Three days after the fire, I discovered two important things:
One, elemental training was ten times more exhausting than any kitchen shift I’d ever pulled.
Two, Tiernan Voss looked unfairly good when he was soaked to the skin.
“Again,” he called, voice carrying easily over the roar of the waterfall.
I glared at him from the middle of the river pool.
Cold water surged around my thighs, numbing my legs. The falls crashed down from a rocky lip above, throwing up fine mist that beaded in my hair and lashes. The air smelled of wet stone and moss, sharp and clean.
“I hate you,” I shouted back.
“Louder,” he said. “The river can’t hear you.”
“I *hate* you,” I repeated, throwing my hands up.
Tiny plumes of steam hissed from my palms where droplets hit.
His mouth quirked. “There we go. Now use *that*. Not the panic. Not the fear. The *heat*.”
Ashra yawned inside my head. *He’s right. You’re crankiest when you’re tired. Very flammable mood.*
*You’re not helping,* I told her.
She laughed and settled, letting me feel the pressure of the water, the slippery tug at my calves.
Stormwake’s waterfall was half a day's ride from Redwood Shadow—Elyra had granted us use of the old training site when Tiernan had insisted the hall yard wasn’t safe for testing steam work. The falls weren’t huge, but the pool below was deep, fed by a strong current that would easily sweep an unwary pup off their paws.
I wasn’t unwary.
I was just cold.
“You’re not going to drown,” Tiernan said, as if he’d plucked the thought from my head. “You’ve got four wolves watching from the bank and a mate who would swim to the bottom of the sea if you so much as sputter.”
“You are *not* using the M-word as a bribe,” I yelled.
Rian, perched on a boulder upstream with his knees drawn up, snorted. “She’s got a point,” he called. “You’re leaning on that word a lot, Tier.”
Tiernan shot him a look. “I am very aware of the word I’m using,” he said.
He wasn’t in the water.
Of course not.
He was pacing along the rocky edge in bare feet, pants rolled to his knees, shirt plastered to his chest from the spray, hair dark and dripping. The muscles in his arms flexed as he gestured.
I tried very hard not to look at them.
*Liar,* Ashra noted.
Fine. I looked a little.
“Focus,” Tiernan said, as if he hadn’t noticed my eyes drifting. He probably had. “You feel the chill, yes?”
“Yes,” I ground out. My teeth chattered. “I feel like a slab of meat in a river.”
“Charming image,” Rian murmured.
“Now,” Tiernan went on, ignoring him, “find your heat.”
I closed my eyes.
The cold was everywhere—leeching into my bones, numbing my fingers, stealing my breath. The falls’ constant thunder filled my ears.
Beneath it, though, there was…something.
A slow warmth, pulsing behind my sternum. The same ember I’d felt in the hall, in the yard. Ashra, coiled and bright.
*Hello,* she said lazily. *Finally. Thought you’d decided to become a fish.*
*Can you…do something about this?* I asked. *I’m freezing.*
*I could if you’d stop flapping and flinching for five seconds,* she said. *Listen. The water is not enemy. It’s…canvas.*
“Canvas,” I muttered.
“Talk to her?” Tiernan asked.
“Yes,” I said grudgingly. “She’s full of unhelpful metaphors.”
Rian huffed a laugh. “She came preprogrammed with those,” he said. “Old wolves like stories.”
“Less commentary from the peanut gallery,” Tiernan called without looking back. To me: “Try what we did with the lightning. Find the thread. But this time, don’t send it down. Let it expand.”
“Expand,” I repeated dubiously.
“Yes,” he said. “Your fires don’t have to be all or nothing. You can warm yourself without boiling the river. Start small. Hands. Feet. Let it seep.”
Ashra hummed approval. *He’s not completely hopeless.*
*I’m telling him you said that,* I threatened.
*You wouldn’t dare.*
I inhaled.
The air was cold in my lungs. My skin prickled.
I reached inward, fingers closing metaphorically around that ember behind my ribs.
Carefully, I peeled off a sliver.
Heat tingled along my veins, radiating into my chest, then my shoulders, arms, down to my hands. I pictured it as a slow sunrise inside me, not a lightning strike.
Warmth spread.
It hurt a little.
Not sharp. More like thawing fingers too fast after holding snow.
The current tugged at my legs.
I pushed the warmth downward too—into my stomach, hips, thighs, calves, feet.
The water around my shins started to steam.
“Careful,” Tiernan warned. “Don’t overdo it. Your skin cooks at the same rate as liquid if you’re not balancing it.”
Comforting.
I swallowed, adjusting, pulling some of the heat back from the surface.
The steam thinned.
My muscles ceased their desperate shivering. My skin stopped aching with cold.
I cracked my eyes open.
The air above the pool was hazy where moisture evaporated in a faint mist around me. Not boiling. Just…warmer.
Tiernan’s eyes widened slightly. He smiled, slow and bright. “Good,” he said. “Very good.”
Rian whistled. “She’s a damn cauldron,” he said. “Do you know how many hours we’ve spent convincing baby elementals not to burst into full ignition at the first hint of heat?”
“How many?” I asked.
“Too many,” he said dryly.
Tiernan stepped down onto the stones near the pool’s edge, water lapping at his ankles. “Now,” he said, “walk to me.”
I eyed the distance.
Maybe ten paces.
The current wasn’t deadly, but it was strong enough that pushing against it took effort. And my legs already felt like they’d been wrung out.
“What, no ball-throwing this time?” I muttered. “No extra humiliation?”
He grinned. “I can arrange that.”
“Pass,” I said quickly.
Ashra nudged me. *Go. We can do this.*
*You say that about everything,* I pointed out.
