Day 3 - Pt. 2/3

Mara made the first illusion in less than a second. It startled everyone, including her.

The image appeared in the assessment lane: a chair, wooden, plain, slightly worn at one arm as if it had been pulled from a schoolroom. It had grain, shadow, perspective. It sat so convincingly on the floor that Cassie leaned sideways to see whether its legs touched.

Mirel checked the display. “Again. Different object.”

The chair became a vase. Then a birdcage. Then a staircase rising three steps into nothing. Each change came faster than the last. Mara’s face stayed controlled, but her hands slowly curled at her sides.

“These used to be softer,” Lizzy said quietly.

Mara glanced at her.

“Sorry,” Lizzy said. “I mean, before. When you showed us. They were good, but this is...”

“Sharper,” Mara finished.

“Yeah.”

Mirel changed the parameters. “Larger now, increase the size and add complexity.”

The staircase became a hallway. Not a full room, but enough of one to make depth appear where the test lane should have ended. A carpet runner. A table against a wall. A window showing rain that did not exist. Mara’s breath changed.

“Hold for ten seconds.”

She held it for fourteen before the edges shimmered.

“Add motion.”

The rain moved. Not just lines on glass. Droplets slid, gathered, broke apart. The hallway light wavered as one of the bulbs flickered.

Naomi whispered, “That’s beautiful in a way.”

Mara lost the window.

The hallway collapsed into fragments of wall and rain and then nothing.

Naomi’s hands came together at her waist. “I’m sorry.”

Mara shook her head, but she did not immediately build the hallway again.

Mirel gave her a little time to gather herself.

Then she said, “Your construction is strong. Your speed and detail have both improved. What is causing this loss of control?”

Mara’s posture changed. “I’m not sure.” Her shoulders slumped in defeat. “The image strains if I hold it too long.”

“What if you don’t hold it?” Mirel started talking faster now, “Maybe your mind is trying to create things and you keep resisting with a stationary image. Try letting your mind wander while feeding your power into the image.”

Mara’s voice cooled. “That sounds like a recipe for disaster.”

Cassie leaned forward with her elbows on her knees. “It’s worth a try, if the stuff you make is as realistic as that was, I’m sure it’ll make great cover in the field.”

Mara looked at her.

Cassie shrugged, uncomfortable with the awkwardness of Mara’s gaze but unwilling to take it back. “Just saying. We’re all stretching our power here. At least your power won’t blast anyone naked.”

Lizzy made a noise halfway between an actual squeak and a cough, then covered her reddening face with both hands.

Cassie snorted, “Can’t even hear the word naked without losing composure, Quinn?”

Mirel did not contradict Cassie. “Start with something familiar first, something safe. Do not **** it to remain still. Let it build.”

Mara closed her eyes.

The first image appeared slowly: a teacup on a saucer. White porcelain. Blue flowers. Steam rising.

Cassie whispered, “Called it.”

Mara opened her eyes, and the image held.

Mirel noted the time. “Don’t hold it, let it breathe.”

Light and motion burst outward from the cup, a wicker table wove itself into being below the saucer, chairs sprang into existence and the crisp greens, purples, reds, and yellows of a lush garden bloomed, all in the fraction of a second as the illusion formed around them.

Grass carpeted a sitting area much larger than the hallway would allow, a stone path dotted the ground between hedgerows. Then sunlight, real enough that Claire sat forward, filled the dimly lit space. Motes of dust drifted on the silent breeze, branches and flowers rubbed against each other in the poetry made by the motion of living things.

Mara’s face changed to an expression of wonder. She had stopped directing the power and it stopped hesitating at the edges. Birds dotted the blue sky and small furry things darted among the flowers.

For half a second, someone stood at the end of the path. Not fully visible. He was a silhouette, warmth without features. He was walking from the distant field with a hand extended in greeting. His lifted hand was wrapped in crimson streamers.

Lizzy’s hand closed around the edge of her chair.

The garden vanished, Mara opened her eyes and looked directly at Lizzy, but Lizzy lowered her gaze.

