by Lina Jubilee
Rajani was half-devoted to checking out Connak a few yards to our front and half-devoted to nudging my arm every time Prince Zeke looked my way. The man was quiet, but his wide eyes spoke volumes, the way they took in our surroundings—the chirping birds, the breezy air, the lush vegetation. Every so often, he’d stop to brush his fingers over a plant you couldn’t find back on Earth, his narrowed brow and rigid stance almost reverential. I had to focus forward not to find myself turning into a puddle during the trek through mostly uneven terrain. I hadn’t realized I’d find his quiet sense of wonder so sexy.
But there was no way this date would lead to anything of the sort that Prince Rio’s had. Not with upward of forty people as witnesses, between the students, the Nelians, Zeke and his guards, and my aunt and uncles, who were waiting for us up ahead. So much for my “try them all until you buy them” strategy to decide which, if any, I could possibly see rearranging my life plans for.
Uncle Bo was the first to pop out of the forest clearing, making a beeline for his not-so-little sister and giving Sage a slap on the shoulder. He was so obviously Lacey’s brother, with the same blond hair and cream coloring, though his beard was flecked with white as well as gold. Lacey’s mouth gaped open, her posture slumping and a slight moan escaping her lips precisely as virtually everyone else in the class grew more rigid, leaning subconsciously away from the source of their discomfort but plowing ahead anyway.
We were within Aunt Alanna’s sphere of influence, and everyone must have felt the sudden indescribable loss of a part of them. But that was why they were here. To practice fighting without their abilities—without even being able to subconsciously reach for them. Veras Academy shaped students to be ready for anything.
“Welcome, extra credit class,” barked Uncle Monroe. He was jacked, his hair cropped so closely as to be almost bald, his skin leathery and practically screaming ruggedness, though his confident stance and handsome features made any sign of aging more like a battle scar hard-earned.
Zeke stepped forward with the rest of the class, and I noticed he didn’t flinch once from the loss of his powers, though this was surely the first time he’d ever experienced it. I half-expected him and his entourage to introduce himself to my aunt as party of importance, but they moved on silently toward the clearing that had been created around the cabin, the Nelian-made vines bending and guiding trees and bushes this way and that, the spindly growths somehow looking like spiderwebs.
Inside the clearing stood Aunt Alanna, as beautiful and unaging as ever. Her skin was lighter than Daddy Alarik’s, taking after my grandfather, her long, green hair as smooth, straight, and as shiny as any model’s. Her pointed ears poked out of the hair without any attempt to conceal them. Beside her were her other two husbands, Uncle Rhett and Uncle Caspian. Rhett was twirling a bo staff, his lean muscles moving like water with the smooth movements, his usual Asian-American cowboy look hard to drop even in workout clothes since he’d pulled his black-and-silver hair back in a small ponytail. Caspian was talking to Alanna, both laughing. He had to have dyed his wavy black hair because the only sign that he was quite a ways past thirty were the wrinkles around his eyes if I looked close enough, the rest of his smooth, brown skin virtually unmarred. He spoke in Spanish to Alanna, and she spoke in stilted Spanish sentences back to him.
“Listen up,” barked Monroe, brushing past the group of students to act as our primary instructor. “Today we’re going to get through two sessions.” He held up two fingers. “One without weapons this morning. Then lunch. Then one with weapons this afternoon—non-lethal weapons only,” he added for emphasis, pointing to a pile of wooden sticks and bokken wooden swords martial artists typically only used for practice.
“Pair up!” shouted Uncle Bo, moving out into the middle of the clearing alongside Monroe.
I turned to Rajani and she gave me a wide-eyed look before chuckling, making her way over to Derek, perhaps to stop me from making that choice, as she’d know my other pick would have been him.
I hadn’t exactly told her all the details about our little blow-up.
“Princess.” Zeke shuffled toward me, his arms crossed. “I did say this could count as our date.”
“Right.” I nodded at him, taking him in from top to bottom. A small part of me was worried I was hopelessly outmatched. The other part of me wanted to be wrestled to the ground, onlookers or not.
