Page 52 of Legacy Found

The words are out before my brain can review them. There's a beat of silence in which I fully register what I just said, out loud, to a prince.

Luke's mouth curves, slow. "Did I?"

Oh, hell.

I plant my feet and square back up, face burning. "Shut up and teach."

He's definitely smiling now. I can feel it without looking. Across the mat, so is Torres, and his is much more dangerous, because Torres is going to bring this up later.

"Spar with Torres," Luke says after a while. "I want to see you move against someone who isn't me."

And the second Torres and I square up, the whole energy of the room changes.

Torres isn't precise like Luke. He's unpredictable — quick and instinctive and a little chaotic, fighting like a guy who learned it the hard way instead of from a manual, and I love it, because it means I have to react instead of anticipate. We're trash-talking before the first exchange.

"You sure about this?" I ask, circling.

"I've been doing this since before we knew wolves existed."

"And yet."

I catch him once — a clean tag to the ribs that makes him grunt — and I whoop, and he narrows his eyes and gets me right back, and I go for a sweep, and he catches me instead, and then we're both going down in a tangle of limbs and laughter and I land half on top of him.

And then nobody's laughing.

His hands are at my waist where he caught me. My palms are flat on his chest. We're both breathing hard, faces inches apart, and I can feel his heart going as fast as mine — and all at once I'm thinking about his room, weeks ago, the strand of hair he tucked behind my ear.

Torres's gaze drops — just for a second — to my mouth.

I see it. My stomach flips clean over.

"Again."

Luke's voice cracks across the arena like a dropped weight.

I look over. He's standing with his arms crossed, expression carefully, completely blank — and somehow that flatness says more than a scowl ever could.

I roll off Torres and scramble up.

"I think," Torres murmurs, low, just for me, getting to his feet, "we're in trouble."

I press my lips together so I don't laugh.

"My turn," Luke says, stepping onto the mat where Torres just was. "You're with me."

I eye him. "You look awfully serious all of a sudden."

"I am."

And then he comes at me.

It's harder than usual — faster combinations, tighter angles, less space, like he's decided tonight's lesson is keep up or don't. And I do. I keep up. I block, I slip, I counter, my body doing what weeks of this drilled into it, and I'm good — genuinely, thrillingly good, meeting him strike for strike.

He presses, and I read it right, and for one glorious, impossible second I catch him off balance and think — I've got him. I'm actually going to put Prince Lucian Draeven on the floor—

Then he reverses it so smoothly I don't even feel it happen, and the mat comes up to meet my back. Not hard. He controls the whole fall, one hand cradling so my head never touches down.

And he comes down with me.