Florence
“Alright, your main attack should be to go for the throat. If that fails, then you can try to break a leg or aim for the eyes.” Erik circled me, crouched down and ready for an attack. I was in wolf form, excited and nervous. He’d finally agreed to teach me how to fight in wolf form, and I was desperate to prove myself to him.
Steven had retreated inside, claiming that he didn’t want a part in any violence, especially between two animals.
Without warning, I dove for Erik’s throat, jaws agape. I was inches from my target when he twisted away, leaving me to land on the grass unsteadily, with my back to him.
“Try to feint in one direction before attacking from another. I could tell where you were going to attack too easily.” The criticism made me growl, but I accepted it.
My next move was to jump at his right arm. He stepped back to evade my teeth, and I quickly sprung up again, aiming for his left side. He was unprepared, and I slammed into ribs, knocking him to the ground. I gave him a playful nip on his shoulder, indicating that I could have easily gone for the jugular.
“Better,” he commented. We both backed away while Erik dusted himself off and stood up. “Now try going for my legs. But remember to be quick, if I was a wolf, I could easily turn it against you and have access to your neck.”
I nodded and we began sparring again. Attacking Erik’s legs was easy when he was in human form, because they were a wide target area for me to tackle. The trouble was immobilizing him before he could do the same to me. As soon as I got my jaws around his calf – gently, so as not to tear the skin – he had easy access to my back. He’d pull my ears and fur, try to poke my eyes, and twist my front legs.
Our sparring session continued for the rest of the day. We stopped for breaks every hour or so, but whenever Erik offered to stop, I’d turn him down. It was a steep learning curve to me, and the fast I could get through it, the faster we’d be on our way to save Kyle.
We had to cease our sparring twice because I’d gotten too rough, and Erik needed some time to heal. The first time was when I’d been overeager in snapping at his throat, and I’d actually bitten him fairly hard. He bled a lot, but insisted that he’d be okay soon enough, with his supernatural healing. The second time was more serious. I managed to break a rib from crushing him to the ground, and the snap had nearly scared me to death.
Embarrassingly, I’d shifted to human form immediately to check if he was okay. Once I had clothes on, I sat him down on the couch to heal and watch some TV. Unlike when I’d received a broken rib from Kyle a few months ago, Erik seemed to heal in a few hours. He explained that it was due to his ‘pure’ Lycan heritage, but I was stunned nonetheless.
Erik helped me develop a repertoire of possible attacks and moves to use in a fight, and we cycled through them regularly, improving on the fluidity of movement and the finesse of certain parts. Once I’d practiced them continually for a few hours, I was able to work on my speed and accuracy. I experimented with mixing moves together so that Erik couldn’t predict them as easily, and the criticism was voiced less and less, until it turned into praise.
By the time night had fallen, we were both exhausted physically and mentally. Steven had prepared dinner for us and we ate it silently, both replaying the day’s events in our heads.
“I’ve made some progress on the tranquilizer,” Steven broke the silence. “I managed to get my hands on the stuff they use for bears, and upped the dose a bit. I imagine when you confront him, he’ll be hyped up on adrenaline, so it needs to have quite a kick to keep him down and out.”
