The Pack Thief

21

Willow's POV

The cruel abrasiveness of the earthy ground beneath me scraped the soft skin of my face. Dirt and other matters of the Earth, entered my mouth in ample waves, flooding in until I was coughing dirt from my lungs and gagging on the unwelcome taste.

Through tears of frustration and anger, I glared up at the woman standing above me. Celeste stared down at me with a scalding impatience, her arms crossed over her chest as if she was the one with mud in her mouth.

Pushing myself off of the all too familiar ground, I spit the remainder of the dirt right at her feet. Blood fell with it. From my nose, from my mouth, and from the various marks and lacerations against my skin. Celeste had taken the training to an extreme. Her posture remained unchanging, she didn't move.

"What did I say about keeping your stance wide enough to maintain balance?" Celeste hissed with a pointed stare.

She was scolding me. Scolding me for the hundredth time already. The beta had been doing so for the last half an hour. From the very first moment she put me on my ass, to the last, Celeste was never pleased. To her, I just kept making the same mistakes over and over.

But to me, I was fighting against a seasoned warrior with a lifetime's worth of training under her belt. Despite my own lack of training, she didn't hold back. Not one single bit. Celeste sparred with me as if I really was her enemy. Fitting.

"Again," She demanded.

Again. She was trying to kill me.

With trembling and sweat-slicked hands, my fists came up to protect my face. I drew my elbows into the sides of my body, keeping them tight against me. My chest rose and fell violently, as my stamina grew weaker and weaker with each repeated round. We had been going nonstop.

I was so ready to be done.

But Celeste wasn't.

The first jab she sent my way was a quick one, one that was meant to stun. It was set to hit me square in my bleeding nose. Thankfully, it didn't. It didn't land, not as I dodged it with a wedge of desperation. The second jab was even quicker, with a force behind it that was meant to disable an opponent. It would leave a mark if it hit me. Again, out of sheer desperation, I avoided her wicked fist, sparing myself just one more bruise.

Relief couldn't find solace in me, not as her attacks became one after the other. Literally and metaphorically, I was kept on my toes the entire time. My focus was like razor wires on her. Every single move she made, I watched as if it would kill me to look away. It most likely would.

Punch. Dodge. Punch. Dodge. Punch. Dodge. Over and over and over, until sweat cascaded off of my skin like raindrops, soaking the too-large cotton T-shirt Cyrus had lent to me. My nostrils burned as my lungs sought out the air that I was rapidly expending.

We danced around each other like we were partners in a ballet. A very strange ballet. One where she sought to crack my face in two. One where I sought to keep my face entirely whole.

Celeste spun on her heel, driving her free foot straight towards my torso. She was quick with it. Efficient. I was inefficiently unprepared. This new and sudden move made contact, sending me tumbling back to the ground with the air knocked right from me.

I collided with the unforgiving ground as it caught me. It seemed to laugh at me, welcoming me back to it for the hundredth time today. My face grew hot and my eyes began to sting, as I realized that she had yet again put me on the ground. Though it was just her and I, it felt as if the entire world was standing there, laughing.

They might as well have been.

For that very brief moment, I actually believed that I was getting the hang of her moves. After all, they were the same repetitive moves that she'd been using. They were unchanging. And maybe that's what she wanted. Maybe she wanted my confidence to grow, just so she could crush it as if it were a beetle between her fingers.