Unmasked | Book 1 in "Dark Descendants" (Editing)

Chapter 25

Right punch. Left punch. Right punch.

This guys has super resilient forearms, Diana thought. He was in a similar pose to her—in a fighting stance as he moved around the training room floor. Except he wasn't attacking, just simply flexing his arm muscles as she landed each lightning-fast punch on them.

Sweat trickled down her temple, but she nonetheless continued landing blows. She was fast—at one instant she was in a fighting stance and at the next, a sharp quick smack was heard while she had returned to her position, the only difference being her slightly displaced fists.

"What's the purpose of this again?" She asked him. The Alpha's expression remained rock-hard.

"Testing your ability to fight. If I somehow get separated from you, I don't want to come back to a bloody mess of peach-and-blood-scented limbs just because I wasn't there to defend you, now do I?"

He suddenly grunted as she involuntarily hit him extra hard. "Sorry," she muttered automatically, half of her not even meaning it.

"I'm sure you are, Diana."

"Actually not really, no."

"I know."

"Sure you do."

Smack. Smack. Displaced wind. Smack. CRUNCH.

Her brown eyes widened and she stepped back, covering her mouth at what she just did. Damien's face was still tilted in the direction she had punched it into, his jaw no longer smooth. It seemed to be cracked and made it look like it was the bottom of a hexagon.

"Damn, that looks like crap." She unwrapped the many layers of white gauze from around her knuckles and dabbed at the blood at the corner of his lip. "Sorry sorry sorry sorry, I seriously didn't mean that this time."

She had tilted his head towards her by his jaw—the unharmed side— and was finishing up wiping the smeared blood away. His eyes were golden and he glared at her silently.

She licked her thumb and removed the smear of dried blood from the corner of his lip. She gave him a quick, innocent smile. "There, good as new."

He slowly raised his own hand to cup his broken jaw, testing its movement as he healed. He rubbed it gently, eyes narrowed at her. "Cut the crap, you meant to do that."

She barely held in a snort. "Okay I admit, maybe at the beginning I was messing around but this was purely unintentional...I think. I'm not sure."

He sighed, his eyes gradually turned back to that coffee-brown shade. "You'd make a prefect Luna," he said almost distastefully as if he was disappointed but impressed simultaneously at that one action.

"Flattery gets you nowhere, Damien." He started to remove his black fitness gloves.

"I'm not flattering you. You're damn perfect." He seemed to reconsider for a moment. "Well, aside from your stubbornness. You don't know when to quit."

"And you may thank my dear friend, Rosie, for that." She gave him a big grin and patted his shoulder. "I got it from her."

Damien watched her for a few moments, cracking his knuckles after placing his gloves on a table. The sound echoed like gun shots across the room. "Yeah, I noticed. Although," his cute eyes were filled with wonder and something that looked like concern, "—she seems a bit confused. Unsure of what to do. I can see it in her big doe eyes every time I'm near her; she's scared of something."

Diana shrugged. "Who wouldn't be scared in a situation like this? Someone's trying to kill her and everyone close to her."

He shook his head slowly in disagreement. "No, it's deeper than that. It's as if she's losing hope. Like she doesn't believe in herself."