The Monster I Made

MORENA POV

Left jab. Slip the hook. Pivot on the ball of the foot, and drive the right cross straight into the ribs.

Sweat stings my eyes as my sixteen-ounce leather glove slams into Cole's body with a wet, heavy thud that echoes across the packed gym. The air inside the River Ash Boxing Club smells like stale sweat, canvas, and the liniment oil they rub into our shoulders before a match.

Around the outside of the ropes, thirty wolves in workout gear are shouting, their voices bouncing off the corrugated tin roof.

I'm twenty years old, five-foot-five, and the undefeated pound-for-pound rising boxer of my generation in River Ash. In the ring, nobody in the under-twenty-five bracket can touch my speed.

Except the woman standing outside my corner isn't smiling.

Grace Matheson-River Ash Elder, sworn executioner, and my mother-watches me from the apron with her arms folded over her black uniform, her storm-gray eyes narrowed in open dissatisfaction. I've won nineteen straight bouts this year, and I still haven't earned so much as a nod from her.

"Stop dancing on the outside like a point-fighter, Morena!" my mother's voice cuts cleanly through the noise of the crowd. "If you can't break his guard before the bell, you're running the southern perimeter in the dark tonight!"

Damn it. My lungs burn as I bounce back out of Cole's reach, keeping my chin tucked behind my left shoulder.

To the human town outside, this gym is just a local youth boxing club where blue-collar kids train for Golden Gloves. To the River Ash Clan, the ring is our monthly Control Assessment. Living peacefully among humans means keeping the wolf locked down, and there is no better test of discipline than taking a punch to the face under bright lights without letting your fangs drop or your claws rip through your leather gloves.

"Heard your mom, Matheson," Cole sneers from across the canvas, spitting blood into his mouthguard. He's got forty pounds of muscle on me and a bruised ego from losing the regional qualifiers to me last month. "Guess that pretty footwork isn't impressing the Executioner today."

"Keep talking with your chin up, Cole. See what happens."

He charges, throwing a wild, heavy overhand right meant to take my head off.

I can tell the exact second he loses his temper, because his yellow wolf eyes flare and the seams of his right glove bulge as his claws start shifting inside the padding. Foul. If he cuts me with shifted claws, the referee will disqualify him, and my mother will put him on kennel duty for a month.

I don't wait for the ref.

I duck under his swinging arm, feeling the wind of his glove brush my braided hair, and step dead inside his stance. Weight on my back foot. Rotate the hip.

I drive a vicious left hook straight into his liver, followed half a heartbeat later by a short, snapping right uppercut to the point of his chin.

Cole's head snaps back. His knees unplug completely, and all two hundred pounds of him hit the canvas flat on his back before the three-minute bell even rings.

The gym erupts in cheers.

"Winner by knockout!" the ref calls, waving the match off as Cole groans on the mat.

I let out a long breath, rolling my aching right wrist inside my wraps as I walk to my corner and duck through the ropes. I didn't let my wolf slip once. My heart rate is already dropping, my footwork was clean, and I took down a heavier fighter in under two rounds.

My mother doesn't even offer me a water bottle.

"You hesitated on the counterpunch," Grace says coldly, picking up her clipboard from the ring apron. "You're too attached to the rules of that ring, Morena. A boxer fights for a ten-count. An enforcer of River Ash fights to end a threat permanently. Until you stop treating combat like a sport, you aren't ready for the inner guard."

My jaw tightens until my back teeth ache. "You told me the assessment was about control. I kept my control."

"You played it safe," she corrects without looking up.

"Clean yourself up. You have the dusk border run along the southern creek at seven. Do not be late."

She turns on her heel and walks toward the front office, where I can already hear the warm, cheerful voice of Betty Monroe-my best friend's completely human mother, delivering a basket of peaches from the market. Watching my mother soften her posture and smile for a human woman who has no idea Grace executes rogue wolves for a living is a whiplash I will never get used to.

Shoving my frustration down, I push through the heavy door into the back equipment alley, yanking my headgear off, and stop dead.

Bass Monroe is sitting on an upturned wooden crate by the locker room steps, a bag of crushed ice in one hand and a pair of bandage scissors in the other. He's twenty-one, six feet of broad shoulders in a faded blue flannel, with messy dark curls and the calm, steady brown eyes that have anchored me since we were fourteen.

"Saw Cole get carried out," Bass says, a slow grin curving his mouth as he stands. Without asking, he unlaces my gloves, slides them off, and carefully snips the sweat-soaked cotton wraps from my bruised knuckles. His large, rough fingers brush my palm, sending a jolt straight up my arm that has nothing to do with boxing. "Your left hook is getting mean, champ."

"Not mean enough for Grace," I mutter, though my chest loosens the second he presses the cold ice pack over my knuckles, his thumb lingering against my pulse. Lately, standing this close to him makes it hard to breathe.

"Your mom's blind," Bass murmurs, his gaze dropping to my mouth for a fraction of a second before he steps back.

"Come on. I'll give you a ride out to the southern creek before you start your patrol."

By seven o'clock, the sun has dropped behind the western ridge, dragging deep shadows across the rushing water of the southern creek.

I walk the mossy gravel bank beside Bass's parked pickup truck, rolling my sore shoulders under my jacket. My knuckles still throb from Cole's chin, and two rounds of heavy sparring have left my legs heavier than usual, but this stretch of the boundary line is supposed to be dead quiet.

"Look, I'm just saying, if you go to the state tournament in the fall, I'm sitting front row," Bass says, leaning against his rusted tailgate with a heavy iron tire wrench in his hand from fixing his spare wheel.

"My mother will lock me in the cellar before she lets me box on television," I say, a small laugh escaping me as I turn to face him. "The whole point of the clan living among humans is staying invisible, Bass."

"Yeah, well, nothing about you is invisible to me," he says softly.

My heart stumbles against my ribs. The teasing humor in his eyes is gone, replaced by something quiet and intense that makes the three feet of space between us feel like nothing at all.