Page 25 of Shadow (Marinah and the Apocalypse #1)

Marinah

T oday’s torture session wasn’t enough to keep my mind off King. Boot wasn’t helping either. Normally, he stayed close by, ready to assist, but today he had planted himself on the other side of the room like I was contagious.

I was currently attempting to walk a balance beam for the twentieth time. And for the twentieth time, I fell.

Frustrated, I climbed back onto the beam and glared across the large, open space. Boot stood with his arms crossed, looking completely unconcerned.

“What is going on?” I demanded, wobbling before finding my center again.

“You just fell,” he said, his tone infuriatingly neutral, like he had no idea what I meant.

“If you were over here, giving me a shoulder to balance on like a good trainer, I wouldn’t keep landing on the floor. Or did you forget that part of the exercise?”

“You’re depending on me too much,” he replied calmly. “You need to learn to trust your own feet. You’re standing just fine now. Try lifting one toe and pointing it toward the door.”

I narrowed my eyes. “I’ll do it if you come here and keep me from falling.”

Boot crossed his arms tighter, the stubborn man. “I’ll watch from here, thank you.”

First Beck and now Boot. The two of them were almost worse than King when it came to testing my patience.

With a resigned sigh, I lifted my toes as instructed, pointing them toward the door. To my surprise, I stayed upright. Maybe Boot had a point, and I had been leaning on him too much.

After repeating the exercise a few times, Boot moved on to kickboxing.

When he had first handed me the gloves weeks ago, I thought he’d lost his mind. Now, it was my favorite part of training.

Finally, Boot stepped closer, raising the mitts he was wearing. We moved through the fighting sequences that had once felt impossible but now flowed like second nature.

“Keep your elbows pulled in and your fists up,” he reminded me as I threw a jab.

For the next hour, I lost myself in the rhythm of punching and kicking. My arms and legs moved in perfect coordination as I jabbed, hooked, kicked, and finished with a strong uppercut. I sweat bullets and didn’t care.

“You need a break?” Boot asked finally.

I wiped the sweat from my face. “No, I need to work on endurance along with balance. Could we go jogging?” Even as the words left my mouth, I couldn’t believe I was the one saying them.

“Not today,” Boot replied, shaking his head. “The island’s on lockdown. King needs to catch those men.”

Left jab, right hook.

“You think it’s the Federation too, don’t you?” I asked, watching him closely.

His expression didn’t change as he studied my movements. “It’s not the first time the Federation has tried to assassinate King.”

I paused mid-swing, frustration bubbling up inside me. “I don’t understand. If they want him dead, why did they send me here?”

Boot glanced over the mitts. “This time, jab twice with your left and uppercut with your right.”

I grit my teeth but followed his instructions. My arms and legs moved automatically; my feet solid beneath me as I executed the combination.

“King will explain what he wants you to know when he gets back,” Boot said.

“Exactly,” I snapped. “What he thinks I need to know. Problem is, I want the truth.”

Boot sighed and rolled his eyes dramatically. “You want me dead, is that it? Because that’s exactly what’ll happen if I open my mouth.”

“Argh!” I groaned, throwing my hands up in exasperation. “I just want to understand what’s happening.”

He ignored my outburst, focusing instead on my strikes. After about fifty repetitions of the combination, he added kicks: forward, side, and back.

It had only been two months, but six hours a day had been the trick. Even I couldn’t deny how much I had improved. The once-crippling muscle pain was now just a dull ache, and I actually enjoyed the small reminders of progress that came with training.

I often wondered if my father had kept me untrained for a reason. I knew he wanted to keep me safe, his only daughter shielded from the harsh realities of our world. But by not teaching me to fight, he had left me vulnerable.

Boot had been patient, for the most part, never making me feel like I was incapable of learning. He had even started laughing when I fell. It wasn’t in a mean-spirited way, but in that annoying you’ll get there kind of way. And the truth was, I had grown to appreciate his company.

Che sneaked into the training room a few times a week, hiding in his favorite cupboard until we took a break. He giggled from his hiding spot, offering his unfiltered critiques with mischievous grins.

For a little guy, he was surprisingly bold and entirely too good at pointing out my flaws.

But even his teasing had become something I looked forward to. It was hard not to smile when he cackled like a tiny gremlin every time I stumbled.

“You have chicken legs,” he told me once. Of course, I had to show him the chicken dance, which led to us covering our mouths to keep someone beside Boot from discovering Che.

I cared about them, I realized. Not as friends, but as family. Boot’s wife made us amazing meals for lunch when she felt good enough. I knew we would have been friends if this was a normal situation.

There was nothing normal about being shot at. If it was the Federation trying to kill me and King, I was in deep water, and it was too overwhelming to think about.

Boot had moved on to weapons training, where I used dull wooden knives and swords. I’d admit to being a touch more graceful now, but I still had my moments. I was supposed to implement kicks to my opponent’s body when I wasn’t within knife range and, most of all, not cut myself with my own knife while doing it.

Today, Boot moved backward when I kicked, and I hit air, losing my balance and falling to my knees. I remembered to keep the knife facing away from me considering it a win.

“Hey, why’d you do that?” I asked before realizing he was staring behind me.

King, in Beast form, stood just outside the doorway, needing to duck through to fit. A soft growl left his throat, and Boot backed another step away. I ignored Boot and all his weirdness for now.

