Repairing Bonds - ON HIATUS

Chapter two

Chapter Two

After an hour of meditation, which Wyatt had thought necessary to combat against the anger that I still held for Nathan, I’d been dismissed for dinner and bed. I did exactly that, despite the layer of sweat coating my skin I headed inside to the cafeteria.

Wyatt had found an old abandoned prison, though many of the buildings were unusable, over the years he’d managed to clean up a sleeping area, taking the prison beds into one room for the men, the other for the females, as well as fixing the showers. Wards had been set up around the perimeter, and other useable rooms were used for storage. All training, whether it was raining or not, was done outside.

I entered the cafeteria, out of the twenty-five students that trained here, only around fifteen were eating, others either in bed, training alone or patrolling. I ignored the students that sat here just like they ignored me. The people in this room were mainly here because they had to be. They were either rogues who were furthering their training, or guardians with nowhere to go. To be quite honest, I didn’t try to get to know why they were here. I didn’t want to. I was here for a specific reason and I wasn’t going to get caught up in friendships again. The people here knew me as Belle, the skilled guardian gone rogue after her charge died. Wyatt believed that it was too dangerous to let people know who I was. He took great measures to do so.

New ID, new birth certificate, new age, passport, new hairstyle and we’d had some of the tattoos on the back of my neck removed. When he said that he was deleting my identity, he meant it. I’d kept tally though, from my time, of how many Strigoi I’d slain by marks on my stake. In a way I couldn’t blame him for doing this. In the last five months I’ve grown stronger and more skilled than I ever was before. He’s taught me to control my anger, to use it in a way that would benefit me rather than distract me. Without the complete distraction of wondering how the others were, wondering if they’re alive while trying to keep the block up with the bond, I’d been much more focused.

It took a while to get back into a healthy eating pattern, but with Wyatt enforcing breakfast, lunch and dinner, it had quickly become routine again. In fact, I was eating better than I was before, the only food available being slabs of meat and rabbit food. It gave us the boost we needed without the processed crap.

Training every single day except Sunday was grueling at first. He trained like a drill sergeant, starting with laps to ‘warm us up’ then going into one hundred burpies before finally going into sets of punches and kicks. At first I was lucky to throw up less than three times a day before finally my body grew used to the exercise again. It took me a month before I went a day without vomiting but I had never felt better when I got through it. I felt stronger and more capable that I’d ever felt before, and that gave me back the confidence I’d lacked all those years ago when I was rejected by Dimitri and then tortured by Nathan.

.

I took my food and sat at a table by myself, silently picking at my food as quiet murmurs filled the room. Most of the people here had fought together or been paired with each other in training, thus creating a bond that I didn’t share with the rest of them. For some reason, though I was thankful, Wyatt had kept me separate to the rest of the students here.

“You know, you’re actually meant to eat the food, or are you starving yourself again?” I glanced up with a masked expression of rage that he wouldn’t be able to see through.

“Thanks for the tip,” I said back calmly. Sean, the one I had pounded on during training, was one man that especially hated me when I got here. He had a few inches taller than me, chiseled cheek bones that—if I didn’t hate him—I’d grudgingly admit were amazing, with blue eyes, fair skin and lean muscle. I was bitchily happy that I’d managed a couple bruises on his stupid cheeks and jaw. He loved nothing more than his own reflection and I took great pleasure in ruining that for him.