Lupi 04 - Night Season

and waited. So far instinct was working out okay.
    Cullen’s servant had arranged for them to use a room near the guard barracks. It was small and bright and empty. No windows—gnomes didn’t like them—but the floor was covered with something with some give. Cullen didn’t know what, but it should cushion any falls.
    He meant to make sure Cynna didn’t take any. But soft was still preferable.
    â€œI’m not sure this is a good idea,” Cynna said. Her voice was tight.
    Cramming it all down, she was. Not that he knew what “this” was, but he had some guesses. “No throws in tae kwon do, right?”
    â€œNo. Tae means kick; kwon means hand or fist. It’s all about kicking and punching. If you don’t know how to do it, though—”
    â€œGood. Don’t try any flying kicks. Everything else should be okay.”
    â€œ I know what to do to protect the little rider,” she snapped. “I’m not sure about you. Have you ever practiced tae kwon do?”
    Little rider, was it? “Some. We’ll stretch first, then forms. Then we spar.”
    â€œForms.” She cocked an eyebrow at him. “So you do know something about it.”
    He hesitated. “Etorri is too small a clan to maintain a separate group of trained as fighters the way Nokolai does. We all trained. Our practice included tae kwon do forms.”
    She was skeptical. “Long time ago. You were pretty young when you lost your clan, weren’t you?”
    â€œTwenty-six.” She always spoke bluntly of his seco —no sympathy, no mincing around his delicate feelings on the subject. He preferred that. His voice still turned harsh. “And I sure as hell needed to be able to fight. Some lupi see a lone wolf as a target. I needed the discipline, too, until I found I preferred the discipline of dance. You aren’t the only one with anger management issues, you know.”
    â€œThis…this whatever’s wrong with me isn’t anger. I don’t know what it is, but—”
    Cullen snorted. “Keep telling yourself that. Stretch,” he told her, and dropped to the floor to begin his own stretches.
    Truth was, he’d fought often enough in the years since he’d trained with Etorri, but he hadn’t practiced the forms in so long, he didn’t clearly remember them. They’d come back. He had excellent kinetic memory. Besides, he didn’t have to be good at her particular branch of the martial arts tonight. Halfway capable would do as long as he knew how to spar and was fast. He did and he was. Fast enough to let her work out whatever was brewing inside her without hurting either of them.
    Â 
    â€œ I should see if they’ve got ice. Ice would help. Surely they have—”
    â€œShut up, Cynna.” Cullen snagged her arm and tugged her back down.
    They were sitting on the floor, breathing hard. He leaned against the wall. “It was a fine kick. A damned fine kick.”
    â€œI didn’t think I’d connect. You said you could keep that from happening.”
    He turned to look at her and grinned, albeit lopsidedly. His jaw ached like fury. It wasn’t broken, thank God. It would have been, if he hadn’t pulled back in time. Well, almost in time. “No? And here I thought you were doing your damnedest to clobber me. No, don’t try to look regretful. It’s my fault you clobbered me. I underestimated you.”
    Her grin broke free. “Or overestimated yourself.”
    â€œSurely not.”
    â€œMaybe you were distracted by my breasts. You’ve got a thing for my breasts.”
    â€œMmm.” He smiled. “That I do, but I think it was your legs that got me this time, Wonder Woman.”
    Neither of them spoke for a few moments. Cullen’s breathing smoothed, but hers was still uneven when she broke the silence. “You think the feelings getting to me are like yours, but they—it—whatever it is, it isn’t anger.”
    â€œIt’s not regular anger a clanless lupus feels, either.” It was loneliness, an unspeakable isolation that sometimes erupted as a red howling against the world. And himself. Always, always, it had been against himself as well, the vast, aching flaw of who and what he was.
    That’s what she felt. He knew that in the deep places inside him. She might not want to call it anger, but however she named the feeling, it rose from the