“If he won’t take my hand and help me up, you should, your majesty. Of course, you had to see the one and only time I biffed it on the floor today.” I lifted my hand and waited for King to take it. He was so large in this form, and I secretly liked it. I just wouldn’t tell him so. And yes me, the woman who complained he had too much muscle.

King took two steps in. Boot slowly circled the room and escaped through the door once he was close enough. King grabbed my hand, pulling me up.

“You’re safe,” he said through his massive jaws. It was his human voice, only with a little more grumble.

Whatever that meant. Of course I was safe. After I was upright, I copied Boot’s common pose and placed my hands on my hips. “Did you find the men who shot at us?”

“No. They left the island.”

“That means you have no idea who they are?” I asked.

King didn’t answer. His intense blue eyes darkened, the color shifting as something stirred within him. Bone and muscle slid beneath his skin, a slow, deliberate transformation. I heard the faint crackle of shifting joints, his hand tightening slightly around mine as his body adjusted.

The pain he must have felt was unimaginable, but his face remained impassive, his gaze locked on mine. I couldn’t look away, even as I sensed the effort it took for him to control the change.

Gradually, his height shifted back to his normal form, and I no longer had to crane my neck so much to look up at him. Relieved, I stepped closer, still holding his gaze.

His pupils expanded, slowly overtaking the blue of his irises until they were a deep, endless black. It was mesmerizing. A sexy, hypnotic trick I couldn’t tear my eyes away from.

Then, his head dipped, and our lips met.

I inhaled sharply through my nose, catching the mingled scent of Beast and the man beneath. He was pure sensory overload, and it made my head spin. I stumbled slightly, and King steadied me.

“How’s training going?” he murmured against my lips, his voice low and rich with a teasing edge.

“I fell. I got back up,” I replied breathlessly. “It’s kind of redundant.”

A slight smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. “Stop falling.”

“Easy for you to say,” I retorted, rolling my eyes. I rarely fall now, but he had walked in just when I did, so I fibbed, trying to make him smile.

He stepped back and picked up the mitts Boot had left behind. Holding them up, he looked at me expectantly. “Show me what you’ve got.”

Suddenly, embarrassment washed over me. Boot had seen me stumble and flail enough times that I’d stopped caring what he thought. But King? He was different. Sexy, self-assured, and utterly gorgeous.

And me? I was ordinary. Scared of my own shadow and ready to fall at the slightest push. Or I had been , and I needed to stop thinking that way about myself. It was time to show him what I was made of.

Squaring my shoulders, I lifted the gloves into the first stance Boot had taught me, my arms ready.

“Two jabs with your left, one with your right, and finish with a left hook,” King instructed.

“Remind me what jabs and hooks are,” I replied with an overly sweet smile, clearly yanking his chain.

His eyes, which had been a deep black moments ago, shifted back to their piercing blue. A short laugh escaped him. He knew I was messing with him.

Not missing a beat, I snapped my left fist forward twice, followed with a sharp jab from my right, and finished with a clean left hook, exactly as he had asked.

King nodded with approval, but I quickly shoved thoughts of his opinion out of my mind and focused on the task at hand. I let myself sink into the rhythm of training and the fluid repetition of movement. My punches sped up, my body shifting with a precision I hadn’t had weeks ago.

For the next hour, King worked me hard. By the time he finally called it, my arms and legs were trembling, the muscles quivering with exhaustion.

“How about a swim?” he asked casually as we prepared to leave the training room.

I narrowed my eyes, suspicious. He had a habit of throwing in these unexpected suggestions, little moments that kept me off balance. But there was no way I was turning down a swim.

“What about your shoulder?” I asked, noticing he hadn’t favored it once during our session.

He rolled the joint with ease. “It’s fine. Completely healed.”

He slid the harness strap he was wearing aside, revealing smooth pink skin where the bullet wound had been. Only a faint puckered line remained. Shadow Warriors healed fast, but I hadn’t quite understood how fast until now.

“Do you swim in those straps?” I asked, raising an eyebrow in what I hoped was a playful expression. The straps were undeniably sexy, but I tried to keep my curiosity casual.

“No,” he replied, adjusting the harness. “When I shift, they need to be readjusted.”

“Haven’t discovered the wonders of Velcro yet, I see,” I teased.

His lips twitched, the faintest hint of a smile. “Velcro’s unavailable on the island. But if you think it’ll help, I’ll add it to the scavenge list. And if it works, I’ll pull you off training detail and put you on sewing duty.”

I grinned. “I’m good with glue. Sewing might be a stretch.”

His laugh rumbled low in his chest. He wrapped an arm around my waist, pulling me effortlessly against his side. I felt the warmth of his breath ruffling the top of my hair. “Training was a stretch too but look how far you’ve come.”

“You didn’t see the thousands of times I fell,” I retorted, a hint of stubbornness lacing the words.

“No,” he admitted with amusement. “But I heard about every single one from the biggest whining Warrior we have.”

I couldn’t help but laugh at that. Poor Boot. I’d wondered how he had managed to tolerate me during those first grueling weeks. Apparently, he hadn’t.

“Boot needs to learn to keep his mouth shut,” I quipped, shaking my head.

“That he does,” King agreed, another rare smile tugging at the corners of his mouth.