Page 96 of Reforging Onyx

He wasn’t.

Standing beneath the hot water, Onyx scrubbed at his skin, trying to get the imprints of Dominic’s hands and body off of him.

It didn’t work.

He shut the water off after cleaning himself thoroughly, then returned to the bedroom with all of the reluctance of someone about to face his execution.

He grabbed clothes and got dressed, but before he could snarl anything in Dominic’s direction, Dominic was already speaking into the intercom. “Have Shane meet us in the gym.”

Shane.

The gym.

Relief — and a grudging amount of gratitude — filled him, and he nodded to Dominic. He waited for the witch to open the door into the hall, then started toward the gym, agitation coursing through him.

When he arrived, he got onto the mat and started to stretch, needing to have this respite.

The wolf pushed through the door with a look of concern on his face, a look that Onyx despised, but without comment, Shane quickly kicked off his shoes and got into the training ring to stretch.

Onyx finished limbering up and got to his feet. “Hand to hand,” he said flatly. Right then, he wanted something familiar, something he was good at, something he’d just used to murder a witch and his two associates alongside his magic.

Magic he didn’t have access to any longer.

But the physical strategies that had allowed him to break through Ambrose’s shields would be good practice for when he did have Dominic in a similar situation. Now that he knew that he’d be freed if Dominic died…

That changed everything.

Didn’t it?

Onyx needed to practice the moves that would get him through Dominic’s shields, which meant he’d have to go hard at one specific point on Shane’s body; wherever he imagined the shields’ major point of impact might be, he’d focus there. In this case, he went for the chest. The other wolf had not had Shane’s training or skill, and Onyx was well aware of just how serious Dominic had been in finding someone who could really keep up with and improve Onyx’s training.

Onyx guessed that earlier would’ve been the first time Shane had seen him like he’d been as a rebel, as a soldier — detached and no-nonsense, dealing with threats as efficiently as possible. What had Shane thought of that?

Worse, though, was the question of what Shane had to have thought about Onyx letting himself be recollared like he had. Shane had to think he was fucking pathetic, and that thought made his aggression go through the roof.

Onyx had no intention of going light on Shane. He was a werewolf; he could take it. Maybe if he’d had his magic, and he’d been able to augment his strength on top of the vampire blood, he’d have needed to hold back. But not like this.

“Aim for lower,” Shane told him as he continued to focus on that one spot. “Shields are thick over the heart. You want to hit just below the solar plexus.”

He put his full strength behind the attacks, using every ounce of speed that he could muster as he aimed where Shane had instructed him to.

He was not weak.

He was not going to let Shane think he was weak.

Even if he had been completely and utterly stupid for not killing Dominic Bancroft.

Shane grunted as one of Onyx’s strikes got through his guard, and then his head cracked back as Onyx pivoted immediately, following the strike with another.

Onyx’s adrenaline was raging as he threw everything he had into the spar with Shane. He didn’t think that Shane was holding back, but neither was Onyx, and the fight suddenly seemed more like it was in deadly earnest — like in the early days, except Onyx had been too weak to actually break through anything back then.

Could he best Shane now? If he really tried, could he knock him on his ass and go straight for Dominic?

It wouldn’t matter. Until the vampire blood had worked its way out of Dominic’s system, Onyx wouldn’t go after him, not when there was even a chance he might wake up. He might be able to kill Dominic in mortal form, but he doubted anyone would let him stake Dominic fucking Bancroft or cut his head off. He wouldn’t be able to burn his body without his magic, either.

But would Dominic keep his word and release the collar at the point of death if he recognized it? If Onyx truly got that close, if Dominic admitted defeat in the way he’d chased for so long?

He didn’t know. He didn’t know, and that drove him inexorably on.