Mirel blanked the display. “That is enough for now, Ms. Ellisson. Very good work. Just imagine setting your imagination loose on a battlefield with chaos and **** in mind instead of being at rest.”

Mara’s voice dropped. “What was that?”

“An image building from your subconscious.”

“That is not an answer.”

“That is the answer I can give you.”

Mara stared at her.

Mirel met the stare without Verena’s polished certainty. She looked tired, and in that tiredness there was something like an apology without the permission to become one.

“Your imagination is tied intrinsically to your power by your transformation,” Mirel said. “That does not mean it belongs to anyone else. It means you need to develop a deeper understanding of your subconscious.”

Mara’s voice settled into something contemplative, “Then teach me how,” she said.

Mirel nodded. “That is the work ahead of us.”

By the time Fiona stepped onto the mat as Van’s partner, Van had stopped trying to make jokes.

Alpha stood off to the side now, whistle caught between two fingers, eyes bright and laser focused.

“Next scenario,” she said. “Master begins the drill exposed. Miss Cross tells the inexperienced young man what to do, since she’s good at that.”

Evelyn struggled to maintain her decorum in the face of Alpha’s outrageous prodding.

The tiny blonde continued, “Miss Kavanagh, you advance from that marker. Be scary, but don’t hurt him. I imagine that’s the default for your relationship with the Master.”

“Our Master’s objective is not to defeat Miss Kavanagh, because he enjoys having his organs on the inside. The objective is to evade Fiona, protect his head if occurs, and reach cover.”

Van nodded.

Fiona rolled her shoulders. “Don’t expect me to be polite about this, Van.”

“I had assumed.”

“Then fix your stance.” She pointed at his feet. “You keep forgetting to set your feet before you start because you’re focused on the threat.”

Van looked down at his stance and adjusted it.

Evelyn watched from the side, her face gave away nothing. Her hands had not quite settled.

Alpha raised one hand and the red marker lit beneath Fiona’s feet.

“Begin.”

Fiona moved suddenly. Alpha was fast in a way that made the eye give up. Fiona was different. She crossed the distance with no wasted motion, and every part of Van that had been told to move filed the instruction one step too late.

“Right,” Evelyn called.

He moved right, but it wasn’t fast enough.

Fiona’s shoulder checked him. Controlled, but hard. He hit the mat, rolled badly, and scrambled toward the block with his teeth clenched.

“You moved late,” Fiona said.

Van breathed. “Noted.”

“Let’s go again.”

His second attempt went better than the first, but not by much. On his third, he managed to reach cover but only because Fiona slowed her pursuit.

Alpha’s whistle pierced the air. “Do not give him charity, Ms. Kavanagh. Push his limits.”

Fiona shot her a look. “I’m not breaking him for your data.”

Alpha tilted her head. “He is your Master, Ms. Kavanagh. He deserves your best.” She smiled beautifully, though there was a touch of mania there as well. “Surely you don’t believe this is his full potential?”

Van missed the pause because he was wiping sweat out of his eyes.

Fiona did not miss it. Evelyn’s attention moved from the drill to Alpha’s face.

“You’re a bitch,” Fiona’s jaw set. “We’ll do it again anyway.”

Alpha’s smile softened into something almost absent. “Begin.”

Fiona’s advance was too hard. She knew it as soon as Van failed to move on the first beat. He had turned his head toward Evelyn’s command, not away from Fiona’s line, and Fiona’s momentum was already committed. She pulled the strike by instinct, shaving **** off the impact before it landed. Enough to avoid damage, she thought, maybe.

Van took the hit at the shoulder and ribs. Fiona expected collapse. A gasp, a fold, a fall that would make her curse herself and Alpha in the same breath.

Van moved with it and it was all instinct. His feet tangled for half a step and his face went blank with surprise, but his body turned. The **** that should have dumped him backward became rotation.

One hand caught Fiona’s forearm. The other landed high at her shoulder. He stepped inside the line because there was nowhere else to go, and for one ridiculous second Fiona found herself checked against him, her momentum stolen badly enough that she had to plant a foot to avoid following him down.

