Chapter 458

DRAKENFELL — TRAINING FIELD

In Shadowclaw, the audience had been small. This was Drakenfell. Drakenfell did not do small.

Serena walked out onto the training field with a crowd watching her. At least two hundred people and growing. Most were members of the Draken Forces and were probably expecting her to perform at the level she did with dragons and magic.

Little did they know…

Aurelia: We have fans.

Serena: Yay us.

Aurelia: That is funny.

The thing about being incapable of shifting independently was that it was already humiliating in private. Now we were adding two hundred soldiers because why the fuck not.

They were about to watch a show featuring a woman who needed the King of Drakenfell to say ’Shift’ to be able to and a wolf who was still figuring out spatial awareness.

Aurelia: Excuse me. I resent that.

On the bright side, the whiskey was doing its job. Elara had shoved a glass into her hands before the war room. One glass of whiskey, consumed in three swallows. It burned her esophagus on the way down. It did not taste good. She did not understand whiskey. But she drank it like a champ.

“Drink,” Elara had said.

“It is ten in the morning.”

“Your point?”

Serena drank.

The edge came off. The anxiety dropped from a scream to a hum. Whether it was the alcohol or the placebo was a question she had asked herself exactly once and then decided the answer was irrelevant because the result was the same and the result was functioning.

Elara’s pre-training whiskey protocol was, medically speaking, insane. Ethically questionable. Possibly a violation of several Draken Forces training regulations.

Oh well.

Aurelia: You can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. This is called strategy.

Serena: Let’s make a damn omelet then.

The pendant sat against her collarbone. The weight was almost nothing. The effect was everything.

Hyran had told them the emotional channel would remain open and looked both Alphas in the eye when he said it. Both Alphas had accepted the explanation.

But their emotions were barely there. What she was getting through both matebonds was fog. A mute button on anything physical and a near-mute button on emotions. The second she put on the necklace, Dexmon’s irritation about it completely vanished, alongside Fin’s controlled frustration.

She made a quiet vow to drag Hyran somewhere private and demand whether he’d intentionally lobotomized the explanation. It had the distinct flavor of watered-down bullshit.

The necklace stayed on either way. She had made the decision. Neither of her mates would be able to make the judgment call, so she would.

Aurelia: The necklace muted our mates. Both of them. Simultaneously. The mage should sell these. Every mated woman in Skardos would buy one.

Serena: Truth. It feels empty though. I miss them.

Aurelia: Our mates’ emotions are exhausting. The silence is nice. I will deny saying this later.

Tiberon entered the training field. His eyes swept the crowd once, registering the size of the audience, processing it, and dismissing it in the span of a single second.

Then his gaze found Serena.

He was running whatever internal diagnostic a military commander runs when he determines whether the soldier is going to hold or fold. His eyes moved across her posture, her hands, her face, scanning for the cracks that would tell him the audience was getting to her.

She gave him nothing. The whiskey helped. It had filed down every sharp edge in her nervous system.

Tiberon’s gaze moved away from her after one second. She had passed.

Thank the gods. Thank Elara. Thank the beverage beforehand.

Dexmon and Finnick arrived a minute later.

They walked through the parting sea of soldiers looking like a matched set of ticking time bombs. Same tension. Same pace. Same everything. From a distance they looked like buddies. Actually, anyone with eyes would’ve called them buddies. Both of them would rather set themselves on fire than admit that. But it had been getting worse and worse.

Aurelia: They compare notes on us and now we can’t run in woods.

Serena: I know.

Serena blinked a few times. Identical jaws. Identical fists. Identical stride length. Identical expressions of tightly controlled displeasure.

At this moment, they almost looked like brothers. The thought landed and she shook her head once to dismiss it because they absolutely were not, and the idea was ridiculous.

Aurelia: I can barely smell either of their scents.

Serena sniffed to be sure. Both of their scents, which usually hit her bloodstream like a drug, were so faded she wondered if she was imagining they were there.

Serena: The necklace.

She added that to the growing list of questions for Hyran.

Right decision. Still. The necklace was for everyone’s own goddamn good. She’d chant that shit in her head until it stopped feeling like a lie.

Tiberon turned. He gave both Alphas a pointed look that said: if either of you shifts, I am removing you from this field.

Both Alphas took the look full in the face and stayed put. Keeping still was expensive and the expense was written across their shoulders in tense muscle, but the hold didn’t crack.

Aurelia: If they shift and start licking me in front of the Draken Forces, I am running away into the woods and no one can stop me.

Serena’s prayer was specific, targeted, and urgent: Dear Moon Goddess, do whatever you want with my shift, but please, for the love of everything sacred, please do not let either of my mates shift into wolf form and lick me in front of the Draken Forces.

Tiberon nodded at her.

“We are graduating your wolf to one-on-one combat drills. Level One. Defensive positioning. Your wolf will learn to hold a stance, maintain spacing, and respond to a single opponent’s movement without retreating. Elementary. The fundamentals that every wolf learns in their first year of training.”

He paused.

“Your wolf did not have a first year of training. So we are building one. Starting now.”

Fair. Blunt. Accurate. The Tiberon Drakenfell method of encouragement, which was indistinguishable from his method of criticism because both methods were the truth delivered without padding.

Serena gave him a nod while her wolf grumbled.

Aurelia: I am chosen by the Moon Goddess and advanced! If someone tries to bring out chicken we are going to have a big problem.

“Your opponent for today’s session.” Tiberon gestured toward the east end of the field.

Thor Crushturn walked out.