Dawn of a New Age: A Sons of Satrina Novel (16 page)

As soon as he stepped out into the corridor and closed the door behind him, the conversation in the room rose considerably. This was really big news. Sure, Aisline had received the mark and that had been a really big deal, but shifters? This was huge.

“I can’t believe it.” Jase said, staring wide eyed at Aisline.

“I can. It happened to me. It’s not much of a stretch of the imagination to believe it could happen to a shifter. Clearly it can happen to anyone.”

“What? You think that this could happen to someone else? To more shifters?”

“Who knows?”

This really was a lot for them to digest and they knew that they wouldn’t have much time before Kelton came back in with the new recruits.

And, that time was up quicker than they thought when the door swung open and Kelton walked back into the room, followed by Kayleigh and the two new guys. Aisline sucked in a breath when she saw them.

The first boy looked so young. He was tall and well built, but his innocent eyes screamed out how young he really was. He was really cute, with a few freckles scattered across his cheekbones and rich reddish brown hair. His blue eyes were alert as he looked around the room and there was a ready smile on his lips. It was clear to see that this was an adventure he was loving.

The other one was something else. It was him that caught Aisline’s breath. He looked a little older, and tougher. He seemed like the kind of guy that wouldn’t take any crap off anyone. His hair was a few shades darker than the other kid, such a dark red that it was almost black in this light. His dark hair was a stark contrast to the sparkling green of his eyes that glared balefully around the room.

Aisline could tell that the older one was going to be trouble a mile off. He had that bad boy thing oozing out of him. The shifters were well known for being hard-asses with attitudes to match. Not that she had ever met one herself before today. Looking around at the expressions on the other guys faces, it was pretty clear that they hadn’t either.

The supernatural races tended to keep more to themselves. There wasn’t any big old feud between any of them, they just didn’t chose to go out of their way to socialise with one another. But, looking at the two guys in front of her, she knew that her best friend, Lana, would throw a fit if she saw them and would demand to be introduced to every single shifter on the planet if they were half as good looking as this pair.

Kelton glanced around the room, half surprised that the trainees had been shocked into silence. Again, this was probably due to the fact that mouth almighty Denver wasn’t in residence. They were all staring at the young boys he had brought back in with him, with expressions that he couldn’t entirely read. The boys didn’t appear to be hostile, merely curious.

The same couldn’t be said about Caleb and Rees. Rees still looked like an eager little puppy who couldn’t wait to get stuck in and didn’t look the least phased by being faced with a room full of vampires. Caleb looked ready to rip some heads off. It was easy to see who they were going to have problems with out of these two brothers. Caleb was the kind of kind that was going to feel out of his depths and was more than ready to fight his way through this situation, fists and feet flying, just to prove that he could. It wasn’t going to be easy, but what could Kelton do? He had promised Patrick that he would do his best by the boys, and he would. Whether Caleb would let him was a whole other matter.

“This is Caleb.” He nodded over toward the scowling boy, “And this is Rees. You will treat them as you would one another, with respect.”

“They’re going to be working with us?” Lewis said with a sarcastic sneer to his tone.

“Caleb will be working in this class, yes. Rees will be working with Master Warrior Verynai’s training class.” He turned and nodded to Kayleigh who started to lead the younger boy out of the room. The boy left with a cheeky grin and a wave.

“This should be fun.” Lewis sniggered.

Kelton didn’t say a word. He didn’t need to. Lewis would be the last person to start anything with the shifter, if he had any sense. Caleb would be able to crush him with his little finger. Not that Kelton would condone or advise that kind of behaviour, but Lewis would be plain stupid to try and start something.

“Would you like to go and take a seat with the rest of the class and we’ll get started.” Kelton motioned for Caleb to cross the room. He moved slowly, scowling deeply at anyone that dared to look his way.

“I want you all to get into groups of three, working in a triangle formation. Caleb, would you go with Trey and Dylan.” Kelton though that they would be the ones who would be the most helpful to the new kid, helping them settle in and get used to their way of fighting and training. Trey was a giant of a boy and was still growing. He would be able to handle anything that Caleb threw his way. Plus, Kelton was hoping that Trey’s gentle nature would rub off on the shifter. “You’ll need your gloves and focus mitts. We’re going to be going through some defensive combinations today.”

The rest of the boys rushed to get their bags that held their kit and Kelton moved to grab some equipment for Caleb to use. They’d managed to throw together a decent amount of gear for the new boys, and there was always plenty of spare sparring kit to be had. It was the especially made weapons that would take more time. Luckily, they wouldn’t need any of that yet anyway. Kelton had already adjusted some of the future training lessons so that Caleb wouldn’t be left on the side lines.

“What about me?” Aisline said as she walked over to him. She had her bag slung over her shoulder, hoping that he would finally relent and let her start training again.

“I want you to observe.”

“Observe?” she replied, trying to keep the sarcasm out of her voice. Observation was seriously starting to suck.

“Yes, observe. I want you to shadow the new recruit this morning, and then this afternoon, I want you to go and see Doctor Phillippe.”

“What for?”

“Purely as part of your ongoing medical assessment. Nothing to worry about.”

Ash rolled her eyes when Kelton turned his back, but made no further comment. She thought that this whole situation was getting out of hand. Sure, she’d had a really shitty time of it out there at the hands of the enemy, but she was getting over that now. But, Kelton was still clearly determined to wrap her up in cotton wool. It wasn’t fair. She was ready to train. The bruises had faded to mere shadows and the nightmares that stalked her sleep were starting to recede. This waiting around and ‘observing’ others getting on with what she should have been doing was wearing very thin.

“Have you been keeping up with your exercises?”