He barely understood what had just happened, but he had stopped her.

Alpha’s whistle trilled again, high and long.

Van looked from his grip on Fiona’s arm to Fiona’s face and immediately let go. “Sorry.”

Fiona stared at him, her eyes unreadable.

“I mean—” He stepped back, breathing hard. “Was that it? Moving with it? I didn’t mean to grab you like that.”

Fiona rolled her arm once, testing the place where his grip had been.

The problem was complex. She could tell, her assessment transformation was clear, he was not in the “helpless victim” category. He was essentially unskilled, but something about his instincts, when he stopped thinking so much, he could become something. She couldn’t decide what just yet.

“Fiona?” Van asked.

“You didn’t do it right,” she said. “You needed to move. If you try to stop an Alter like that, you’ll be torn to pieces.”

His face fell by a fraction.

Fiona continued, “You got one piece of it right.” She allowed the point grudgingly, “by accident.”

“Oh.”

“Do it again on purpose someday and I’ll be impressed.”

The breath came back into him.

Alpha bounced on her toes. “Oooh, progress!” she clapped twice, smiling at them both.

Fiona turned away before anyone could see too much of her face. “Don’t celebrate. He still moves like a drunk walrus.”

Van smiled anyway.

Mirel dismissed the current test lane, darkened the display, and brought Naomi’s name to the top.

Naomi stood and moved to the front. She kept her hands tucked close, fingers curled into her palms but not clenched. Gloves helped. Sleeves could have helped if she had any. None of it made the space between wanting touch and fearing it any easier to cross.

Mirel did not hesitate, moving directly into questioning. “When have you felt most in control?” she asked.

Naomi blinked. “What?”

“Since the change. When has control felt easiest?”

Naomi had prepared herself for warnings, monitors, maybe a lecture about safety. The question slipped past that armor because it sounded like something someone would ask if she already had part of the answer.

“I don’t know,” she said.

Mirel waited.

Naomi looked toward the pool room glass without meaning to. “At night, maybe. In the shower.”

Cassie looked away very hard, which somehow made the effort more obvious. She looked back at the wall, then at the pool, then at Naomi’s legs, then closed her eyes for a second with visible annoyance at herself.

Mirel touched the display. “Why?”

“I don’t know. I’m tired by then. Maybe the power retreats when I’m tired. Or maybe it’s hot water. Or maybe...” Naomi’s fingers pressed against the inside of her arms. “Maybe my head is quieter.”

“All testable.” Mirel reached for one of her clip boards and adjusted her glasses.

Naomi gave a nervous laugh. “That’s your favorite kind of thing, isn’t it?”

“No. My favorite kind of thing is when a problem is solved. Testable is what we have before that.”

The first test was shoes off on tile.

Naomi stepped onto a clean square of pale stone, bare feet curling slightly at the cold. Mirel gave her a pad that emitted a low pulse of stored energy. Naomi touched two fingers to it, focusing the way she always did: count, hold, do not pull, do not want, do not need, do not take.

The energy trembled. “Do you feel a difference?” Mirel asked.

“No.”

“Good.” She made a note on her board. “I assumed your showers were bare footed. So we eliminate simple grounding of energies.”

The second test was temperature. Mirel adjusted the temperature in the room until it matched a hot shower. The room warmed by slow degrees. Beads of sweat formed and Naomi’s hair stuck lightly against the back of her neck. She pressed her hand to the pad and focused. There was no measurable improvement.

Naomi’s frustration reached her mouth and stopped there.

Mirel lowered the temperature controls. “I know this feels pointless. It is not. Every failed test keeps us from wasting your strength tomorrow.”

Naomi nodded, though the nod looked more like she was being polite than convinced.

The doors to the pool room opened with a soft hiss. It was not large. More like a therapy pool than a recreational one, tiled in pale gray, steam faint over the surface. A rack of folded towels waited beside it. On a bench lay a plain athletic two-piece swimsuit in dark blue.

