Page 23 of A Cruel Kindness

“Goodnight, Soren,” Bellamy said, her voice following me into sleep.

Chapter 7

Bellamy

I kept my hands out of view, tucked under my crossed legs so that the dickwad in front of me didn’t know I was holding them there so that I wouldn’t attempt to strangle him.

I needed to remind myself that I maintained composure in much more irritating circumstances.

But those instances hadn’t been preceded by a night of tense sleep, trying to prevent my body from shamelessly burrowing into Soren’s warmth lest I risk waking up plastered to him.

“How much training do you think you’ll need?” an older, clearly arrogant soldier asked me with a sneer on his face, like he was responsible for training me and viewed me as nothing more than a fresh fawn on wobbly legs. He’d introduced himself as Corporal Dulik with a tone so biting, you’d think he was hiding razor-sharp teeth behind that curled lip of his.

I breathed in through my nose, held it for a second, then let it out slowly. There we go. Now my voice would be steady. “What is Soren’s level of competency?”

The snort he let out made him sound like an angry horse, but I wasn’t going to point that out. Especially not as he was shaking his head in disbelief.

He rose from his chair and stalked out the door without another word. With much less haste, I stood and followed him, assuming that was what he wanted. I didn’t think the training he was convinced I needed would occur in a small, dimly lit office.

I trailed him down the hallway, widening my stride in a way that would go unnoticed to a passerby but allowed me to catch up with him quickly. “That wasn’t a rhetorical question, Corporal,” I said with as much levity as I could squeeze into my tone.

Corporal Dulik turned to me slowly, his eyes widening ever so slightly. Well, at least he was somewhat good at maintaining a stoic expression. I’d still clearly shocked him with how quickly I caught up to his strides. Raising one disbelieving eyebrow he said, “He trains newbies when he has time.”

Of course, Soren did. I bet he secretly liked it even if he bitched about it to his superiors. “And who trained him?”

The corporal’s mouth straightened into a thin line. “Me.”

“Is he better than you?” I asked, as Corporal Dulik sped around a corner without any warning. As if he was trying to see my reaction time, he cut the corner too short, pushing me into the wall. I kept my steps in time and my smile wide.

A fact which only seemed to piss him off further. He was about to get a lot angrier if being steady on my feet was that annoying. “Maybe in a few years.”

I hope when that day came Soren decided to flatten this pompous asshole, and I would be around to see it.

My heart clenched at the thought, knowing that I would be here when that happened. I’d be with Soren for the rest of my life, or if he died first, I’d follow him shortly after.

God help me. This was deeply annoying.

“Then you’ll be the judge of how much training I need,” I said, right as we walked up to the large, swinging doors hiding the training room. You could hear the soft sounds of limbs connecting as people fought and the smack of fists slamming against training pads. Based on the sharp slicing sound that cut through the back of the noise, I assumed there was weapons training here, too. “If you trained Soren, you’ll be able to tell how far apart he is from me.”

Corporal Dulik’s steps faltered at my statement, and I assumed he was smart enough to understand that I’d phrased it intentionally. The notion that I was on par with Soren was so mind-blowing that a soldier who probably had twenty years of service under his belt tripped over his own two feet. Unfortunately for him, his misstep was perfectly timed with his approach to the training mats, causing him to trip and stumble inside.

The entire room stilled, people stopping in the middle of a wrestle, or with their arm pulled back in preparation to let an arrow fly. Even though I wanted to laugh, years of training kept a pristine smile in place.

“Alright,” Corporal Dulik snapped, whipping to face me. Oh, dear, he was about to say something distasteful wasn’t he? “I guess we will start with hand to hand work.” So he could see me get knocked on my ass, I assumed. “Then there’s a survival skills evaluation. Then gun and archery range. Do you know how to ride a horse? Not in side saddle, I mean.”

“I do,” I said, smiling through that unfortunate comment. “I’ve—”

“That was a stupid fucking question,” Soren barked from across the room. Now that he was speaking, I was forced to acknowledge that I’d not only felt him the second I stepped in the room, but I recognized his voice, even when it was unleashed in a sharp snap. “Leave.”

Corporal Dulik clearly deemed it unwise to argue with a newly bonded paranima and left the room, but not without turning to a soldier running the room and snapping, “Deal with her.”

The soldier’s cheeks colored slightly as he nervously looked between me and Soren across the room. I was sure he’d seen horrors most could never even fathom, and yet he was still faltering in the face of the Bond.

He muttered a quick introduction, simply giving me his name. “Williams.”

Williams took one step back, his eyes bouncing to Soren in respect. God help me, I muttered in my head. If people were going to treat Soren like a territorial asshole and let him crowd me all the time, I had plans that would need to be rearranged.

After a moment, he looked around the large room, and said, “We’ll start you with Esme.”