Chapter Four

Sami

When I’d asked Harvard if I’d see him tomorrow, I thought it’d be at, like, breakfast or something. Maybe we could share a meal and talk some more.

Boy, was I kidding myself.

Training started with a thunderous racket in the hallway outside my room at ridiculous o’clock in the morning. It sounded like firecrackers. I hadn’t been asleep for even two hours when the door burst open and a gorgeous black woman stalked in. She hauled me out of bed and ordered me to get dressed.

Disoriented, adrenaline pumping, I struggled into the workout clothes and sneakers she thrust at me. She wore something similar—black running shorts and a T-shirt that said HORNET across her chest.

Men’s voices boomed through the hallway.

“Let’s go! Let’s go!” the woman said but then blocked the doorway as I tried to exit. She tapped the corner of her full bottom lip with one finger. “Uh-uh. That has to go.”

I pushed my tongue against my lip ring. Okay, that sucked. I crossed to the bathroom and studied my reflection in the mirror over the sink. I had thick hair and had recently started shaving one side of my head and leaving the other long. I liked the asymmetrical style. It was on trend and cut back on the amount of hair I had to deal with. My roots were my natural dark brown, almost black, and my ends platinum blond. As I took out the lip ring, I wondered if they’d make me change my hair, too, and wasn’t entirely sure what I’d do if they demanded it. I wanted to change my life, but I didn’t want to lose me in the process.

“Move it, Blackwood!” the woman ordered. “They’re leaving without us.”

The small hoop clinked against the sink when I set it down. My face looked bare without it. My lip felt weird.

I was still me. Still Sami. And just maybe I’d come out of this a better version of me.

I raced after the woman. She was already halfway down the hall, gaining fast on a line of men. I broke into a run but was already huffing and puffing by the time I caught up just outside the dorm. They kept going, so I sucked in a deep breath and followed across the flat plains.

The sun wasn’t up yet, but the promise of it glinted on the horizon, making the looming mountains look dark, foreboding. Of course, we were headed right toward them. Did they expect us to run up the damn things? If so, they might as well bury me right here in this cow pasture.

The terrain got steeper. We passed piles of snow that had once been so deep even the June sun hadn’t managed to melt it all yet. We lost several men to exhaustion as the path climbed higher. My muscles ached, my head pounded with every footfall, and the morning air, still cold from a winter clinging on up here in the mountains, stung my lungs. Even so, I refused to stop like those others had. I would drag my sorry ass up this mountain even if I had to crawl the last little bit.

Secretly, I was glad to see I wasn’t the only one struggling. I wasn’t even at the back of the pack. One of the guys with a head full of pretty golden curls started limping with each step and fell behind the group. I slowed my pace because he looked like he was in real pain. He stumbled and fell to his hands and knees. I stopped, breath sawing painfully in and out, and glanced to the top of the ridge, where I could see the fastest runners stopping. It wasn’t too much farther. We were almost there. He couldn’t quit now.

I backtracked and jogged in place in front of him. If I stopped moving, I might have ended up in the dirt beside him. I didn’t know his name, so I gave him one. “Hey, Crash. You can’t stop, buddy. We’re so close.”

He looked up at me, his face drawn tight in pain. “Hurts,” he gasped. Only then did I notice the thick, ridged scars covering the entire left side of his body from his neck down. Burn scars.

Holy…shit.

This guy had literally walked through fire already. No fucking way was I letting him stop now. I crouched down and wedged my shoulder under one arm just as two more of the trainees reversed course and came back to help. One of the newcomers looked so much like a bigger, burlier version of the actor Kit Harington, I had the half-delirious urge to shout, “You know nothing, Jon Snow!” at him. He took Crash’s weight from me, which I appreciated. I was only 5’3” and 125 pounds, and Crash was at least twice my size.

The third guy flashed a bright smile like we hadn’t been running for miles and miles and tucked his shoulder under Crash’s free arm. “Hey, there. I’m Remy, and that’s Wolfe-Boy.”

“Jeremiah Wolfe,” the Jon Snow look-alike corrected. “Friends call me Wolfe.”

“Sami,” I said and motioned to my new friend as they got him standing upright again. “I don’t know his name.”

“This is Gavin, but I like your nickname for him better,” Remy said. “C’mon, you got this, Crash, my man. Almost there.”

As Wolfe and Remy supported Gavin up the last little bit of the trail, I jogged slowly behind them to make sure they made it. Not that I could help if they didn’t. If the three of them tumbled backward, they’d take me down the mountainside with them.

The four of us were the last to reach the top. Several of the other trainees had collapsed. Remy and Wolfe sat Gavin down on a boulder, then dropped to the ground on either side of him. Just as I suspected, as soon as I stopped moving, my legs turned to Jell-O. I sank to the ground. Really, it was more a semi-graceful fall than a sit.

Someone shoved a water bottle under my nose. “Here.”