Naomi took the swimsuit and moved behind the privacy screen. She changed slowly, hands shaking less than she expected. She expected shame, anxiety, the old miserable math of exposed skin and dangerous skin. Instead, somewhere between removing her shirt and tying the swimsuit top, something in her power shifted.

Not off, it was never off. But less like a live wire pressed against the inside of her skin. More like a valve with a hand on it. She stood very still.

“Naomi?” Lizzy called, gentle.

“I’m fine.” She was not fine. But she was curious, and curiosity was better than terror by a narrow margin. When she stepped out, no one stared in the way she feared.

Cassie was staring at a ceiling sensor with the fixed determination of a woman using disinterest as a moral shield. Claire gave Naomi the courtesy of normal attention. Katherine’s glance was brief and assessing, then gone. Mara watched Naomi’s face, not her body.

Naomi entered the pool, warm water closed around her waist, then her ribs. She let out a breath she had not meant to hold. Mirel crouched at the pool edge and extended her own hand.

Naomi recoiled. “No, I’ll hurt you.”

“You could. But not before I withdraw. Your danger is real. It is not a magical **** touch.”

Naomi’s throat worked while Mirel’s hand remained there, palm down, steady above the tile. “You said the shower felt easiest,” Mirel said. “Find out what that actually means.”

Naomi moved closer as if approaching a wild animal. Her fingers touched the back of Mirel’s hand. The power woke beneath her skin. It pulled itself sluggishly towards the hand touching her skin.

She focused her thoughts and leashed the power before it could escape. Naomi counted; one thousand, one thousand one, one thousand two. The power stayed contained.

Mirel’s pulse ticked under her fingers, ordinary and impossible. Naomi’s eyes filled before she could stop them.

“Continue,” Mirel said quietly; one thousand three, one thousand four.

Cassie had both hands clasped around the back of her chair. The plastic creaked.

One thousand five, Naomi pulled her hand away before Mirel did. The pool water moved in small waves around her.

Mirel flexed her fingers once. “How did that feel? I couldn’t detect any of your power targeting me.”

Naomi’s face was tight with emotion. “I did it. It still needed my attention but it was almost easy.”

“Congratulation, Ms. Hale.” She was staring in an almost uncomfortable way.

Naomi laughed, and the sound broke halfway.

Mirel let her have two breaths, then she said, “Again. This time while answering questions.”

Naomi stared at her, but Mirel’s voice stayed level, but not hard. “Control that only works in silence is a beginning. It is not the end of the road.”

The second lasted three seconds before Naomi lost count and pulled too hard from the Mirel’s hand. The third lasted six. The fourth lasted four because Cassie shifted too suddenly and Naomi startled. The fifth lasted eight while Lizzy asked her favorite color, then what she had eaten for breakfast, then whether she preferred dogs or cats.

“Dogs,” Naomi said through clenched concentration.

Cassie said, “Wrong.”

Naomi laughed and nearly lost it. She pulled away in time and Mirel marked the result.

Naomi stood in the pool with wet hair clinging to her cheeks, breathing hard as if she had run a mile. Mara reached for a towel and held it out. Naomi took it, though she made sure their fingers did not touch.

Mirel was recording her findings as Naomi dried and changed clothes again. She waited until the exact moment Naomi was undressed and bending to dry her legs to ask, “Before I finalize this test record, are you sure you can’t think of any other variables, Ms. Hale?”

Naomi froze. Her mind had been awash with the success of her test and the joy of finally having some kind of control. She straightened her back and put a finger to her lips in thought. She thought long and hard about the problem. She was holding the wet towel to her dry body for modesty despite the privacy screen and focused on the sensation of her power that was definitely not changing as she toweled off.

In a very small voice, “Oh, no.”

Mirel spoke up, “Did you say something, Ms. Hale.”

Panic was clear on her face, but she mastered her voice in time, “No, Ma’am.”

The final training drill combined too many things. Van thought that was unfair until Alpha explained that unfairness was the point. “Combat is rude,” she said. “Combat does not wait for us to be ready and well rested.”

