Chapter Eighteen
Elle's POV
What the hell was I thinking? I thought twenty minutes into my first lesson with Kaden and shortly to be my only one.
He was light on his toes, a graceful predator to my fumbling prey. He studied me with sharp, clear eyes, intensely focused on every move I made. If I so much as flinched, his body moved in reaction, but the rest of his expression was emotionless.
It wasn't something I was used to seeing, and it threw me as my thoughts swirled. I tried to untangle the sense of loss at suddenly being unable to read his expression. As I strained to find a flicker of emotion, it wasn't until now that I realised just how much I had taken his openness for granted.
I wasn't sure when, but at some point in the last year, Kaden had started letting me through the barriers he had been building, allowing me to see what was going through his mind, even if he didn't tell me. But, I understood why he let me see the thoughts flash across his face rather than tell me because, for a long time, I wouldn't have listened or trusted him, and now we had fallen into a pitiful rhythm.
I wanted him to tell me. But I was still learning how to ask him.
I must have been in my head too much because Kaden barked gruffly, 'Show me how you should stand.'
I'd had shown him twenty, thirty, forty times. I had stood how I thought I should, and each time he had circled me, correcting my stance over and over again. I was about ready to throw fists, not because I wanted to learn how to hold that pose a million times before moving on to something else.
This is stupid. I was so close to saying something, but I didn't because that felt like I was admitting defeat, and I refused to put myself in a position where someone could so easily poke holes at my weaknesses.
'You're not stupid.'
I was sure I hadn't said the words, but I'd had a year to learn Kaden's facial tics. He had been given fourteen years.
He came back into focus after tucking my elbows back down for the fiftieth time, and he flinched as my teeth ground together. I couldn't even muster the willpower to be annoyed with him because I was the one still making mistakes. 'You'll get there,' he said simply, double-checking my fists to check that I wasn't still tucking my thumb over the top.
You'll end up breaking your thumb. After correcting me the first time, he'd explained calmly, and I'd realised with trepidation that the Kaden I'd become familiar with over the past year had sunken back into the façade.
It had been so easy to believe that I'd gotten good at reading him, that something about our bond had meant I could see more than others could. I'd forgotten that he had spent over a decade mastering his emotions.
Even before he'd found and decided to keep his secret about us, Kaden had witnessed the consequences of emotions. He had seen the greats fall after a flicker of emotion had sent them begging for mercy. His first vivid memory was when he was three. It had been a birthday party or a celebration, he couldn't quite remember, but an Alpha of some pack had been so desperate for help that they'd started propositioning other leaders. The desperation ended their pack because while they'd secured the aid they needed, they'd sold their souls in the process and hadn't survived much longer. Kaden's memory was of the fallout.
His steady gaze was unflinching, and it told everyone who looked the same thing, I am a fearless leader. It was the most selfless thing he'd ever done because it wasn't true, and he'd donned that persona for his people.
He had also been pretty good at fooling the entire world, and worst of all, me, into believing that he had never had a second thought about me. But it was those thirteen years of keeping secrets so tightly bound to his soul that had, at some point, slowly started whittling away at his sanity. Now, he was the man he was to—the man who tried his hardest to let me in but still struggled in his unique way.
'Do you know why I'm asking you to practice this again and again?' Kaden's voice broke me from my thoughts again, and I chastised myself for my distraction. This wasn't the time while I was trying to prove something. I shook my head. 'If you don't hold your body right, you'll hurt yourself.' His tone was tight, and if I dared look at him, I was sure I'd see some of that emotion peeking through. 'If you don't tuck your arms in, you leave your ribs vulnerable,' he splayed his large hands over my ribs, and I shucked in a heavy breath. 'You'll end up winded and unable to fight.'
His hands sank to my hips, and he angled them just slightly, 'You need to be balanced to draw power from your legs and body. So use them. Use your momentum.'
Kaden's thumb grazed my skin as his hands retreated from my hips, his eyes tracking their movement. 'Your centre of balance is one of the most important things.' He murmured, the warmth of his words fluttering against my skin. 'If someone knocks you off your feet, you've got to work twice as hard to get back up.'
In hindsight, I should have known what he was about to do, but the air was knocked out of my lungs as his leg came around behind mine, and suddenly, I was pinned to the dirt, blinking up at the brilliant grin Kaden was giving me, centimetres from my face.
I wanted to roll over and cry as reality started to crash down upon me. What was I thinking? Humiliated and suddenly realising how unfit I was after a year of finding my solitude, I wished that Kaden hadn't been the one to discover just how useless I was. 'I'm sorry.' I mumbled, staring at his forehead, unwilling to catch his eyes.
The amusement faded, and he sat back, pulling me up as he went, and we sat across from each other, the dirt hard beneath us. 'No,' he shook his head, offering a small smile as he dusted grass from my shoulders. 'I'm sorry that I never got Jacobi to teach you any of this,' he wrung his hands together.
I held my breath for a long moment as his eyes focused on me, those dark eyes searching my soul in a way that only seemed possible to him. Then, when I'd started to feel faint, he finally sighed. 'What's going through that mind of yours?'
I shrugged, studying the dirt beneath my nails. Some moments define a change in a relationship, and I could see it. If I'd wanted us to stay on the same path, following the same old routines, I would have kept quiet, and he would never have pushed, but I hated our path. I hated that it always felt as though we were at a standstill, so instead of pulling the same old useless tricks from the shelf, I admitted in a quiet voice, 'I feel like I can't do this.'
For a long time, Kaden was silent, so I continued, barrelling past what used to be our stalemate. 'I know I can. I have to be able to do this. But right now, it feels so stupid to bother. I want to do so much better, but it feels stupid when I'm practically begging someone to push me over because I don't know how to stand. And then there is everything else I have to be focusing on, things that are so much more important, like deciding if I could even potentially consider becoming Luna. I thought-' my eyes felt heavy, but I refused to cry. 'I thought that if I could do this. If I could prove that I could at least defend myself a little, maybe I'd be able to do this with you.'
Kaden didn't say anything for so long that it felt like I was drowning—in my thoughts, in my words, in all the opinions of people who shouldn't matter but seemed to have the loudest voices. I can't do this. An omega would have been better. Reject him. A weak Luna. They were no longer the loudest voices, but they seemed louder than others some days. 'You were right.'
I blinked, struggling to focus back on the real world and not the world that was tearing my sanity apart within my own head. He looked so serious, brushing a hand through my hair. 'What?'
'You were right,' he admitted, almost scared to do so. He swallowed hard, pinching his mouth in concern. 'You need to do this, and you can.' He said fiercely, leaning forward so that I could feel his warmth. 'But you're also wrong. Because whether you can defend yourself in a physical fight or not has no bearing on whether you'll be a good Luna. No one can guarantee or know if you'll stumble so badly that you'll fall. You are not expected to be perfect. The only thing I expect of you is to try your hardest to care for the people of our pack. To do everything you are capable of to do the best for them. You will stumble, Elliot. It's one of the only things I can promise you. No Luna has ever been perfect, and no Alpha either. You can do this only if you decide to because no one can force you to care.'
I stared unblinkingly at the man who had changed the entire course of my life. He didn't flinch or take back his words. His conviction was that I'd succeed if I set my mind to it. 'What's something you can guarantee?' I whispered, almost ashamed to be asking.
His smile was soft as he came even closer, fluttering a kiss to the base of my ear, his lips brushing against my skin as he promised, 'I'll always support you and listen to your ideas, no matter how silly you think your ideas are, and I'll cherish you, for as long as we've got.'