voice giving away how much he was affecting me.
He complied without a word. When my gaze met his, my knees nearly buckled, and my stomach did a couple of backflips. He stared at me with an almost feral hunger. His parted lips gave me a glimpse of his teeth clenched in a snarl. With lightning speed, Zain's hand wrapped around my neck, and he drew my face close to his. My fingers instinctively closed around his wrist, but I didn't attempt to break free. Although his hold was firm, he wasn't choking me.
“Be careful, little Naima. You are playing with fire,” Zain whispered, his lips a hair’s breadth from mine. “When my fire ignites, it will be all consuming.”
He released me and straightened, leaving me oddly disappointed.
I took a step back, startled to notice that the handful of agents inside the room had all stopped their training to stare at us. Judging by their stances, they’d been ready to intervene, thinking that Zain was hurting me. I discreetly shook my head to indicate that all was fine, and elbowed my wretched companion in the ribs when he started grinning at them in a provocative way.
We proceeded to perform some warmups. Zain didn't see the point of any of this, even when I explained to him that it was to prevent injury. I was slightly concerned by the fact that it was becoming increasingly obvious that my Nightmare was disappointed by the extent of the weaknesses of the human body compared to the near invulnerability of his ethereal form. Still, he complied with my requests. Lifting weights actually met with his partial approval. He liked being able to put a number on his strength, especially compared to others.
However, he once again quickly grew frustrated with the limits of his new vessel. Thankfully, his self-preservation instincts exceeded his need to display power. He paid attention to the pain his body felt when he started to overexert himself.
“How the fuck am I supposed to hunt that Nightmare of yours with this pathetic body?” Zain asked with a bitterness laced with a quickly rising anger.
“There's a reason we need you,” I said in an appeasing tone. “You are now seeing the limitations that we are coping with. However, you have something we don't; your ethereal powers. With it, you can create a powerful armor that will shelter your human body from a tremendous amount of damage that would crush us. But it will also allow you to inflict an insane amount of damage to your target.”
Zain perked up, the glimmer in his eyes telling me I had caught his interest. I almost smiled in triumph.
“For that lesson, you will need someone better versed in the Mistwalker powers than me,” I continued. “And this is why what we're doing right now is so important. You need to understand this body in order to know when to protect it and how much shielding is required based on whatever situation you will be facing. Preserving your energy will be vital moving forward since you can't walk around shielded around the clock.”
He nodded slowly, his entire demeanor changing, and his frustration melting away. He looked at his body with new eyes and then at the various training equipment around us.
“Train me, my mate. I will master this body,” Zain said with a determination that tickled me in all the right places.
I should have corrected him for calling me his mate, but the moment passed and, truth be told, I didn't really want to correct him.
Time flew while Zain pushed himself with the relentlessness and the discipline of an Olympic athlete. I couldn't help the feeling of pride that washed over me as the other agents looked on with both admiration and awe. Thomson walking in put an end to our training.
Although he kept a calm and friendly expression on his face, the program's director bubbled with an excitement that even I could feel. I didn't need to read his mind to know he was as thrilled as I was to see Zain so fully cooperating. Granted, that cooperation was driven in large part by my Nightmare’s hunger for power. But as long as our respective goals aligned, we didn't care about his motivations.
“Hello, Zain,” Thomson said in a warm tone. “I am pleased to see you adapting so quickly to your new body.”
“Did you expect any less?” Zain responded with an insufferable amount of arrogance.
Rather than being annoyed, Thomson seemed amused by my Nightmare’s ego.
“I had expected to