I accepted it, twisted off the cap, and downed the bottle in several long gulps. Only then did I realize Harvard had handed me the water. He crouched in front of me, and, dammit, he didn’t even look winded. How was that possible?

“Feel better?” he asked.

I nodded and swiped at my mouth with one sweaty forearm. I’m sure I looked like I’d been dragged up a mountainside. Because, you know, I had been. Not exactly how I wanted to look when I saw him again. I battled back the unfamiliar surge of self-consciousness. I’d never before cared what I looked like or, for that matter, what a guy thought of my looks. It was weird. I didn’t like it.

“Uh, thanks for the water.”

“You earned it,” he said simply. “The first time I did this run, I made it halfway and hurled.”

He was giving me too much credit here. I kind of felt like puking now that the water I’d gulped hit my stomach.

As if he just realized what he’d said, his neck flushed, and his ears turned red. “Uh, sorry. TMI. But you did well. You stayed with the group right up until the end.”

Right up until the end, when I stopped and let everyone else pass me. I’d come in last.

Had this been some kind of test? Did coming in last mean I was going to be cut from the program? But I didn’t want to leave yet. If you’d asked me yesterday if I thought I could run up a mountain, I’d have laughed in your face. But this morning I did it, and I felt like Wonder Woman. An exhausted Wonder Woman, but still. I wanted to see what else I could do.

Past Harvard’s shoulder, I caught sight of Gavin bent double with his head in his hands. “Someone should check on him.”

He glanced over and nodded. “Jesse, our medic, will take care of him.”

“Your…what?” Not understanding, I narrowed my eyes. Did he mean his class had a medic? Just how far along in the training was he? Before I could open my mouth to ask, a voice boomed across the mountain.

“Recruits! Listen up.”

I looked toward the muscular man with skull-trimmed hair and gray eyes. He radiated authority. Yeah, nobody would doubt that he was in charge.

“I’m Quinn,” he said. “For the next two years, you’re mine, and I plan to put you through hell. You’ll jump when I tell you to. You’ll run, shoot, sleep, eat, and even shit at my command. You gotta problem with that…” He swung an arm toward the path we’d just ascended. “There’s the way out.”

Nobody moved. I looked at Harvard. He was grinning. No doubt he’d heard this all before.

“All right,” Quinn said after a long pause. “Welcome to training, Class Alpha. On your feet. We’re not done yet.”

Nobody dared groan out loud, but you could feel it in the air as everyone scrambled upright.

“Except you four,” Quinn added and motioned to me, Remy, Gavin, and Wolfe. Being singled out like that felt a whole lot like getting called to the principal’s office when I was a kid. Which had happened. A lot.

What can I say? I was precocious.

As everyone else disappeared down the path, Quinn pinned us with his gaze. “What happened back there?”

Gavin cleared his throat and climbed to his feet. He was pale and shaky but snapped into rigid military posture. “I fell, sir. They were just helping me. If they did something wrong, it’s on me. Not them.”

“Fuck that,” Remy said. He didn’t seem the least bit intimidated by Quinn, and I had to give the guy major props for that. “I didn’t do anything wrong. I wasn’t leaving him while he was hurting.”

“What he said.” Wolfe just crossed his arms over his chest and met Quinn’s stare without even a flicker of apprehension. Maybe it was a guy thing? Because Quinn scared the shit out of me.

When those gray eyes shifted to me, I tried to keep my nerves out of my voice. “I made the choice to go back and help Gavin, and I’d do it again.”

Several beats passed in tense silence. Then something that might have been a smile twisted Quinn’s lips. “Good answers. It’s important to be at your physical best, but that’s not all there is to this program. HORNET is more than a team. We’re a family, and we always have our brother’s”—his gaze flicked to me—“or sister’s six. Remember that, and you four will be okay.” With that, he took off down the path, as graceful as a freaking gazelle despite the bulk of his muscles.

Remy let out a breath. “Someone have a wipe? I think I just shit myself.”

“Move it, recruits!” Quinn’s voice boomeranged back at us, and we all got our Usain Bolt on.

By the time we made it back to the dorm, the sun was high in the sky, almost directly overhead, and the cold of the mountain air had burned away. I dripped sweat and wasn’t sure how I was even still moving. I’d stumbled a couple times on the way down, and Gavin had been the one to come to my rescue each time. The conversation with Quinn at the top of the mountain seemed to invigorate him, and he’d called encouragement when one of us started lagging.

I liked these guys. Having a cheerleader in my corner was nice. I’d never had anything like it before.

Quinn waited for us in front of the dorm, standing over the other recruits as they all did push-ups. So the run was just the start of it.

I looked at my new friends. Wolfe gave a whatcha-gonna-do shrug and dropped to the ground, joining in with the next rep.

God, I thought as I lowered myself into a plank between Wolfe and Remy. What had I gotten myself into?