The minute the training begins, I regret downing so much food.

Perhaps I should have eaten after, even though that would have left me too weak to perform many of the exercises Wolf ran me through. Still, I should have expected that a full belly would only add an extra layer of difficulty. Both Wolf and Savannah have trained me in the past and while Savannah occasionally had patience for my physical limitations Wolf never did.

And just like in the past, he starts by making me run laps, right to the edge of the Dark Forest and back. Endurance has never been my strong suit and neither has strength, but Wolf doesn't care. He doesn't care when I tell him that I feel nauseous either. He simply orders me down to the base of the hill again and has me running back up to the cottage.

Of course, I do my best not to disappoint him. But after the fifth lap, I start to get winded. The eight lap makes my lungs burn and my legs shake. By the tenth, I want to die.

“You better hurry,” he says, as I trudge up for the eleventh time. “It's getting dark. You don't want to linger at the base for too long. You might tempt the monsters out of the forest."

I glance behind me at the dark forest, looming like a threat. I shudder to think of the manner of creatures that could be in there.

This time, I lift my legs higher as I run, trying to go faster, but my foot hits a stone and I stumble to the ground. My hands shoot out to break my fall, burying itself in dirt and stone.

“They like it when you fall,” Wolf adds. “Makes it easier to eat you."

He's joking, I tell myself, even though his face is as deadpan as ever.

Fear makes me rise and keep going. Like everyone else in Accacia, I've heard stories of the monsters in the Dark Forest practically since I was a child. They're terrible and sometimes come out of the forest at night time in a different form, to lure unsuspecting victims back. Then they eat you alive while you scream for your mother, or they play with your mind until you run mad.

But as I jog closer to Wolf, whose body appears to fill the horizon, I wonder how he's managed to survive frequent visits into the forest unscathed.

Many in town whisper about it, and the reigning theory is that the monsters are far more scared of him than he is of them. Some also think he was already driven mad but does a good job of presenting as normal.

Perhaps that's why he keeps going back.

I ponder on it and almost start to feel sorry for him, but when I reach the top of the hill, he says, "I think you can do ten more, easily."

I gape incredulously “I…I can barely breathe right now.”

He scans me and then nods. "Fine. Five more."

“Do you want to kill me?” I pant, bracing my hands on my knees. “If I go back down that hill I’m not coming back up and it will be your fault when the monsters drag me in to chomp on my bones.”

“At least then, I wouldn’t have to worry about all your complaining.” He points. "Get back down that hill or you're sleeping out here. And you better stop joking around. I'm serious when I say you don't want to be here by nightfall."

"You really would leave me out here?" I'm incredulous.

"Yes." There's not a single thread of humor in his face. He's serious. He would subject me to that.

And he might be invulnerable to monsters but I'm certainly not.

I run back down the hill, cursing him the entire way in my head.

I run back up the hill falling over several times but somehow making it. I refuse to even speak to him as I run back down again and this time I fall over even more times.

Two more times and my limbs are so stiff I can barely shuffle them. For the last lap, I have to crawl up the grass on my hands and knees, spots swimming in my vision, all the while fearing that the monsters are going to snatch me back before I get to the top. When I do thankfully reach Wolf, I stand back up to my wobbly feet, eager to get back inside.

“On your knees little bird,” he says.

"What?"

"Get down on your knees. To build your arm muscles, you're going to push against the earth. Like this." He drops on his feet and hands spread shoulder-width apart and demonstrates a fluid movement of lowering his chest close to the ground before pushing back up. “You’re going to do that fifty times."

“I can’t even do it once.”

“Then I suppose you can spend all night here."

I glare at him, rapidly changing my mind. I no longer feel bad for killing him in my second life. In fact, I should have savored the experience more.

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I sigh and get on my knees.

I’ve done this before when Wolf trained me in the past, but my body didn’t feel quite as frail and heavy. I had built muscle borne from fighting at that point.

But now it's horrible. The first one I try to execute, I collapse to the ground breathless. True to his word Wolf doesn't help me, and neither does he seem to pay any me much attention. He sits on the grass, leans his head back, and whistles.

He actually whistles.

It's a tune I recognized faintly, one that the woman was singing in the bar. It's a reminder of that first night, the awfulness I encountered, the women with their vacant gazes. I can't believe Wolf frequented places like that. Why was he there? Simply to find clients?

Or is he like those men? Does he leer at the women too and touch them, or hire them for the night?

Why had he not stopped the abuse of the one who was dragged off the stage?

Wolf catches me watching him and smirks as though he knows all the thoughts I'm having, the ones plaguing me. As though he doesn't care what I think of him.

In fact, he's daring me to think the worst of him, to hate him, knowing I'll still be here regardless because I need him.

