Refuge (37 page)

“I do care about him, but he drives me nuts
always telling me what to do.” I rolled onto my back and looked
over at her. “This is really freaking me out. I’ve never even been
on a real date, and now all of a sudden I have a life mate? I mean,
I could have one.”

“Whoa, you’ve never dated anyone?”

“I had coffee with a guy once. Does that
count?”

She shrugged. “I guess. But Nikolas was your
first kiss?”

“Yes.”

“Excuse me while I hate you for a
minute.”

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, please.”

Jordan smacked her forehead. “Ah, this
explains why he almost went nuclear last night.”

“Because of one kiss?”

“Because you’re a virgin. Didn’t Tristan tell
you about that?”

My cheeks grew warm. “We didn’t talk about
that
.”

“Men.” Jordan turned on her side and cradled
her head in her hand. “Most people go a long time before they meet
a mate, and they don’t exactly live like monks while they wait.
From what I’ve heard, a male’s protective instincts can go a bit
haywire if their mate is a virgin.”

“Great,” I muttered weakly, wishing the floor
would swallow me up.

“Don’t worry. They say the male calms down
once you complete the bond.”

“What if I don’t complete the bond?” What I
felt for Nikolas, it was definitely stronger than friendship, but
was it enough to commit to him forever?

“You can choose not to, but then I’d have to
smack some sense into you. This is
Nikolas
we’re talking about.”

I rubbed my temples. “Can we talk about
something else?”

“All right. How about you tell me what you
did to that vampire last night?”

I pasted an innocent expression on my face.
“What do you mean?”

She gave me a pointed look. “I was there,
remember? I saw you take him down, and I heard him scream.”

He screamed?

“And I’m pretty sure I smelled something
burning, too.”

“I had a silver knife,” I said weakly.

Jordan shook her head. “Your knife was across
the room. Listen, I know you did . . . something, just like you did
something to that lamprey demon. You’re different from the rest of
us, aren’t you? I mean, look at you. You’re a seventeen-year-old
orphan and you’re totally sane. You don’t even act like you have a
demon inside you, and the rest of us have to meditate every morning
just to control ours. And who the heck owns a pair of
hellhounds?”

“You meditate?”

“Don’t try to change the topic. If it wasn’t
for your bond with Nikolas I’d wonder if you were actually a
Mohiri.”

I should have known Jordan would put it
together. I wanted to confide in her, to tell her everything, but
something held me back. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her. It
wasn’t easy for me to open up to people, especially about this.

“You’re right. I am different. I wish I could
tell you how, but I can’t yet. Only a few people know about me, and
they think we should keep it between us for now.”

“Tristan and Nikolas, right?” I nodded, and
she pursed her lips. “Is that why Nikolas is training you?”

“Yes.” There was no point in denying it.

“Okay.”

Okay?
“That’s it? You’re not going to try to figure
out what it is?”

Jordan tugged at a loose thread on my sleeve.
“If Tristan and Nikolas think you need to keep it a secret then it
must be important. I’ll just have to wait until you can tell me.”
Her eyes gleamed. “Or until I can figure it out myself.”

“Good luck with that,” I said confidently. No
matter how smart she was, she would never in a million years guess
this one.

She rolled off the bed. “How about that
walk?”

“Sure.”

“Inside or out?”

“Inside.” If Nikolas was out on his
motorcycle, there was no chance of me running into him.

It was almost ten o’clock so we didn’t run
into many people as we wandered from one wing to the next. In one
of the common rooms, Olivia and Mark were snuggling on a couch
watching a movie, and they both eyed me curiously when we passed
by. I couldn’t hide from everyone forever, but I wasn’t ready for
the stares and the questions.

It was different with Jordan. There was
something about her bluntness and sense of humor that made it easy
to talk to her. I couldn’t help but wonder what it would have been
like if I’d had a girlfriend like her back home.