“Start with basic pinning maneuvers,” said Uncle Rhett, practically reading my mind and weaving through the group that had broken off into pairs. I caught Derek’s eye as he faced off with Rajani, and he turned away, swallowing.
“No shots above the neck or to the groin,” continued Uncle Rhett.
“That hardly seems fair,” grumbled Zeke. “I can work magic on some of those locations.”
Raising an eyebrow at him, I widened my stance.
“Begin!” said Uncle Monroe.
Zeke didn’t move, instead walking around a few feet in front of me, and I responded in kind, the two of us moving in a circle. All around us, other students were already growling or grunting, one pair even already rolling on the ground.
“I hear your date with Rio went really well last night,” said Zeke.
My face flushed, but I only fell behind in my steps for a second. A few pairs behind Zeke, Pepper and Jerry were locked in a grappling stance, their hands threaded together, their faces contorted. Pepper looked my way and narrowed her eyes, allowing Jerry to push forward and pin her to the ground.
I felt almost as smug as if I’d pinned her myself.
Zeke’s leg swept out and caught me by the ankles—not too hard, but enough that I lost my balance, stumbling toward him and gripping on to one bulky forearm.
Grinning, he didn’t offer much resistance as I leaned into the hold and tried pulling him off-balance, yanking his arm over my shoulder.
He did stumble, but then he shifted the arm, gripping it around my waist and yanking me toward him, our abdomens flush against one another’s.
My breaths were shallow, perspiration glistening across my body, as his warm breath caressed the top of my head.
“I’ve got quite a few more moves than my mate,” he whispered huskily. “If you’ll let me show you them.”
His grip went loose and he stepped back. There were others making noises all around us, my uncles and aunt shouting instructions here and there, but it all rang empty in my head as I focused on the man leading me in another slow circle in our small corner of the clearing.
“Stunning,” said Zeke, and his shining eyes darted quickly toward the forest pushed back by the vines. “This place,” he clarified. “Peaceful. You spend a lot of time here?”
“Not really,” I admitted, the rumbling thunder of a distant waterfall my parents had brought me to once before somehow louder in my head than all the sounds of students fighting around us. “But yes. It’s beautiful.”
Zeke lunged again, this time yanking me by the arm and somehow twirling me without putting too much pressure on my limb, pinning me, my back to his abdomen. His grip was loose across my stomach, but my mind still swam and I found it difficult to extricate myself, even if that was the entire point of the assignment. “So tell me about yourself, princess.”
“First of all, it’s ‘Bryony,’” I said. “‘Bry’ would be even better.” I used his smug decision not to pin me down too hard to slip down to the ground, crouching, then crawl between his legs to get behind him. Popping up, I plastered my stomach to his back before he could do so much as turn three-quarters of the way around. He chuckled darkly.
“I love tea, reading on occasion, and vegging out in front of the TV,” I said. “I’ll take a long walk on the beach, but there isn’t as pleasant a shoreline on the Great Lakes as there might be on the ocean.” Digging my heels into the dirt, I tried throwing him off-balance, hooking my leg around one of his calves. He stumbled but didn’t lose his footing, instead managing to throw me off-balance as he turned. His hands slid behind my back as h
e lowered me more than body-slammed me to the ground, as gently as if I were the princess who couldn’t sleep because of a pea beneath her countless mattresses.
“I doubt an enemy you face will offer such little resistance,” said Uncle Caspian as he passed by. Both Zeke’s and my heads turned toward the disturbance. I’d almost tuned out everyone around me. Uncle Caspian’s teeth gleamed as he grinned. “But A+ for form.” Chuckling, he moved on.
Zeke had me pinned now on the ground, his hands clutching my wrists above my head, his body glistening with sweat. The heat between us drove me wild, his lips so close, I could practically taste them.
“Full name’s Ezekiel, but no one calls me anything but ‘Zeke,’” he said, his voice catching between breaths. “I like looking at nature, beautiful women, and especially a beautiful woman all fine and dirty at home in nature.” Leaning forward, closer to my ear, he whispered, “And I turn into putty around gorgeous women who are far more intriguing than I ever expected.”
