Chapter 82

Kayla

Sure enough, Isabella wasted no time in retaliating the next day.

I curled my fingers around the remote to the TV, feeling my blood pressure go up just from watching that interview.

“They even kicked us out of our own home,” Isabella said, dabbing at her eyes with a dainty little handkerchief as she sat across from the interviewer. “They left us with nothing—nothing! After I raised Nicholas despite the fact that he wasn’t my biological son.”

The interviewer said something apologetic, but I hardly heard her. My mind was too busy racing, my heart pounding so hard I could hear the blood rushing through my ears.

Suddenly, warm fingers brushed across mine, pulling the remote from my grip. The TV clicked off, and I looked up to see Ava standing there with a pinched expression on her face.

“Watching the news all day won’t do you any good,” she said matter-of-factly.

I sighed and flopped back against the couch cushions. “Yeah, well, I can’t think of anything else to do. All I really want to do is throttle that bitch.”

“Language, young lady.”

“Sorry.” I looked away, toward the window. It was a surprisingly balmy day for December; the birds were chirping, the sun was shining, and much of the snow from the last snowstorm had melted. Nicholas was out there somewhere, wandering the pack grounds with Henry. But I’d been cooped up all morning.

Ava, with a sigh of her own, set the remote down and patted my shoulder.

“You’re only visiting for a short while,” she said gently. “You should go outside. Let the pack see you. They’ve been missing you.”

I couldn’t help but scoff at that. “Oh, yeah? And does ‘missing me’ entail trying to overthrow my position every five minutes?”

Ava frowned, but said nothing. I knew she couldn’t really argue with that; there had been three attempted coups since I’d left to stay with Nicholas. And while things were a bit better now that Nicholas and I were here, I knew that the bullshit would start up again as soon as we left.

Still, she wasn’t wrong. It would be better if I made more of an appearance outside, showed my face around the pack. Nicholas was doing the same right now, but it wouldn’t mean much if the Luna was wallowing in the darkness inside, watching the same news channels over and over again.

Finally, I rose, my legs wobbling a little beneath me. Maybe a little exercise would do the trick, I figured, so I took a deep breath and headed over to the door, grabbing my jacket off the hook.

“I’ll go punch a training dummy for a little while, I guess,” I said.

“That’s my girl,” Ava chuckled after me. “I’m making a big dinner, so make sure to work out really hard so you can stuff yourself later without any regrets.”

I just grunted in response before shrugging my jacket on and stepping out into the brisk afternoon air. Nicholas and Henry were nowhere to be found, so I made my way to the training yard, which was blissfully empty.

Within a few minutes of sparring against a training dummy, I began to feel better. The familiar sensation of sweat coating the back of my neck and my muscles burning from the movements soothed me in more ways than I expected, and the cool air against my skin was a welcome sensation after sitting inside all morning.

Soon enough, I had almost forgotten about Isabella’s smear campaign.

Almost.

As for the things I couldn’t seem to entirely forget, I let those frustrations out on the dummy. The impacts echoed through the training yard as I deftly punched and kicked the dummy, powerful strikes landing in the sort of spots that could cause a fleshier opponent to go down in an instant.

But my flow didn’t last as long as I would have hoped.

“Practicing?”

The sound of a gruff, unfamiliar voice caused me to halt my training. I turned to see a large, well-built male Gamma standing at the edge of the training yard. He was shirtless, leaning against a post with his muscular arms folded across his equally muscular chest.

“Just letting off some steam,” I said, taking a step back from the dummy and wiping the sweat from my brow with my forearm. “Were you planning on using the training yard?”

The Gamma scoffed lightly and pushed away from the pillar. “Something like that.” He strode across the sandy ground toward me, each movement slow and deliberate. Something about it made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end.

When he finally stopped a few paces away from me, he made no effort to hide the disdain in his eyes. They flicked over me like I was nothing more than a squashed bug on the bottom of his shoe.

“Can I help you?” I asked coldly, lifting my chin at him.

He nodded his head toward the sparring ring. “I challenge you,” he said as coolly as ever.

My brow furrowed. The tone in his voice was awfully official for someone looking for a casual spar. No, this had to be more than that.

“What are the stakes?”

He shrugged one shoulder. “Take a wild guess.”

I didn’t have to guess; I knew the answer before I even asked the question.

“You’re the one behind the attempted coups lately, aren’t you?” I asked, narrowing my eyes. My mind flickered back to the first attempt that day I had come out of the hospital, and a familiar name burned at the edge of my memory. “Mason.”

“The one and only.”

I paused, taking the Gamma in for a moment. It was awfully ambitious of a Gamma to vie against the Luna, even more to do so when the Acting Alpha was conveniently occupied.

“Why me?” I asked, cocking my head to the side. “Why not Nicholas? Or are you too scared?”

Mason’s eyes turned into cold, glittering slits in the afternoon sun. “He’s only the Acting Alpha; with him gone, there’ll still be you. And I don’t intend to marry you, girl.”

I suppressed a snort. “Fair enough,” I replied, already making my way over to the sparring ring. “Very well. I’ll take you up on your challenge.”

If my parents had been watching, they might have wrung my neck for accepting a challenge like this. But I had spent my entire life training my ass off, and I really wasn’t concerned by one Gamma; if anything, I was intrigued by the thought of a good fight.

I did come out here to let off some steam, after all.

As we began to circle each other in the ring, it didn’t take me long to pinpoint the Gamma’s weak spots. He left his right side open, placed too much weight on his front foot. He was large and muscular, but that wasn’t an advantage; it made him slow and clumsy, which was only solidified for me when I feinted to the left and whirled around his right side, knocking one leg out from under him before he could stop me.

But then, something changed.

It wasn’t like when I fought Nora, who had taken stimulants to win. No, this was different—dirtier, somehow.

The silver glint of the blade he slipped from his waistband caught the sun just moments before it drove into my thigh.

I didn’t have time to react before the knife was buried to the hilt. I cried out, falling backwards, onto the sand. Mason pulled the blade back, sending hot red blood immediately gushing onto the ground.

“You—that’s against the rules!” I ground out, my hands clutching at the wound. I tried to climb to my feet, but fell again, pain barking through my leg and up into my hip. It spread outwards like fire, and I gnashed my teeth against it, trying to crawl toward the edge of the training grounds.

“We never specified any rules, though, did we?” Mason growled, advancing on me. Before I could get away, he grabbed a fistful of my hair, causing another cry to rip from my throat as he wrenched my head back.

“N-Nichola—”

“Shut up.” He cut me off before I could even get Nicholas’s name off my lips, the knife warm and slick with blood as it pressed against my throat. “Bluemoon needs a proper leader, not a little girl and a pretender. I will—”

But then, suddenly, a mass of flesh and muscle knocked Mason away from me, sending the bloody knife skittering across the sand.

Nicholas’s glowing eyes met mine for the briefest of moments before he and Mason flew into combat.