Warrior (Relentless #4)(195)

“You don’t seem to be in any hurry for that to happen.”

I let out a short laugh. “Trust me, Desmund, if there is anyone who wants Sara to join with her Mori, it’s me.”

More than once, I’d wondered where our relationship would be if she and her Mori were one and she could feel the bond as much as I did. I had a feeling we would have been mated months ago, and I wouldn’t be taking cold showers every day.

“Then you will be happy to assist in the special training I’ve planned for her.”

“What training?” I asked.

“Eldeorin and I had a conversation last night about Sara, and we both feel she would do better with the proper…motivation. Namely you.”

I raised an eyebrow. “You and Eldeorin. This should be good.” I couldn’t imagine what the two of them could have cooked up, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to know.

“It’s quite simple really,” he replied smugly. “But it won’t work without your assistance.”

“What’s the plan?” I didn’t like Eldeorin, but he did genuinely seem to care for Sara. And Desmund wouldn’t do anything to harm her or allow her to be harmed.

“I think it would be more effective if you didn’t know beforehand.”

His sly smile made me wonder what the hell I’d just agreed to. But if it would help Sara, I’d do it.

“Fine. What time?”

He glanced at his watch. “Half an hour in the training room. Eldeorin will join us there.”

“I’ll see you then.”

He walked away, and I crouched beside the bike again. I could have taken the Ducati to a mechanic for a tune-up, but I enjoyed working on it myself. I didn’t think Eldeorin would appreciate me changing the oil in his pristine driveway, not that I cared. I still owed the faerie for taking off with Sara the night of our date.

Twenty minutes later, I went to get cleaned up and headed to the training room. No one was there when I arrived, and I wondered what Desmund had planned for today. Looking around, all I saw was the usual gym equipment.

I was stacking weights when I felt Sara approach. She stopped in the doorway and gave me a puzzled look, but Desmund nudged her into the room.

“Nikolas has agreed to join us today to help with a new training technique I’ve devised for you. We’ll start with our normal routine and take it from there.”

Curious about their training, I walked over to stand near the wall and watch. Sara went to the middle of the room and took a few deep breaths as if she was about to lift something heavy. Her shoulders tensed, and she grimaced as she joined with her Mori.

I tried to imagine what she felt and why it bothered her so much to do something so completely natural to me. She’d described it to me once, but it was still hard to grasp.

Desmund spoke to her, and she bent to lift a pair of forty-pound kettlebells. He walked over to join me, leaving her to her weights.

“She has to stay joined with her Mori for the duration of the exercise,” he explained. “That is the real work out. The weights just give her something to focus on.”

“How long is the exercise?”

“Normally it’s thirty minutes, but she’s barely lasting that long,” he said in a low voice. “Today, I hope to fix that.”

I nodded and watched her switch to sixty-pound weights. So far, she appeared to be doing well.

“So Vancouver was bad?” he asked after a few minutes of silence.

I lowered my voice. “Biggest ambush I’ve ever seen.” I told him everything that happened from the time we entered the house to when we killed the last vampire.

“I’ve never seen them behave that way. There were enough of them to wipe out several teams.”

He nodded slowly. “It is unusual to hear of that many vampires working together. I am amazed you did not suffer casualties.”

“I am too.” I thought about the way some of the vampires had tried to grab warriors and leave with them. That had been bothering me since the attack. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think they were trying to capture us, not kill us.”

A kettlebell hit the floor on the far side of the room, drawing our attention to Sara. I went to pick it up and bring it back to her.

“Are you okay?” I asked because she looked a little shaken.

She gave me a tight smile. “Great. Sometimes I don’t know my own strength.”

I set the weight on the floor and joined Desmund again. We watched her resume the exercise for a minute before he spoke.

“You are fortunate then that help arrived.”

“Yes,” I replied, thinking about the masked man I’d spoken to briefly in the backyard. I was annoyed when he took off, but after I saw the carnage outside, I knew every warrior there probably owed their life to him. “We found almost twenty vampires dead in the street and near the house. I don’t know how he knew where we were, but he’s the reason we didn’t lose anyone. The Seattle team wouldn’t have made it in time.”

Desmund glanced at Sara to check on her progress. “It sounds like you have a powerful ally out there.”

I nodded gravely. “We need one. We are already getting reports of more vampire attacks on our people. The team in Houston nearly lost two warriors last night.”

“Did they get help from this vigilante too?”