William heaved a heavy sigh and took a few steps toward his Alpha, “If this was real I wouldn’t care about who reached the ground first.” William glanced up to the top of the Towers. “If this was real I would be the last one down because I would be protecting our rear.” He lowered his gaze to meet Aceso’s hard stare. “But this isn’t real, Aceso. This is training. I have always believed that during training you push yourself as hard as you can and as far as you can so that you know what you’re capable of come game time.”
“William, I need to know that I can count on you ‘come game time’. The last time I needed you to be there you became something that I have never seen before. I need to know that winning isn’t the only thing you care about. And frankly my Enforcer has not given me the greatest vote of confidence that he can be trusted to do the right thing when it counts.”
William felt his anger rise at his Alpha’s accusation, “Are you saying you can’t trust me?”
Aceso took a step toward him, “I’m saying that right now we are not ready to go back there.” Aceso paused and looked away for a moment at the blackness of the cavern walls surrounding them. “But we need to be.” She returned her gaze to William, “To do that I need to know that you are going to do what’s best for the pack.”
William glanced around out of the corner of his eye, “Are you saying that I made a mistake and that I should have let everyone die? If I hadn’t done what I did every single one of us would be dead. Is that what you want? Just so long as you can say that this pack is safe, that neither I nor Charles have any problems and we have mastered whatever demons we have in us?”
“William, I don’t want to lose any more of you. Every time I think about Achelois I feel sick thinking about all the things I could have done differently to save her, all the decisions that could have been made differently to save her, can’t you understand that?”
William softened his tone, “You are my Alpha, and you always will be. Everything I have done and everything I will do, will be for you and our pack, I swear it.”
Aceso looked into William’s eyes. Her golden eyes cut deep into his. “William, are you all right?” Her eyes ran down and then up his body looking for something. It made him feel a little uncomfortable, like he was in a doctor’s office being examined. “When the time comes will my Enforcer do what is needed to kill when the pack requires him to?”
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William took a deep breath and looked his Alpha in the eyes. “In all my life I have never gotten into a fight just to hurt someone. For me the battle was enough and afterwards I would think well of my opponent whether I won or lost and hoped he would do the same for me. In my forest I fought the old grey for the right to keep my life not to end his. But now, knowing that those things are out there, I want nothing more than to end the existence of every last one of them.”
Aceso nodded, she knew that he meant what he said. “When the time comes, we will do what we have to. For now, I need your help to get Nicolas where he needs to be.”
William shook his head, “The best way for us to do that is for him to swear fealty to you as his Alpha.”
Aceso shook her head, her ears twitching to the sides in frustration, “I will not force something on him that he doesn’t want to do for himself.”
“But it was OK to do it in my case?”
Aceso glared up at him with something less than hate and more than embarrassment “Are you going to turn on me now?” William let the silence hang between them. The minutes stretched out into the silence of the obstacle course. William was afraid that he had pushed Aceso too far this time and that she was going to leave him there. He would have deserved it. There was no call for him to bring that up after so long and after defending her in front of Achelois. He wanted to say he was sorry but there was a small ring of truth to his question and he wanted to see how she would deal with it.
Aceso finally spoke, “My sin was in accepting the misunderstood oath of an untrained pup.” She held William in a steady unremorseful gaze, “Are you my Enforcer?”
“Yes.”
“Nicolas has to be trained harder. He has to gain speed and endurance, quickly.” Aceso stated very matter of factly without giving any second thought or pause to what had just happened between them.
William let the past few minutes drop as well and attacked the problem of getting Nicolas faster and stronger, in a very short amount of time. “The biggest problem with us humans is that our bodies need rest to gain muscle. While the body sleeps the muscles repair themselves from the damage done to them by working out in the first place.” William absentmindedly flexed his arm that he broke in his crash from the Towers. The body needed to recuperate; it needed to repair itself, to regenerate muscle tissue. “Is it possible for you to heal Nicolas after every workout session?”
Aceso looked at him out of the corner of her eye, “What do you mean, like if he broke an arm?”
“No, like heal him after he works out.” William was instantly excited about the idea. It was so simple how had he not thought about this before? “Aceso, look, after we human born work out we are usually sore the next day.” Aceso nodded still not understanding, he plowed ahead anyway. “If you could heal a human born after they worked out they wouldn’t be sore the next day. You could instantly heal the wounds our bodies incur because of working out. Our muscle mass wouldn’t decrease we would lose nothing because we wouldn’t need to rest. We could work out every major muscle group every day and we would gain from it every day.”