We were finishing our walk through the south
wing when we spotted Tristan and Celine coming out of his office.
We were not close enough to hear what they were saying, but it was
obvious that Celine was angry about something. I didn’t need to be
a mind reader to know what had her out of sorts.

“Poor Celine. She never had a chance,” Jordan
said in a low voice as we headed back to our rooms. “You should
have seen her at dinner. She was like a grizzly bear with a sore
tooth.”

“She is never pleasant to me, so I probably
wouldn’t know the difference,” I replied, not wanting to talk about
the other woman. I still wasn’t convinced that Nikolas didn’t feel
some attraction for her, especially after seeing them together.

Why do you care if you aren’t even sure you want
him?
The annoying little voice in my head asked. Instead of
answering, I wondered where Nikolas was now and what he really
thought about all of this. Was he angry with me for not wanting to
talk to him today? How did he truly feel about this bond between
us? It wasn’t as if he’d had a choice either, right? Maybe he
didn’t want this at all and he was waiting for me to reject the
bond and set him free.

Why didn’t I break the bond? What was I
waiting for? If I’d found out I had a bond with any other male
here, I would have freaked and ended it on the spot. I was confused
and scared and okay, a little freaked out, but not averse to the
idea of being with Nikolas. I mean, it was Nikolas. I did care
about him a lot, even if he made me want to clobber him sometimes,
and I’d have to be comatose not to be attracted to him. And that
kiss. I got butterflies just thinking about it. I had nothing to
compare it to, but that couldn’t be a normal reaction to a
kiss.

The truth was I didn’t doubt my feelings for
Nikolas. I’d tried to bury them, but they refused to go away no
matter how upset or angry I got at him. But Tristan said the bond
was a forever thing, and I just couldn’t see me committing to
anyone for eternity after a few months and one kiss. And I’d be
surprised if Nikolas was ready to jump into anything either no
matter what his Mori was telling him. I wasn’t ready to say
good-bye to him forever either. Every time I thought about that
possibility, my stomach felt like it had been filled with lead. I
needed time – we needed time – to get to know each other more and
figure this out.

Right now though, what I really needed was
space to clear my head and wrap my mind around all of it. I wasn’t
ready to talk to Nikolas about any of this, and I didn’t know how
I’d feel when I had to face him again. I was glad I’d asked Tristan
to switch me back to training with Callum. Nikolas might not be
happy about it at first, but I was sure that once he thought about
it, he would agree that this was best for both of us.

I STRETCHED AND did my warm-up while I waited
for Callum in his usual training room. After the last two days, I
had a lot of restless energy stored up and I was looking forward to
burning it off. If there was one thing I could count on Callum for,
it was to work the hell out of me. Today I was going to ask him if
he could start teaching me some kicks and punches. My Mori strength
would be a lot more effective once I learned how to channel it
properly.

When the door opened, I turned to greet my
trainer and my smile faltered when Nikolas, not Callum, entered the
room. Seeing him so unexpectedly for the first time since the night
of the party, my stomach fluttered and my heart sped up. His closed
expression made it impossible to tell what he was thinking or
feeling.

“I’m waiting for Callum,” I said lamely.

He shut the door. “Callum and I talked, and
we agreed that I will continue to train you.” The determined set of
his jaw when he faced me again made me look at the door and think
of escape.

“I didn’t agree to that. I’d rather work with
– ” I broke off and took a step back when he moved forward.

He stopped and regret flashed in his eyes.
“Don’t do that. I would never hurt you.”

“I know.” Things might be weird between us,
but I would never let him believe I was afraid of him. “I just
think it would be best if I trained with some other people.”

“No one here can teach you anything I
can’t.”

I didn’t respond because I knew he was right.
I couldn’t tell him that what I really needed was to work with
someone who didn’t tie my stomach in knots and make me so confused
I couldn’t think straight.

He ran a hand through his dark hair. “We both
know what this is about.”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“We have to talk about it sometime,” he said
in an infuriatingly calm voice. How could he be so composed when I
was a nervous wreck?