The room had shifted again: three cover blocks, two threat markers, a low rail, and Evelyn at one side. Fiona stood across from Van, no longer hiding that she was interested in his growth. That was more frightening than when she had merely been annoyed.

Van’s ribs ached where she had checked him. Not badly, just enough to remind him he had ribs.

Alpha walked a slow circle around him. “Master, what is your job?”

“Do not win,” he said, sounding like a school boy reciting a lesson. He sighed, “Don’t try to prove I’m brave. Move when told. Protect my head. Find cover. Don’t make myself someone else’s obstacle.”

Alpha pressed both hands to her cheeks. “He can be taught.”

Fiona rolled her eyes, but she did not contradict her.

Evelyn’s voice came from his left. “And if no one gives a command?”

Van looked toward the cover blocks. “Move out of the threat lane.”

“Which one?”

He looked at Fiona. At the markers. At Alpha, who was too cheerful to trust. At the low rail.

“The one I’m in.”

Evelyn nodded. “Acceptable.”

Alpha stepped away. “Begin.”

Fiona moved first, but this time not directly. She feinted left, cut right, forcing Van toward the rail. Evelyn called “down” before he understood why. He dropped, badly but fast, and Fiona’s arm ed over where his shoulder had been.

“Cover two,” Evelyn said.

He rolled, came up too high, saw Fiona’s footwork shift, and ed not to stand. He threw himself the last two feet behind the block with no dignity at all.

“Alive,” Alpha called.

“Barely,” Fiona said.

Van was still behind the block, breathing hard, when the second marker lit under Alpha’s feet. “Oh come on,” he said.

Alpha charged. Fast enough to be insulting.

“Left,” Evelyn called.

He moved left. Wrong left? No. Her left? His left? He lost a half-second to thought and Alpha took it, caught his shoulder, and spun him onto the mat. He hit, tucked, breathed, rolled. Good enough. He ended on his back near Fiona’s boots.

She looked down at him. “You hesitated because you translated the command.”

Van stared up, chest heaving. “I noticed.”

“Don’t. If you get confused, trust your team. Evelyn is smart, her instructions are for you from your position.”

“That would have been useful thirty seconds ago.” He laughed because he was tired enough that almost anything could become funny.

Evelyn came closer, offering a hand. Van took it and for a second, her grip tightened more than necessary. Then she pulled him up with perfect control and released him as soon as he was steady.

Alpha bounced. “Again, Master. Don’t stop until I say, OK?”

Van looked at Fiona. “You’re hearing this, right?”

“No,” Fiona said. “I definitely am not hearing, porn bot 6900 over there make everything sound like a bad streamer.

Cassie’s first shot was too big and everyone knew it, including Cassie. The target was a reinforced disc twenty meters downrange. Mirel had asked for a fast, small burst. Cassie gave her fast. The small part died somewhere between instruction and ignition.

Plasma cracked across the lane in a bright, violent bloom, hit the disc, and washed heat over the shields hard enough to make Lizzy step back.

The target survived, though it was covered in scorch marks and soot. The air smelled sharp, like ozone and accelerant.

Mirel checked the display. “Another blast, but smaller this time.”

Cassie rolled her shoulders. “It was small.”

Claire choked back a light laugh, “For a demolition permit, maybe.”

Cassie lifted one hand again. Her power came fast, too fast, a flower of light forming above her palm. It was seething, it wanted to be thrown. Cassie wanted to throw it. Anger had always fed her power before discipline did.

She was not just angry now though.

Four o’clock waited in the back of her head like a firing squad oiling its rifles. Van saying he would try to make it good, was well intentioned but had not helped. Claire’s calm little date-night afterglow had not helped.

Fiona standing in a tank top with her arms folded under her breasts and one hip cocked like she was daring everyone to notice her had definitely not helped. Naomi in the swimsuit had not helped. None of them were doing anything wrong, which made Cassie’s own aggravation feel like a stone in her throat.

The plasma in her hand brightened and bucked. Claire shifted back slightly.

