Thor was conveniently omitting that the five knockdowns were delivered by a wolf half his size using a technique that belonged to a cat, and that the sixth round involved him exceeding the force parameter by three hundred percent.

“I want this noted in my file. I want a commendation. I want a STATUE.”

The crowd stared at him with the collective expression of two hundred people who were watching a man celebrate tackling a princess. That was not the flex he thought it was.

“ARE YOU NOT ENTERTAINED?” he repeated, louder, spinning to address the other half of the crowd who had been denied his initial address.

A soldier in the fourth row looked at the man beside him. “Is he serious?”

“He is always serious. That is the problem.”

Serena, meanwhile, had already walked back to center field. Without a word. Without acknowledging Thor’s victory speech or his invisible statue or his request for a commendation. She returned to her position, wiped the dirt from her gloves, and stood with her chin level and her breathing controlled and the specific quiet of a woman who had just been thrown across a training field and was ready to go again.

“CRUSHTURN.” Halvek’s voice cut through Thor’s celebration like an axe through balsa wood. “You just exceeded the force parameter by a factor I am going to pretend I didn’t calculate because the number would require paperwork I am unwilling to file. Get back in formation. Shift. If you exceed quarter force again I will personally run you through the obstacle course until your LEGS QUIT and then I will run you through it AGAIN on your ARMS.”

Thor’s arms came down. Slowly. The speed of a man processing a threat and determining its credibility and arriving at “credible” with reluctance.

“Copy that, Captain. Quarter force. My mistake. Passion got the better of me. It happens to the best of us, and I am the best of us.”

“SHIFT, CRUSHTURN.”

Thor shifted. Fast. No mid-shift flex this time because Halvek’s face had communicated that the next flex would be Thor’s last as a member of the Draken Forces.

“SHIFT, Serena.”

Tiberon’s command came. Serena closed her eyes.

White light erupted.

The shift took five seconds. Aurelia was in the light. She could feel the light around her, the white-hot restructuring of bone and sinew and skin, and for the first time, she held it. She stayed in the transition. Deliberately. Intentionally. The light burned and the burning was the price and the price was patience and Aurelia was paying the price because Aurelia was furious.

The light held at five seconds. Six. Seven.

Serena:What are you doing? How am I still here? This hurts like a bitch.

Aurelia:Charging.

Serena:You can’t charge inside a shift.

Aurelia:Watch me.

Eight. Nine. Ten. Eleven.

Serena: We have been stuck in mid-shift. Since when can you control that?

Twelve seconds.

The field shifted from watching to worrying. Soldiers exchanged glances. Halvek pinched the bridge of his nose because the shift was lasting too long and “too long” during a training session meant either injury or complication and both required intervention. A murmur rippled through the back rows.

Tiberon watched the light. His eyes were steady. He did not intervene. He did not call out. His assessment was already complete: the wolf was choosing to stay. The staying was intentional. The duration was a decision, and the decision belonged to the wolf, and the wolf’s decisions during a shift were hers alone.

Across the field, Thor’s wolf was using the extra time. He squared his stance. Dropped his center of gravity. Puffed his chest. Rolled his shoulders. Flexed his front legs one at a time, alternating, a pre-combat warmup that doubled as a display because Thor’s wolf could not perform any physical action without it also being a performance.

He was ready. He was set. He had learned his lesson. Six tackles in six rounds and the seventh was going to be different because the seventh was going to feature a Thor Crushturn who was prepared, positioned, and absolutely goddamn certain that the small white wolf was going to come sprinting out of the light at him like she had every other time.

He dug his back paws into the dirt. Locked his shoulders. Braced.

His tail wagged. Twice. Anticipatory.

The light held at second twelve.

Then it didn’t.

Aurelia came out of the light like a white comet with a personal vendetta.

The twelve seconds had been a loading screen. The loading screen was finished. What it loaded was a wolf who had been thrown across a training field by a wolf she had beaten five times and whose defeat on the sixth was a clerical error she was here to correct with interest.

She hit him so hard the sound carried.

The impact was center mass, low, identical to the first five takedowns except for one variable: speed. The four-and-a-half-second shift had given her fast. The twelve-second shift had given her faster. She had coiled inside the light like a spring compressing, storing every second of held transition as kinetic potential, and the potential was released in a single burst that covered the distance between her and Thor in a timeframe that qualified as unfair.

Thor’s wolf had been braced. Thor’s wolf had been prepared. Thor’s wolf had been ready for exactly the attack she delivered.

Thor’s wolf went down anyway.

His back hit the dirt so hard dust erupted in a cloud that obscured both wolves and drifted across the front three rows of spectators. His legs went up. His tail went still. His dignity went wherever dignity goes when a wolf gets flattened seven times in thirty minutes by the same opponent using the same move and the same move keeps working because the same move is being delivered by a wolf who is smaller, faster, and angrier than physics should allow.

Aurelia stood on his chest. Both front paws planted. Golden eyes burning down at him.

She did not paw his face this time.

She just stood there. On him. Glowing. Chin lifted. Waiting for him to understand that the understanding was final.