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“Have you ever been in a place like this?”
Lachlan looked over at me and snorted.
“Nah. I was born in Ireland originally, raised there, and then did some travelin’. Back in my normal life, I was part of a motorcycle club. Great life. Good people. I was with ’em when the magic came on. It happened out of nowhere—I was at a pub, drunker than hell, about to get into a brawl to back up one of my boys. Then all of a sudden…”
He glanced down at his hands, a look of something like wonder on his face. I could relate.
“Your magic origin story sounds a lot like mine,” I commented. “I wasn’t in a pub, but the brawl sounds familiar.”
He chuckled, one corner of his mouth lifting. “You? Brawlin’? Why am I not surprised?”
I arched a brow. “I dunno. Should I have been baking instead?”
For a second, Lachlan’s green eyes narrowed, a spark of remembered anger lighting in them. That was what he’d told me after the first time I’d beaten him in sparring in class. He’d been a fucking sore loser about it then, and I almost expected him to get all pissy again now.
But instead, he surprised the fuck out of me by throwing his head back and laughing.
“Touché.” Then he waggled his eyebrows at me. “Think of the crazy shite ye might’ve baked though. You could’ve blown up the fuckin’ oven.”
“I wasn’t baking,” I reminded him with a roll of my eyes. “I was kicking ass, just like you.”
“Aye. I know.” He nudged me with his shoulder, his eyes still glittering with amusement. “I may have been a little hasty with my judgment. Ye’re good. I’m not surprised ye made it into the challenge.”
I had no idea what to do with the unexpected compliment, or the way heat curled in my belly at the look of respect and hunger in his expression.
“Yeah.” I glanced away, looking into the fire. “You too.”
He shrugged his massive shoulders. “Eh. The competition is fun and all, but I’d give anything to get back to my life. I miss my home, I miss my bike, and I miss my club brothers. I didn’t really sign up for fuckin’ wilderness survival.”
I chuckled, taking another bite of my dry ration. It tasted like an extra stale, extra hearty granola bar. “Then why did you sign up to compete?”
He shrugged. “Dunno. Something to do. Fuck. Bein’ at that academy is like bein’ back in high school all over again. I’m a twenty-year-old man, I got no need for high school bullshite. I needed to shake it up a bit.”
He finished speaking, and I could feel him staring at me, waiting for me to take my turn.
I kept my lips zipped though. I didn’t want to offer any information about myself—not that my history was top secret or anything, but it was an instinctual survival instinct to play things close to the chest.
We were silent for several long moments, and when I thought he’d finally given up waiting for me to answer, I glanced at him again.
As soon as I did, he grinned. “So? What about you?”
Godsdammit. Fine.
I swallowed another bite of stale granola bar and stared at the fire.
“I’ve been on my own for quite a while. I’ve been fighting since I was a kid and went pro with it—or amateur, I guess you would call it, since it’s mostly underground—when I got older. I could beat just about anybody in the ring, and my career was pretty awesome. I fought, went home, did whatever I wanted to do, and came back. I trained all day, and I never really dealt with anyone other than the thieves and crooks in the back alleys of Boston.”
He shook his head, dusting his hands off on his pants and standing up. “Well, it doesn’t surprise me. I was pretty impressed when I saw ye fight the first time. Not that I’d admit to ever sayin’ that,” he added with a lopsided grin.
I snorted with a chuckle. Maybe it was just an effect of being trapped in a small, dark space with the guy when we had nowhere else to go and a threatening landscape full of strange creatures lurked outside, but in the flickering firelight of the cool cave, he didn’t seem all that bad.
He put his hand down toward me, and I glanced up at him.
“We need to get some sleep,” he said. “If tomorrow’s anythin’ like today was, we’re gonna need all the rest we can get to be ready for it.”
Good point.
I was exhausted and sore. And this was just the end of day one.