The new awareness tugged oddly at the corners of her perception. Claire’s position. Lizzy’s. Naomi near the pool room door, standing rigidly with some internal, ooh nobody can touch me trauma. Mara seated too close to the left shield. The Cover Girl effect mapping them as not-targets, people the blast should not hurt.

Cassie took a deep breath and lowered her hand. The plasma shrank, maybe. At least she felt like it did. She cocked her hand back and threw. The burst hit the target with a sharp pop instead of a concussive crack.

The disc glowed but did not blacken. Mirel looked at the readings. “That focus you found, just then. That was better.”

Cassie flexed her fingers. “That was annoying, my plasma is safer than ever. Why focus so much on smaller blasts?”

“Umm…,” Claire hesitated to remind everyone about her getting her clothes blasted off in the jungle.

“Sheesh, princess!” Cassie groused. “One time, damn.”

Mirel cut in, “ how it felt to shrink the blast.”

“I try not to build my life around annoying feelings.”

“You appear to have done so anyway,” Katherine chimed in with a rare comment.

Lizzy covered her mouth.

Cassie turned. “Don’t laugh.”

Lizzy’s voice came muffled through her fingers. “I’m not.”

Cassie tried to glare and failed halfway. The second small shot came faster. Still too hot, still ugly, but deliberate. Mirel marked the improvement without praise.

Following several rounds of examination, Mirel acknowledged that Cassie had one of the strongest control out of all of the contestants so far.

Katherine’s assessment followed, quieter and more technical. Height limits. Weight distribution. Gait changes. Fingerprint alteration. Facial mimicry under timed conditions. Mirel confirmed what Katherine already knew and quantified what she had only estimated. Dossiers did nothing for the morphing. No new tricks. No hidden boost. Just Katherine’s original practiced skill under a brighter light.

Katherine smiled as if relief had been the sensible response. Her fingers kept tapping the tablet long after the result stopped changing.

“Your transformation did not improve this ability,” Mirel said. “Which was already within known parameters, but accuracy demands testing.”

By then, they had all rearranged around the tests, each looking at themselves and each other slightly differently than when they had arrived.

Naomi kept looking at her hands, not with fear alone but with puzzled attention, as if something locked had clicked once from the other side. Mara did not look at anyone. She watched the blank test lane where her garden had vanished and folded one hand over the other until both were still.

Mirel closed the display. “Final awards will be posted after review,” she said. “You have not mastered anything today.”

Cassie huffed. “Inspirational.”

“You have identified starting points, Ms. Lin. That matters more.”

Mara’s voice was quiet. “Because now we know where to push?”

“Because now you know some of the places to push.”

Mirel took off her glasses and rubbed the bridge of her nose. The gesture made her look older. Less like a lecturer. More like someone who had repeated this work in too many rooms with too many girls.

“You do not have to be grateful for what was done to you,” she said. “I would be concerned if you were. But don’t refuse to master your powers just because someone is watching you do it. Please take these days as an opportunity. Learn about your power, learn to live with the transformations you can, work to change the ones you can’t.” She took a deep breath, “And, please, for the love of god, learn to rely on each other. I know this harem set up is hard to accept, but I promise the system chose people that CAN become something amazing. It doesn’t always happen, but it CAN.”

Then she dismissed them.

Van did not end training standing tall, he ended it sitting on the mat with his elbows on his knees, sweat running down the side of his face, trying to decide whether drinking water or lying down forever was the higher calling.

Alpha crouched in front of him with a bottle of water. “Hydration, Master. You’ve spent a lot of fluids today. You practically soaked us. Don’t let yourself waste away.”

He took the bottle. “I hate that I’m getting used to that. Would you stop if I asked nicely?”

“Oh Master!” she clasped both hands and sighed dreamily, “You know I’d love to hear you beg.”

Fiona sat on the edge of a cover block, one forearm resting on her thigh. “Alright, that one was Van’s fault.”

“Don’t defame the Master.” Alpha said, pouting in Fiona’s direction. Something in her perky response had sharper edges than she must have intended, because she went still and her face seemed to strain as she smiled. The strange sweep of emotion faded almost as fast as it arrived and she was back to her manic porn-star pep-rally self in a flash.

