Page 70 of Anomalies

“You’ve never gone easy on me before,” I force out, taking another vicious lunge, salt on my tongue from the sweat dripping off my upper lip. “Why start now, Captain?” I haul myself back up and take another step.

“Going easy on you?” He catches up to my side in two long steps, grey eyes assessing my tired and burnt-out body. “Your face is flushed, your skin is overheating, and your thighs are trembling.”

“That’s how you want me, isn’t it?”

Unfortunately, I failed to think through how that might sound out loud, and heat floods my cheeks, raising my internal temperature until I’m seconds from bursting into flames. Callan stumbles a step, but I keep lunging, if only not to die of regret and embarrassment.

He’s back at my side in seconds, not that I made it far. “Drop the weights,” he commands.

Gods, that’s all I want to do. Then I want to melt into the dirt and hope Gemma can stitch my limbs back together.

“Is that an order?” I ask, with all the stubborn pride I can muster.

“Lucina,” he growls, and the weights hit the ground, dust kicking up as they sink into the dirt. Callan steps into my path, and I’m forced to tilt my head back to meet his darkened stare. “It is.”

I cut him a glare. “Ordering me to stop when I’m more than capable of continuing is the definition of going easy on me⁠—"

“No, Lucina,” he shakes his head slowly. “I was answering your first question.”

My stomach plummets. Then twists. Chiaros.

His mouth splits into a taunting grin. “I’ve never seen you speechless, little Reenan.” He plucks the dumbbells from the ground as if they were mere feathers, and my mouth opens, then shuts.

Dear gods, I am speechless. I…I have nothing.

Callan smirks, gathering both dumbbells in one arm. “Why ask a question you don’t want the answer to?”

“The question came out wrong…I didn’t mean—” I’m going to curl up and die right here.

Callan shrugs. “I meant it.” He crosses the training ring to put the weights up without another word. My mouth hangs open like a fish. Like a godsdamn fish.

We don’t speak as we run back to camp, but he sets our pace fast enough to jar my thoroughly wrecked legs. I can’t believe I gave him the satisfaction of rendering me speechless. That wasn’t fair, my brain is mush. How the hell am I supposed to think straight when my body feels⁠—

The world tilts, and my knees buckle, sharp bursts of black cutting across my vision until it’s all I see. I anticipate the impact with the ground as I fall, but it never comes.

Callan’s arm shoots out across my chest, catching my weight inches from the ground. He hauls me back to my feet as quickly as I had fallen. The world is fuzzy, and there’s a faint tingling in my fingertips and toes.

“Look at me,” he orders, but I see four of him. I would look at him if I knew which one was real, but genuine concern flares in all four sets of grey eyes.

Gods, he really is handsome—devastatingly so. A strong jaw that he keeps close-shaven, piercing eyes behind heavy black lashes, and not a single flaw aside from a few peppered scars above his right brow as if they were quick cuts from shattered glass. I want to touch them. I want to know what they feel like⁠—

Why is he smiling at me?

Callan’s hand comes up under my chin, and he uses his thumb to turn my face to the right, wrenching my eyelids open from their squint, and I wince against the pound in my head.

“You okay, little Reenan?” he smirks, and my body jolts back into place.

“I’m fine,” I assure him, clearing my throat when my voice comes out hoarse. “Stop… calling me that.” I stumble over my words and my footing as I try to get free of his grip, but he tightens it, bracing his other hand on my hip to keep me upright.

“Why?” he asks, dipping in one quick motion to slide an arm under my thighs. “That is your name.”

I wrench myself backwards to try and get away, but I’m in the air before I can so much as shout. “Put me down,” I grit out, fighting against his hold, but he ignores me completely.

“What else should I call you if not your name?” he ponders, carrying me down the path as if I’m just another discarded dumbbell.

“Callan,” I warn, mentally gaining some sense, but physically, my body’s still failing me. There’s no way I can stand. “Put. Me. Down.”

“Why?” His head tilts. “You like falling flat on your face?”