This Dark Wolf (Soul Bitten Shifter #1) - Everly Frost Page 0,47
stop. She has no mind other than yours.”
Helen presses her palm against my chest above the location of my heart. “When you really understand your power in your heart, then you’ll control your wolf’s energy completely and you won’t be afraid of her anymore. That’s when you’ll also control your scent.”
Helen helps me to my feet, but I can’t quite meet her eyes.
I bite my lip as guilt rises inside me. “I’m sorry that she—I mean I—attacked you.”
She waves away my concern. “You’d be the exception if you hadn’t. Every woman who shelters here has learned to distrust everyone around her in order to survive. I don’t judge anyone for that.”
Helen supports me as we walk to the stairs, leaving the quiet garden behind. Even two days ago, I never would have accepted her help. Now I hold on to her without shame, feeling like a barrier has been lowered between us.
My wolf attacked her and she stood firm, facing my rage without flinching. Any woman who can do that deserves my respect.
Chapter Twelve
For the next two months, I remain single-minded.
Each afternoon, I spend hours with Helen, learning how to separate from my wolf and to control my power. Each morning, Iyana trains me in weaponry first and then combat after that. My shooting aim improves marginally, but nowhere near as quickly as my ability to take on new combat techniques. At our gym sessions, Iyana introduces me to the art of Muay Thai, and I don’t look back, learning to extend my boxing skills and make more effective use of my elbows, knees, and shins. Every part of my body becomes a weapon, not just my fists and feet.
I’m not the only woman in the house who makes progress.
Ella ventures out of our room and starts spending her mornings in the garden, making her way back up to our room before everyone comes to the garden for lunch. We often meet in the library and walk silently along the corridor back to our room together—me to have a shower, her to crawl into her bed and sleep away all of the sensory input from her morning spent outside.
Over the course of the first month, several women leave the house, including the woman with the pointed ears. Before she goes, Helen places a glamour over her ears to hide her true appearance from the world and protect her.
Jace is a regular but quiet visitor each week, but he only ever visits the gun range, observing me from a distance before disappearing again. It frustrates me that he always turns up first thing in the morning, watches me scowl my way through a shooting session in which I inevitably miss the target about a thousand times, and then he leaves before we head upstairs to the gym.
He has no idea of the progress I’m making in the combat ring.
I tell myself that’s a good thing. Jace reports back to Tristan. If they don’t know about my progress, then they’ll underestimate my skills.
Even so, my pride smarts every time I sense his gaze burning my back. I can feel his judgement cutting into my self-esteem through the soundproofed wall as he watches me fail at target practice time and time again.
Danika, the hawk shifter, often joins Iyana and me in the mornings. And then at lunchtime too. She doesn’t talk much about her past, but when she shows me her room, my jaw drops. She sleeps on the edge of a cliff, where she can shift into her hawk form and soar across the sky whenever she wants to.
As far as the gun range goes, I envy Danika’s ability to hit the target every time, no matter what type of gun she’s using. At one point, she takes pity on me and tries to tell me that it helps to hate my target, to imagine it represents the person I despise most in the world.
I try imagining that the target is Baxter Griffin in the moment that he ripped out my father’s throat. Then I try to imagine it’s Cody. And lastly, Tristan. Even with all of my anger, my bullets continue to chew up the edges of the target day after day, never hitting the center.
Finally, at the end of my second month at Hidden House, I place my empty weapon onto the bench in front of me, remove my earmuffs, and plant my hands on my hips, staring at the untouched target.