Damn him. I have to do this. At least one push up. I can't let him win.

The pain spiraling through my body no longer makes me want to die. Instead, I want to live so I can repay him for every single second of this torture.

I place my hands shoulder-width apart, my fingers and legs, and intestines quaking as I prepare to lower myself once more.

I dip, nearly flopping but I managed to pull myself back up even though my midsection caves into the ground a little.

One.

I try it again, slower this time so I don't fall over. Then I push back up.

That's two.

I shoot Wolf a triumphant look and he raises an eyebrow as if to say, That's it?

Bastard.

I try again and again to complete one more move, but fail every other attempt. I don't know how long we spend there, but I keep trying . Even when my body finally collapses onto the ground, spent with dirt in my mouth, my finger clench in the grass and keep trying to push. Defeat exhales through my lips in protesting cries. Time crawls into time, and pain upon pain. Exhaustion steals my mind and by the time he finally says, "Enough for today," I can't move.

Wolf swings me into his arms and the world swims. Next thing I know I'm staring at a thatched roof. My back is placed on a soft bed of pillows that envelope me.

Next, I feel strong hands massaging my arms and my legs, but I'm too exhausted to protest.

And then finally, I'm dead to the world.

That night I dream of my first life. I did a lot of foolish things in my first life, but perhaps none was more foolish than allowing Caster to turn me into his mistress.

At first, it was fine. He convinced me nothing would change except that our relationship simply had to remain a secret. Caster would be out during the day, doing Princely things, and then come to meet me at our secret cottage once night fell.

In public, he would hold Genya's hand and smile, playing the part of a dutiful spouse. She would accompany him to all events and weigh in on important matters concerning the Kingdom. In the eyes of everyone else, she would be his queen.

But he would spend every night in my bed.

I told myself that meant something. That meant he loved me, even though I cried myself to sleep sometimes. I told myself stories about the powerful concubines throughout history. King Drogo never took a concubine, believing that a man should limit his sexual appetites to one woman. But that was likely because his father's concubine had betrayed the North and inadvertently led to the death of Drogo's mother, the true Queen. Once Drogo became King, he put the former mistress to death and declared her name a curse in the nation.

He likely saw his father's indiscretion as the reason for his mother's death.

But Caster was different. He wasn't irresponsible, or careless or selfish. He just loved me too much to let me go. We had a love for the ages, and I would never betray him or our nation. In return, he would never cast me aside or let anyone harm me.

It would all be fine.

But then after Caster's coronation as crown prince, we moved into the palace where he formally brought me in as his official concubine. That was when everything changed.

I could no longer hide myself from the horrible reality of this arrangement anymore.

Before, I could convince myself that Genya was a horrible woman who Caster was forced to be with and that theirs was a cold silent union when they weren't being paraded in front of his father.

But staying at the castle, I immediately saw the reality of their relationship. They formed at the very least a strong friendship, but it likely developed into more. He laughed with her the same way he laughed with me. He respected her ideas, and I saw admiration on his face a few times when she spoke about politics. That admiration whenever she showed off her magical powers.

He never had that admiration for me.

He was a Northerner after all, and Northerners respected strength. Genya was strong and a picture of poise. I was weak and a nobody.

And Genya took every opportunity to rub it in.

She made sure to show me how insignificant I was every time we all had tea together. She insisted it was important that we both got along to the betterment of the kingdom and it was seen as her playing the gracious queen.

But I knew in reality she wanted to show me the truth of her and Caster together. They were lovers too and she wanted me to see, to understand that no matter what I did, I would always be beneath her in his eyes. That as much as he wanted me, he would never respect me as he did her. I was nothing but a thing to warm his bed.

And it was a feeling I never could shake.

It was a feeling that made me do very stupid things to gain Caster's favor to have him look at me with the same respect that he did her. One of those things got me in trouble with the King because I overstepped my boundaries and sought to help the North. I involved myself in political matters.

The King demanded Genya punish me for it.

Caster protested. Genya claimed that it was the only way to absolve me of my crime. She would make it quick, she said.

And eventually, Caster stood back and watched as his wife burned me. I screamed and she cooed gently, all the while holding that secret glee in her eyes under the most serene expression imaginable.

It was then I looked at Caster for help, but he simply stood there, looking annoyed like he hated being bothered by this whole affair.

That was when I knew that he would never protect me from her. Not because of the King or because of Genya, but because he simply didn’t want to. I wasn't worth it.

I would have faced the world for him. He never would have done the same for me.

I think, I sob as I dream of those events once more. In my sleep, I can no longer avoid the heartbreak of my past, and the fear that, despite making different choices, it will all happen again.

And then someway, somehow, I feel the phantom touch of someone pulling me onto an embrace and growling me back to sleep.