Van drank half the bottle before speaking. “So,” he spoke to defuse that awkward silence, “How bad was I?”

No one answered immediately, so he lowered the bottle. “I dislike the silence.”

Fiona looked at Alpha. “You’re the instructor.”

Alpha placed one hand over her chest. “Master began his path this morning stiff and upright, but after going up and down with three beautiful women all morning, he is spent, limp, and horizontal.” Everyone’s face went through the stages of grief together before Alpha could continue. “But, his response times, field awareness, and reflexes have all improved by at least 11%. Quite a gain for someone with no training or combat background.”

Van considered that. “That sounded like progress if I don’t listen too closely to her word choices.”

“It is progress,” Evelyn said.

He looked over to where she was still facing the display, but her voice carried easily across the room. “You followed external commands more reliably by the end. Your recovery time improved. You stopped wasting movement on apology. Not consistently, but enough to measure.”

Van smiled faintly. “High praise from the spreadsheet.”

Evelyn finally turned. “Do not insult spreadsheets. They are one of the pillars of civilization.”

Fiona slid off the block. “You’re still bad.”

“There it is,” Van said, then caught himself and grimaced.

Fiona ignored the stumble. “But you’re bad in a fixable way.”

That was not what he had expected and Fiona seemed to regret saying it, so she made the next part rougher. “You listen when you stop trying to prove you’re not a burden. You are strong enough and stubborn enough to take this instruction somewhere useful. But you need to get over yourself. You keep worrying about breaking us or disappointing us.” She pointed and **** him to meet her eyes, “You. Are. Not. A. Threat. Stop acting like one.”

Van stared at her.

She pointed at him again. “I meant not a threat in combat, so don’t get comfortable with that Master nonsense. I’m still not your little harem girl, and do not make that face.”

“What face?”

“The one where you look like a kicked dog.”

He shut his mouth.

Alpha sighed happily. “Team bonding through blunt trauma, I love days like this.”

Fiona ignored her and looked at Van again. “You didn’t beat me.”

“I know.”

“I mean it.”

“I know.”

“If you start acting like you did, I’ll put you through the floor.”

“I absolutely believe you.”

Fiona couldn’t quite explain her sudden need to establish that he had not beaten her. It felt like if he had, she would owe him some kind of payment or something. But she also realized that she hadn’t beaten him, not in a real one on one contest.

Because if she ever did, she was going to take it out on him harshly. Winners need to punish losers after all. The thought was swift enough to slip through her mind unnoticed, but its shadow lingered.

The look on her face caused Van’s grip to tighten around the bottle.

Alpha watched Fiona’s internal struggle like a hawk. Her smile faded, only for a breath. Her hand closed around the whistle until the plastic creaked.

Van saw it. The expression behind her eyes did not match the rest of her: not the twin tails, not the bright outfit, not the cheerful posture, not the teasing voice. Something had opened under the performance and looked out at him. Then she blinked, and the smile returned brighter than before.

“Excellent session!” Alpha sprang upright. “Master has survived his first training foursome, Miss Kavanagh’s impatience, Miss Cross’ instructional standards, and my magnificent supervision. A productive morning by any rational metric.”

Van kept watching her for one second longer. The moment of weirdness did not return.

Alpha’s clipboard reappeared from the wall slot. She caught it without turning.

“Final training notes will post after review,” she said brightly. “Please proceed to recovery showers, nutrition, and whatever emotional processing you find least embarrassing.”

Van pushed himself to his feet. Everything hurt in small, educational ways. His ribs hurt. His knees hurt. His pride had taken enough small injuries that it had stopped checking in. Despite all of that, he felt like he was recovering something he had lost. Maybe his independence or his confidence. He couldn’t be sure.

He picked up the empty water bottle and gave Alpha a tired salute with it. “I assume there will be a next time?”

Alpha’s smile sharpened, “Oh, Master,” she said breathily. “I can’t wait.”

Fiona laughed first, Evelyn tried not to, Van just closed his eyes. For the first time all morning, the sound that came out of him was almost a laugh.