Where The Ice Gives Way Chapter 116

**Blake**

I point the girls upstairs to Charlotte’s room, and then Dad calls me back outside. I feel a tangle of emotions through the bond until she finally softens a bit. The guilt is still there, but it isn’t swallowing everything now. Every so often, something warmer moves through it, and it steadies me more than I want to admit. Amidst all the chaos, what she needs right now is to feel normal. If only for a pocket of time.

The backyard is cold enough that my breath fogs the second I step off the porch. Thankfully, Dad already has the fire going again, flames snapping in the pit and casting an orange glow over the snowbanks pushed to the edges of the cleared space. John stands beside him with his hands tucked into the pockets of his jacket, watching me with that same measured look he’s had since this whole thing started. A few of the pack guys are here, too. After yesterday’s events, it’s become clear throughout the pack that we all need to be prepared.

I pull my hoodie over my head and toss it onto the porch rail, rolling my shoulders as I step into the circle. My body feels better tonight. Stranger, yes, but I’m not even sore after yesterday. The power under my skin feels like it’s gearing up for more.

“You look bigger.” Dad huffs.

I flex my fingers once. “Feel bigger”,

John laughs. “You can grow as big as a bloody mountain, but it doesn’t mean much if you don’t know how to use it.”

Dad steps closer, eyes moving over me as he hums in agreement. “We tested strength and sensing yesterday. Tonight, we test your response.”

I glance between him and John as I stretch my muscles.

John steps into the circle opposite me and rolls his shoulders. “I want to see how quickly you feel it coming,” he says. “Then I want to see if you can answer it without putting me through the fence.”

That sounds reasonable. Without warning, his fist cuts toward my jaw, and the spark hits under my skin a split second before the strike does. I shift, block, and catch his wrist without twisting. He nods and comes again, shoulder dropping, weight turning. I feel the commitment before I see the movement, and I step aside and let him pass.

I start to see what he’s doing as we go round for round. John doesn’t hold back, but he keeps changing the way he comes at me. Sometimes he charges in like a bull in a cage, all force and full intent. Other times it’s more like when he clips Theo up the back of the head, quick and annoying and barely serious. He’s trying to mess with me. Trying to confuse me with the difference between movement and intent, between a real hit and one meant to throw me off. I start learning the difference. Dad circles slowly around us, watching from the edge of the firelight. “Good,” he says. “Again.”

John drives in low, and this time I catch him at the shoulder and stop him without shoving. My boots dig into the frozen ground. His weight hits me, hard and solid, but I hold. He grunts once, then steps back. “Better.”

I let out a breath. I think we might actually be getting somewhere. Then one of the younger pack guys near the fence laughs at something under his breath, and another shoves him for it. Just a bump between friends, but I feel the irritation flare. My head turns before I can stop it. The second shove is coming. I know it. I feel it gathering under the first boy’s skin, that tiny swell of pride and embarrassment and the need to push back. “Stop.” The word leaves me low and rough, and the yard goes still. The boy freezes with his hand half lifted. His arm hangs there in the air for a full second before he blinks and drops it. Did I do that? Was it just the alpha in my blood, or was it the gift underneath all of that? Dad’s eyes sharpen on the boys, and John turns slowly to look at me. “Say it again,” Dad says.

“To whom?”

“Me.”

John steps back, and Dad moves the second the space opens, crossing it fast, a roar tearing out of his chest as he drives straight for me with one fist raised and every ounce of Alpha aura behind it. It hits me before he does. The command in his body. The full weight of an Alpha choosing to strike. Everything in me drops low and solid. The last thing I want is Dad’s fist in my face. I bear down. “Stop!” The word cracks out of me, rough and sharp and carrying something deeper than sound. Dad freezes with his fist inches from my face, his body locked mid-stride, one foot planted hard in the dirt, and the other caught halfway through the step. The roar cuts off in his throat, and the whole yard falls silent.

No one moves. Dad’s jaw tightens, his eyes burning as the Alpha in him pushes against whatever just caught him. Slowly, he forces his arm down and steps back. John lets out a low breath behind him. “That shouldn’t have worked.”

Despite what just happened, a grin spreads across Dad’s face as he crosses his arms. “We should probably get your mother to start writing notes down in that old book of hers. That right there is something we can use.” 

Dad’s grin doesn’t fade as he looks past me to the pack gathered around the cleared space. “Let’s see what happens if you do that with a pack of wolves coming at you.”

My smile drops. “What?”

Dad doesn’t answer me. He lifts his chin toward the men standing by the fence, the fire, the porch steps, all of them watching with the kind of interest that suddenly feels a lot less friendly. “Charge him.”

All at once, noots tear through the snow. Bodies surge out of the dark, some laughing, some already half-shifted, all of them coming straight for me. The first wave hits my senses before they reach my body, intent flaring from every direction until it crawls under my skin and lights me up from the inside. I turn into it. “Stop!”

Two freeze hard enough that the men behind them crash into their backs. Another breaks through from my left, and I catch him by the shoulder, spin, and shove him into the snowbank before the next one reaches me. After that, the night turns into firelight, snow, breath, and bodies. Dad keeps calling orders. John keeps changing the angles. The pack keeps coming. And me? I keep learning how to protect my future Luna.