“Every single day.” Aisline grinned, happy that they were actually letting her do something. They had given her a range of exercises to do on a daily basis to keep her limber, but that wasn’t enough for her. She had taken to adding in a few exercises of her own, just to keep in shape. She knew that getting back to full training was going to be pure torture, so she was simply giving herself a bit of a head start.

It was funny to think that less than a year ago that she was more than content to sit on the sofa, eating Pringles, drinking gallons of Pepsi and chilling out doing nothing but watching DVDs with her friends. Who would have thought that she would have ever been the least bit health conscious? Sure, she still didn’t really stick to any kind of strict diet or regime and still enjoyed all of the things that she loved, but now she worked hard to make sure that whatever she consumed wasn’t to the detriment of her health. Ash grinned to herself thinking how she voluntarily kept herself fit and it was laughable how annoyed she was that they wouldn’t let her do more of it.

“Keep it up.” Kelton nodded briefly before walking to the centre of the room to demonstrate what he wanted the guys to do.

Ash didn’t have much of a choice but to walk over to where Trey was getting the new boy warmed up. The shifter didn’t look very impressed to be here at all. Not that she could blame him in the slightest. The mark had appeared on him and there was nothing that he could have done to fight it. She’d been there, done that. She knew, or at least had some idea, of the kind of thoughts that were going through his head.

The boy didn’t look happy about it, but he followed Trey’s instructions and copied the moves he demonstrated as they got the blood pumping around their bodies. The raw power of Caleb’s body was obvious; the bulging muscles, the taut bronzed skin. Aisline would have had to be blind not to notice how drop dead gorgeous he was. The main downside to his looks was the grim expression on his face. He didn’t want to be here and he clearly wasn’t afraid to let everyone know it.

Kelton was busy barking orders and the guys rushed to get their gloves on. The room was already feeling hot. All those male bodies produced a hell of a lot of heat when they got down to training. Aisline hadn’t really felt it before, because she’d been part of it. Now that she was on the outside looking in, the air was cloying. Heat caressed her skin, but the stink of the place was almost unbearable.

“Right.” Said Trey. “Have you had any kind of training before?”

“No. Not really.” Caleb muttered at the floor, not liking to admit that he was at a disadvantage

Trey moved to stand next to him, showing him how to get into his stance, how to effectively distribute his weight and where to how his fists in his guards. Caleb grudgingly thought that Trey actually seemed like a pretty decent guy for a vamp. At least he wasn’t being condescending. If he had been working with someone who tried to make him feel like shit because he wasn’t one of them, no amount of training would have made the slightest difference – he would have put them on their asses without a second thought. Caleb may not have had any formal training, but he’d grown up in a pack of shifters and could street fight with the best of them.

As much as he hated to admit it, he actually enjoyed the training session. Trey and Dylan didn’t seem to treat him any differently to the rest of the guys which made things much easier. He had no real preconceived ideas of what the fangers would be like when he came here, but he still hadn’t relished the thought of being surrounded by them day and night. It wasn’t something he’d given much thought to when he had been growing up, but they weren’t that bad. Not at all. In fact, they kind of reminded him of some of the guys he’d grown up with. So, yeah, things could have been a lot worse.

Aisline hated not joining in with the rest of the guys, but watching Caleb working up a sweat? It was almost worth missing out on the training. Kelton had come over several time and seemed pleased with the progress he was making. He was a natural at this and it was easy for any of them to see that he was going to be a hell of a fighter and a welcome addition to their warrior ranks.  At the moment, if she was honest, he had a whole lot of power and not a lot of style or direction, but Aisline knew that would come with time and the right training. Hell, look at her for example. When she had first come to the academy, she hadn’t ever lifted a hand to anyone in her life and yet, the sparring had come naturally to her. She simply had to learn how to direct what her body wanted to do. Caleb had a few advantages over her already so it wouldn’t be long before he was up to standard with the rest of them.

Walking out of the sparring room, the guys were all in high spirits. Kelton had praised more than one of them during the session and that was a rare thing, making them beam with renewed enthusiasm. Ash smiled as she walked, feeding off their buzz.

“So, are you some kind of assistant or something?”

She swung her head around to see Caleb walking next to her. At first, she wasn’t sure that it was him that had spoken, or if he was even speaking to her, because he continued to walk with his face forward and stern. It wasn’t until he glanced over at her as he obviously waited for an answer that she knew for sure.

“What makes you say that?”

“Well, you seem to know what you’re doing.”

Aisline grinned. “Of course I know what I’m doing.” She swept her hair to the side to reveal the warrior mark on her temple.

Caleb stopped dead and stared. With her hair down and flowing around her face like that, he hadn’t even noticed the mark before. It was strange to see it on his own face, let alone on a girl. “You’re the warrior? The female warrior?”

“The one and only.” Aisline laughed. She probably should have been offended by his reaction and probably would have been if it had been anyone else, but for some reason, she knew that Caleb was merely shocked and not being rude, just because she was a girl. It wasn’t a sexist thing. “You didn’t think that I got all these bruises cleaning, did you?” She was actually quite shocked herself, being able to joke about her ordeal like that. Again, it was probably because it was Caleb and he had no real idea of what she’d been through.

“Holy shit!”

Aisline laughed again. “So, how did you find it?”

“It was okay, I guess.” He shrugged and tried to look cool. “So, why aren’t you training?”

Aisline cocked an eyebrow at him. So he really didn’t know anything about what happened to her. That was a good thing. She could sweep over it, like it was no big deal. The last thing she needed was the new guy treating her like bone china, like the rest of them. It was nice for someone to treat her like everything was normal for a change.

“I got into a bit of trouble out in the field. I’ll be back training as soon as the doctor gives me the go-ahead.”