, the main problem right now was that he had slept in. Trey was nowhere in sight, probably already gone down to breakfast. Jackson wasn’t going to have time for that now and he wasn’t relishing working on an empty stomach. He’d have to haul ass and get outside before Kelton and Dixon noticed that he was late. The last thing he needed was another punishment on top of this one.
Throwing on some dirty clothes that he found on the floor at the end of the bed, Jackson bypassed all the normal hygiene niceties and ran out of the room, bounding down the stairs and out into the frigid night air.
Aisline put her head down and moved through the quiet stacks of books to sit at the back of the library. Or at least the room that was going to be the library when they finally got everything unpacked and put on the shelves. This place was taking forever to sort out, but at least it was liveable now.
The room was quiet. That wasn’t surprising. The library at the old place had never been well used, except when they were forced to as part of their studies. Not Aisline, though. She loved it in there and knew that this room would be even better when it was done. There was something about being surrounded by all those books that was soothing to her. There was endless knowledge wrapped up in fine leather, stories that took you to another time and place. There was everything you could ever need to feed your imagination.
Ash was quite old school like that. If she had a choice between a paperback and reading something digitally, she’d go for the physical copy every time. Not that she didn’t appr
eciate the technological advancements, but there was nothing like the smell of a new book, the feel of the paper coming alive in your hands.
She opened up her laptop as soon as she sat down at the empty table. The trainees may not have been allowed to have their own phones, but laptops and tablets were there to be used for their work and research. Apparently, the academy didn’t want them distracted from their duties by social media sites and meaningless text messages that seemed to go off every two seconds, interrupting their studies. That didn’t stop them from checking out their Facebook and Twitter accounts whenever they were supposed to be researching on the internet. There was no way they were going to waste that opportunity when it arose. They were normal teenagers in every other way.
Slapping a hand over her mouth, Ash tried to stifle the bark of laughter that attempted to escape as soon as she logged in. The first thing she saw was a message from Lana, demanding pictures of the cute new shifter recruits. That was typical Lana. Ash had sent her a really quick message with the news the day before and rather than wanting to know anything else about them, all she wanted to know was on a scale of one to ten, how hot they were. That girl was always looking for a suitable husband and she was clearly broadening her horizon to cover shifters now.
Lana gave Aisline a connection to the world she used to live in. It was a little slice of reality and normality in this crazy world she’d been thrown into. Not that she didn’t love her new life, she did. It was just good to remember that there was something else in her life before this and that she still had it.
When Aisline had first received the mark of the warrior, her family had shipped her off to the Sons of Satrina combat training academy without another thought, banishing her from their lives. They’d effectively washed their hands of the embarrassing problem of having a warrior for a daughter, disowning her at the time when she needed them all the most.
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