Rather than shift my head just slightly to plant a kiss on his rough, stubble-covered chin, I decided to show him a surprise, all right.
I formed my bubble of protection, projecting it between us and repelling him upward, soaring several feet through the air.
“You didn’t know that she doesn’t lose her powers around her aunt, did you?” asked Rajani, practically bouncing in her spot on the picnic blanket next to me. “She’s the only one. That we know of, anyway.”
“No,” said Zeke, taking a drink from this thermos, his eyes not off me for a second. “I wonder why that is.”
Shrugging, I took another bite of my lettuce-wrap chicken sandwich. “My biology teacher, Professor Wade, has studied it extensively. Best we can guess is it’s some kind of result of the mixture between Earth and Nelian blood. It’s not even being related to her because Aunt Alanna can take Daddy’s powers away, too.”
Shirking, I winced at the word “Daddy,” but Zeke simply clamped his lips together.
We ate for a little while in silence, my gaze wandering in order to keep the pounding of my heart in check. This was ridiculous—I wasn’t going to lose my head this much over multiple men like Mom and Alanna had. Yet the tingling permeating my body wouldn’t be swayed, not when I took note of Derek some distance away, holding a book in one hand and a sandwich in the other. On the other side of him, Hazel and her crew were shooting daggers at me, but I had no idea what they expected. I was supposed to be going on these dates with the princes. And I wasn’t even alone with him.
“I thought we were here to practice without abilities,” said Zeke, zipping up his lunch bag.
“We are,” I said. “But we’re also here to learn how to take an opponent off-guard. You’re the only one participating who didn’t know I’d still have my powers.” My shoulder bobbed up and down nonchalantly. “You can’t blame me for taking advantage of that fact.”
“Maybe not,” he said, his accent able to make any little thing he said sound sexy. “But that won’t work twice.”
I bit my lip to refrain from telling him it would work as many times as I wanted it to, even if he’d be expecting it. But I laughed.
“Okay!” shouted Aunt Alanna from near the cabin door. “Break’s over! Time to pick up a weapon.”
Everyone got to work putting away our reusable lunch bags, letting the biodegradable napkins flutter off into the forest. Rajani gathered our stuff into her bag and wished me luck, setting off after Derek, who was the only student left sitting when he was supposed to be picking up a staff or sword.
“What do the Nelians need weapons for?” asked Zeke, drawing my attention back to the hunk standing beside me. “Don’t recall being told they used them during their invasion of Earth.”
He spoke so bluntly, not even dodging the issue. I liked that about him.
“Well, I don’t know about swords and staffs,” I explained, picking up a bo staff for myself. Zeke followed suit. “These are more my uncles’ things.”
“That’s right,” said Zeke. “They all married your aunt, eh?” He smirked.
Okay, maybe he was a little too much of a straight shooter. I led him away to the edge of the clearing, right near a path in the forest, away from prying eyes.
“Yup,” I said matter-of-factly.
Uncle Caspian shouted at everyone to take their places and ready their weapons. Then, with a flick of his arm, he told us to begin.
I didn’t wait this time, shooting my staff out and forcing Zeke into a defensive position. Just in time, his staff caught mine.
“They do need weapons, though,” I said, nodding toward the small group of Nelian guards who patrolled the length of the forest’s edge as we all got our workouts in. Twirling my staff, I managed to make Zeke stumble, no abilities necessary. “But they usually prefer bow and arrow.”
Panting but as handsome and rigid as ever, Zeke twirled his entire body away from the pressure of my staff, catching it on the opposite side and forcing me to dig my heels in. “Oh, and why is that?”
“How big are animals in New Zealand?” I asked.
“How big are—what?” He chuckled, giving some ground, and I pushed back. “I don’t know. Big as the ones around here, I reckon. We don’t have bears or probably any mammals you think of. Our bats and birds can have pretty large wing spans, though.”
“Well, the boars here are about the size of elephants.”
A thrust of my bo staff forced his to the ground too easily as he stumbled from my news.
