The Alpha Trials

Chapter 16

His words echoed around in my head for a moment, along with thoughts that went something along the lines of, I'm actually about to die because this terrifying man is going to rip me in half.

To hell if I was the unknown luna of the New Blood pack, I was still going to die here in rookie training all the same. All because I had a teammate that didn't want his own position in the pack to be threatened by my own incompetence.

Zeke stepped forward and tensed his muscle, before gently shoving me to the ground in a pile and letting me sit there.

"I think that may have actually been the slowest punch I've ever seen thrown. You aren't exactly the strongest girl, so until you get stronger you're going to need to get faster. The speed you have might be the only thing to keep you from dying the second we reach a real battlefield," Zeke said, reaching down and holding a hand out to me.

I was frozen in place, staring at the hand.

He hadn't just killed me. Nor had he even hurt me, despite having the perfect opportunity to take out some of his frustration.

"What?" It was actually the only word I could get out as I stared up at him.

"Just take my hand and stop gawking at me like an idiot," he snapped, a little more strictly this time.

I gently reached up and placed my hand on his own. To which he pulled me up with ease and then took a few steps back to look me over.

"You need to swing harder and faster. Don't let your eyes be so expressive as to where you're planning to strike either. This should almost feel like muscle memory to you. It's not controlling your body that you need to think of as much, but rather you need to think before you ever even act. Your enemy can't read you if you're always one step ahead of him."

His words did make sense, as much as I didn't want them to.

"Try again wherever you're ready," he said, but before the words were even out, I had already lunged forward.

Zeke didn't catch my hand this time, but he did neatly move out of the way, which had him unbalanced for the kick I sent from the opposite direction than before. The kick was the one that caught him in the side of the head.

He let out a soft huff of air before dropping my legs out from under me and laughing gently as he held out a hand again. "There you go! That was so much better. Smart thinking to not even let me stop talking."

Where I had expected to hear some sarcasm in his tone regarding my dirty move of starting early, Zeke only seemed proud of me. His light colored eyes lit up with joy.

"Do it one more time, and then I'm going to try and do it to you. You'll have to block it though, because I'm not holding my punches. I didn't drop you to the ground as hard as I could, so feel like this is the only fair repayment for that."

Fuck.

This was fine. I couldn't have expected him to baby me the whole time anyways, that would just be ridiculous. Unfortunately, he very much meant everything he said, and held back nothing when attacking me.

Taking his earlier message to heart, I steeled my nerves away and focused on dodging and using that speed to my advantage. It was either that or make myself an easy target just to get things over with a little bit faster. Neither my wolf nor myself liked the idea of making ourselves a practice dummy.

Watching him circle me, I thought back to what he'd said. My eyes were what had given my hits away, so if I watched his eyes and his feet then I should be able to deduce which direction he was going to come from.