“But not now.” My eyes pleaded with him as I
fought to hide my panic. “Please.”

He exhaled slowly. “Let’s train then.”

“Okay.” If I had to train with him, I would,
but I couldn’t deal with more than that. Not yet.

“What do you want to work on?” he asked, and
I was surprised he was going to let me choose.

“I want you to teach me how to fight. I can
have all the demon strength I want, but it’s totally useless if I
don’t even know how to throw a punch correctly.”

He started to shake his head, but I cut him
off before he could argue. “Listen, I have to learn to protect
myself. I’m supposed to train to be a warrior, right? If you’re
going to get mad every time I mention it, this is not going to
work. I’d rather not waste my time.”

“You need to condition your body and spend
more time getting used to working with your demon before you learn
fighting techniques.”

I shrugged. “Can’t I do both? The bad guys
aren’t going to wait for me to catch up with everyone else.
Couldn’t I learn some moves and do that other stuff at the same
time?”

A muscle in his jaw twitched, and I groaned,
“See, there you go again. Callum wouldn’t think twice about
teaching me to fight. He’d have no problem giving me a few bruises
and throwing me across a room.”

“He throws you around?”

“Gah!” I threw up my hands and headed for the
door.

“I’ll teach you a few strikes and blocks, and
then we will put you through a workout to see how much work we have
to do. We’ll spend time on your fighting technique and your
workouts every day. Once you have mastered the basics, we’ll move
on to more difficult moves.” He walked to the center of the room
and motioned for me to join him.

I hesitated for a moment before I went to
stand before him. Being this close to him made me more than a
little jittery, not out of fear but out of a deeper awareness of
him. I took a steadying breath and tried to focus on what he was
saying and not our complicated relationship. It was the only way I
was going to get through this.

“The only rule you need to understand about
combat is that there are no rules. We fight to neutralize a threat
and to survive, and we do whatever is necessary to win. We use
techniques from almost every martial art, and combined with our
strength and speed, we can turn our bodies into weapons.”

“It sounds like Krav Maga,” I said, intrigued
and nervous at the same time. “My friend, Greg, used to talk about
wanting to learn it.”

He gave a small smile for the first time
since entering the room. “Where do you think the principles of Krav
Maga originated?”

“Oh.”

“In a fight, you have to be on the offensive
at all times. You never stop moving and every movement counts. You
never give your opponent an opening. To do this, you must master
every possible strike, every hold and block, until you can do them
as naturally as breathing. There is no room for hesitation when you
are facing an opponent who is faster and stronger than you. You
fight dirty because they will. And remember, a vampire is strong
but the body still has human weaknesses. A well-aimed punch or kick
to the groin hurts them, too.”

I nodded, thinking about how fast he had
moved when he fought and killed three vampires at once. His
movements had looked so effortless, almost like a dance. “Where do
we start?”

“The first strike we’re going to work on is
the straight punch. There are two types of straight punches.” He
demonstrated punching with his fist and then with the heel of his
hand, and his movements were so fast I could barely make them out.
He repeated the strikes several times, but much slower, each time
explaining how to stand, how to hold my shoulders, my head, and my
arms. Then he stepped back. “Show me what I did.”

I positioned my body like he had instructed
and punched the air with my fist. Then I repeated the action with
my open hand. My movements were slow and sloppy compared to his,
but that didn’t bother me because I knew that, starting from this
moment, everything I learned would make me a better fighter.

Nikolas’s face was impassive, his words
matter-of-fact as he explained what I had done wrong. When he came
to stand beside me and show me how to stand correctly, I was able
to concentrate on his instructions despite the slight tremble in my
body. If he felt it when he used his hands to position my shoulders
and arms, he did not show it. His candid, almost detached manner
made it easier for me to put aside everything else between us, at
least for the moment, and focus on training.

After I’d done countless air punches to his
satisfaction, he stood in front of me. “Hit me.”