“Wild boars?” said Zeke, the bo slipping from his fingers. “That’s what they have to fear on this planet? Elephant boars?”
Aunt Alanna passed by, regarding us. “Point Bryony. Start again. And yes, you absolutely should fear the giant boars of Nelia.”
Zeke chuckled slyly and we got back into starting position as Alanna moved on her way. “So have you ever fought one of these creatures?” He struck his bo staff out, catching my staff and spinning it in a circle. I gripped my staff tighter and fought back.
“I have not,” I admitted. “But I’ve seen them, and they’re no laughing matter.”
A cry pierced the air a few groups away and I turned, giving Zeke the perfect opportunity to get my staff down. But my attention was focused on the heated argument drawing half of my uncles toward the scuffling partners, and even some of the Nelian guards patrolling the border into the forest. Pepper was on the ground, a red welt on her cheek as she screamed up at Jerry, who held his wooden sword up above him as if ready to strike his already fallen opponent. She kicked a scattering of dirt up at him and he screamed, looking away.
“You blinded me!” he shrieked.
Alanna moved over to see what had gone wrong.
“Amateurs,” said Zeke, drawing nearer to see what had caught my attention. The scent of sweat and dust wafting off him somehow became an invigorating odor as it hit my nostrils.
“They’re not exactly combat-experienced,” I agreed. Neither was I, but I didn’t fly into a rage when things didn’t go my way. Pepper got to her feet and brandished her wooden sword like she wanted to clobber her out-of-commission partner, stopped only by Uncle Caspian and Uncle Bo stepping onto the fray. Behind them, Hazel and Sheila had paused their bout, chuckling at their own friends.
Zeke raised an eyebrow. “I’d hate to be partnered up with any of those lovelies.”
I snorted.
“What?” he asked, his eyes sparkling.
“Before we came here, Pepper warned me off marrying you. She wanted you for herself.”
Zeke’s head cocked. “Is that a fact? And how did she suppose I’d be sweeping her off her feet? Against my father’s wishes?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted as Uncle Monroe barked for the rest of us to get back into position and keep it up if we wanted any of that credit. My gaze darted quickly toward Rajani and Derek, reminding me that Derek was only a few fractions of a point short of closing in on valedictorian. I needed to focus.
But my grip was s
till weak, my attention still elsewhere, as Zeke knocked my staff to the ground, allowing him to step closer again. “And how did you respond?” he asked. “When she demanded you back off?”
“I told her to mind her own business.”
A lock of Zeke’s fiery-orange hair slipped over his shoulder as he leaned in. “Glad to know you don’t give up so easily,” he whispered.
I was about to respond when another cry—this one much more shrill than Pepper’s—rang out, the thunderous rustling of the forest behind us drawing everyone’s attention. Hazel and Sheila clutched each other’s hands, their wooden swords on the ground at their feet as they stared into the parting forest all around them. The Nelian guards who’d been patrolling there were still over by Pepper and Jerry.
The ground actually shook as the rustling grew louder.
“Pull back!” shouted Aunt Alanna, running to put herself between the edge of the forest and the nearest students. Uncle Caspian ran after her, but she was determined to get the frozen Hazel and Sheila to pick up their feet already instead of huddling together, their legs shaking.
“Dammit,” I muttered, tossing down my staff. I was the only one who could rely on powers right now.
“Bry!” I heard behind me from multiple directions, the closest a deep, guttural bellow.
The beast broke through the forests, shredding through the vines like paper, its tusks moving this way and that as it shook its head. Its breath was visible as it snorted, digging its hoof into the dirt.
And still, Hazel and Sheila just shrieked. No running. No getting ready to fight. They totally flaked.
“Move!” shouted Aunt Alanna, but there was nothing much she could do.
Chapter Twelve
I skidded to a stop a few feet away from the boar, projecting my bubble of protection over Hazel, Sheila, Alanna, and Caspian. The boar charged at them and the sheer weight of its bulk against my bubble sent a painful grunt out of my mouth as I stumbled, my arms out in front of me, holding on to the bubble with sheer grit.