Page 29 of Ghost’s Awakening

"Fair."

"Someone else should take a round." Tyler looked around the room. "Different style. See how fast he adapts."

Irish pushed off the rack. "I could⁠—"

"Ghost." Hawk's voice cut through the air.

Every head turned to me. I'd been holding up the wall with my arms crossed and my head running its usual dozen directions at once, and at least five of those directions had been on the sweat sliding down Caleb's stomach and the way the fluorescent light sat in it, which was a distribution problem I was going to have to solve eventually, just not in the half-second after Hawk said my name.

"He got cleared this morning." I heard the words leave my mouth. "Kai told him to stop if anything⁠—"

"I'm fine." Caleb's voice cut across the room. Steady. Certain. His eyes found mine and the fire in them was the same fire from the medical bay, the one that had lit up when he looked at his own fist and told me he needed to train. "Let's go."

I sighed, pulled my shirt off and stepped onto the mat.

Caleb waited at the center, hands on his hips, sweat running down the side of his neck. He looked at me and something changed in his face. Not the wariness he'd carried into the round with Tank. Something sharper. His brown eyes narrowed.

"You fight different from him." A fact, not a question.

"Everyone fights different from Tank. Tank fights like a building came down on you."

His mouth twitched. Almost a smile. "So how do you fight?"

"You'll see."

We squared up. My stance was nothing like Tank's and nothing like his. Blade had drilled me to fight from a place that didn't read as a stance at all, feet staggered, hands low, weight balanced so I could break in any direction without loading first. You couldn't call what was coming because there was nothing to call.

Caleb's eyes dropped to my center and lingered there. Reading me. Hunting the tells that would let him get ahead of my next move.

He wasn't going to find them.

He threw the first kick, a roundhouse for my left side, the same one that had rocked Tank back. I shifted right, half a step, and his shin cut clean through the space I'd just left and found nothing but air.

His eyes clocked it. He wasn't surprised. Just adjusting.

He threw a combination. Jab, cross, low kick, fast and stacked. I slipped the jab, turned the cross off my forearm, stepped inside the kick so his shin only grazed my hip instead of landing. Close. Closer than I let most people get.

"Stop moving." There was a growl under it now. His hands came up and he reset, bouncing on his toes, reworking the whole equation. "Stand still and fight me."

"Can't hit what you can't catch, huh?" I circled left, my feet silent on the rubber.

"Watch," Blade murmured from the wall. I caught it between exchanges and filed it.

Caleb came harder. A front kick I sidestepped. A spinning backfist I ducked, the wind of it dragging across my scalp. A low sweep I hopped and landed soft off. Every time, I was gone before the strike arrived. And every time, Caleb reset faster. Tighter. His mind closing the gap between where I'd been and where I was going to be.

He was studying me. And fuck, he was fast.

"He's figuring him out." Blade, to Irish, low enough that he thought I couldn't hear.

The next kick came lower than I read it. His shin caught my outer thigh and buckled my footwork, and Caleb was inside my range before I recovered, his hand snapping around my wrist, hauling me off my balance, his elbow driving for my stomach. I got my forearm across it, bone on bone, the jolt of it running all the way up to my shoulder.

Close quarters. His world, not mine.

I pivoted, got an arm around his neck, tried to drag him into a clinch. He dropped his weight and drove his shoulder into me instead, and we went backward together. My spine hit the mat. He came down on top, one knee sliding between my legs, one hand planting flat to pin me.

His hand was on my bare chest. Palm flat against my skin, right over the bullet scar, his fingers spread wide. Hot.

I bridged, my hips up hard, throwing his weight off its line. He rolled and I rolled with him and we came up sideways, tangled, his leg hooked through mine, my arm slung across his waist, both of us hauling air.