We Are Monsters 🌕 Book 1 || gxg

Acceptance

When dawn broke on day seven of training, Sam woke rested, but stiff. Her shoulders, back, and left hip were speckled with deep violet bruises when she had gone to bed some time after midnight; now, they were faintly yellow and no longer ached. On the other hand, her muscles were reminding her of the beating they'd taken under all this training.

Since her first voluntary shift, her werewolf senses and strengths were becoming more prominent by the day. The more her strength built, the more intense their spars became. She never won, but she was definitely improving. Just the afternoon prior she had managed to knock Aidan over without the advantage of surprise. He flattened her a moment later. Still, it was an improvement.

Sam wanted to sleep in, but now that the wolf had woken, it was already taking control where it could. Every morning, up before eight. At least she could stay up as late as she wanted without suffering. The amount of sleep she needed now was much more forgiving, so her work only suffered marginally.

Aidan insisted she needed to train every day if she was going to be more than an interruption to Noah, as much as she longed for a lazy day of reading. Knowing him, he would be by around when she finished making breakfast. He'd learned her routine pretty quickly. After food, they had "two-legged combat", then more food, then off to the forest for "four-legged combat". His terms, not hers.

The knock came like clockwork. She had just folded an omelette and ran to let him in before it burned. He followed her in and locked up once more. Today he had brought doughnuts, proper ones from their only bakery.

"Did you heal all right?" he asked as he took the corner seat at the table. Sam was honestly surprised her tiny flea market chairs could support him.

She shrugged. "Pretty well, but not fully. I guess I'm not there yet."

Aidan's injuries, though negligible, rarely showed for long. Any bruises she scored on him were gone in a half-day. She hoped her healing advanced as well as his, but the odds weren't in her favour. Supposedly most bitten wolves don't hone or tap into those skills until many years later, if at all. Those were only words; even Aidan couldn't verify them as true. He said himself he only really knew family. This theory came from one of his history books from when he was growing up. In her experience with books, she knew just how one-sided the dialogue could be in historical texts, so she could safely assume the same would hold true for werewolf history.

Also, she itched to read those texts.

Today was no different. After breakfast they pushed her coffee table in front of the stairs and took up position in the living room. It was no where near as intense as their evening spars, just some punch and kick practise, sometimes elbows.

Aidan didn't need padded gloves to catch her fists considering hers was nearly two-thirds the size of his palm. She seriously doubted the benefits of fighting like this against Noah, but he insisted on teaching her.

"Remember, Noah has less muscle mass. Against him, you could probably hold your own if you could just put some power behind that right hook. Like you, he's never beaten me, and he has eighteen years of attempts under his belt." Aidan caught her next punch, this one enough to make him brace his right leg back. "Better. Noah is a lot faster than I am, but that's because he's slim. Okay, fine, slim compared to me."

Sam huffed a few times, swiping sweat from her brow. "Is there a reason for that, or is it just chance?"

"That he's smaller?" he asked with a cocked eyebrow.

"No, well yes, but also that you're so much bigger than ... well, most people. Or is this normal for yo- our kind?"

Aidan chewed his lip. "A bit of both. Our kind, when we're born into it, tend to be rather tall and athletic—alpha bloodlines more-so than our cousins."