*And we’re not dead yet,* she replied. *So my track record is flawless.*
I snorted softly and took a step.
The water pushed.
I pushed back.
Heat pulsed out with each movement, keeping the worst of the cold at bay. Not too much. Just enough.
Halfway there, my concentration wavered.
A chill nipped at my hip. The steam thinned.
“Stay with it,” Tiernan said. “Don’t rush.”
“I hate rivers,” I muttered.
“You love rivers,” he countered. “Your parents used to bring you to the one behind Redwood. You told me.”
I almost lost my footing.
“When did I tell you that?” I demanded.
“Yesterday,” he said mildly. “In the yard. You were half-asleep between shifts. You mumbled about how the water used to sound when you fell asleep in your mother’s lap.”
Heat flared in my chest.
Not elemental.
Emotional.
“I did not,” I said, horrified.
“You did,” he insisted, amused. “You also threatened to drown me in soup if I made you run one more lap.”
“That sounds more like me,” Ashra said.
*Shut up,* I told us both, cheeks burning.
The warmth inside me faltered under the embarrassment.
Cold rushed back in.
I stumbled.
Tiernan’s expression sharpened. “Kaia. Eyes on me.”
I lifted my head.
His gaze locked with mine.
For a heartbeat, the river, the rocks, Rian’s watchful presence, everything else fell away.
There was only the steady, stormy gray of his eyes.
And the bond, thrumming between us like a tight-strung wire.
“Breathe,” he said. “In. Out. You’re not in Redwood’s kitchen. You’re not eight. No one’s going to smack you with a ladle for talking too loud. You’re here. With me. In this freezing river. Failing gloriously.”
“Gloriously?” I echoed.
He smiled. “If you’re going to fail, you might as well do it with flair.”
Despite myself, a laugh slipped out.
The knot in my chest loosened.
Heat flowed back into my limbs.
I took another step.
Then another.
By the time I reached the rocks at his side, my legs were shaking, but not from cold.
He reached down.
I hesitated.
Then placed my wet, numb hands in his.
He hauled me up with ease, like I weighed nothing.
Water streamed off my clothes, darkening the stone at our feet.
“Not bad for a morning’s work,” Rian said, hopping down from his perch. “You didn’t boil anything important.”
I peered into the pool. “What about fish?”
Tiernan huffed. “If I see any floating, we’ll hold a tiny funeral.”
“Fish funeral,” I muttered. “Ashra would eat them.”
*We do not waste protein,* she sniffed.
Rian chuckled. “Stormbound and practical. I like her.”
“She’s not a toy,” I said, surprising myself with the fierceness in my tone.
Rian blinked. Then inclined his head. “Understood.”
Tiernan watched the exchange, something like approval glinting in his gaze.
“How do you feel?” he asked me.
“Like someone wrung me out and hung me up to dry,” I said. “But less like an icicle.”
“That’s progress,” he said. “Next time, we try sitting meditation under the falls.”
I stared at him. “You want me to sit *under* that?” I jabbed a finger at the roaring curtain of water.
“Eventually,” he said. “Not today. It’s a way to test your control. The water pressure triggers instinctive surges. We teach you to let them roll without exploding.”
“Your training methods are insane,” I muttered.
“Yes,” he said. “And they work.”
Rian clapped his hands. “Break,” he declared. “We’ve poked the storm enough for one morning. If we keep at it, she’ll fall on her face and Elyra will tan all our hides.”
“Luna does not tan hides,” Tiernan said.
“Not physically,” Rian said. “Her looks hurt, though. I’d like to avoid another one.”
We grabbed our things and headed back toward the waiting horses.
As I walked, water squelching in my boots, Tiernan matched his pace to mine.
“Good work,” he said quietly. “You didn’t bolt. You didn’t freeze.”
“I almost did both,” I said.
“Almost,” he said. “But you didn’t. That matters more than doing it perfectly.”
I studied his profile—strong nose, scar along his jaw, the little lines at the corners of his eyes that hinted at years of squinting into wind and sun.
“You really would have waded in if I’d gone under,” I said.
He looked at me like I’d told him the sky was blue. “Of course.”
“You can’t swim that well,” I pointed out. “You almost drowned two nights ago pulling that pup from the hall stairs.”
He frowned slightly. “Who told you that?”
“Eren,” I said. “He saw you coughing up water behind the healer’s tent.”
Rian snorted from behind us. “Tiernan Voss. Storm alpha. Can command thunder. Can’t float.”
“I can float,” Tiernan said, a little defensively. “I just…don’t like it.”
“Water doesn’t listen to him,” Rian said. “It stresses him out.”
“It listens fine,” Tiernan muttered. “It just…has its own pace.”
I bit back a smile.
“You’d really jump in to save me if it meant choking on water again?” I asked.
He stopped.
I took two more steps before realizing.
When I turned, he was looking at me with that open, unguarded intensity that always made something in my chest stutter.
“I almost burned alive to keep a roof off your pack’s pups,” he said. “I walked into a hall I knew might collapse. Do you really think a little water would stop me from going after you?”
My throat went tight.
“That’s…stupid,” I said weakly.
He smiled. “Reckless with nice hair. That’s me.”
Rian snorted. “That *is* what I call him.”
Warmth curled low in my belly.
Ashra crooned. *We approve. Mate jumps into stupid places for us. Good mate.*
I shoved down the surge of feeling.
“We should go,” I said. “Kellan will have my hide if I miss evening drills.”
Tiernan’s smile softened. “He’ll have mine first,” he said. “Come on, stormheart. Let’s get you back before you melt my Beta’s horse.”
“I am not melting any horses,” I muttered.
“Yet,” Rian said cheerfully.
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