“Alphas are systems thinkers, so you have more in common with scientists than you think. It’s just your focus is on the complex web of interconnected relationships between people, whereas ours is on the building blocks of life itself.”
“So what do we have when we’re together, as a pack?” he prompted gently.
“I don’t know,” I said. “And that’s got my attention.” He grinned at that. “I guess that’s what we try and find out?”
“How’re we doing here?” Bjorn asked in a chipper tone, both of us jumping as a result. It felt like he’d appeared from nowhere. We quickly finished off our forms and then pushed them his way. “All right, I’m going to take you through a safety and throwing basics tutorial, and then you can have a go. The good thing is axe throwing is more of a precision sport than a strength based one, so you’re both on relatively equal footing here.”
I snorted at that, then eyed Fen’s massive form. His biceps were huge, so how that could be true, I didn’t know, but I was about to find out.
“So the firstthing you need to know is that this is not your usual axe. They have a broad head.” Bjorn gestured to the axe he was holding. “And these have much slimmer heads, which allow them to dig into the wood without a huge amount of effort.”
He threw the axe with a nonchalant ease, and it spun through the air and dug into the wood like it was no big thing.
“So it’s not about throwing an axe with all your might, to try and bury it in the concrete behind the wood. It’s about getting your form right and going for accuracy.”
Bjorn showed us all of this—how to throw one- and two-handed, how and where to stand, where the onlookers needed to stand for safety purposes, how not to throw too high and too low and what to do if you did. The axes fell onto the rubber mat over and over as he showed us the wrong way to do things. Then finally, he stepped free of the lane and gestured for Fen to have a go.
So he’d picked the perfect date to take me on. I was itching to have a go, as it seemed like a simple activity which didn’t require too much skill, since despite my ability inside the classroom, PE had been the death of me.
I wasn’t super clumsy or anything, but my body didn’t naturally do what it needed to with enough speed, grace, or skill, not like I did in theory classes. My sheer ordinariness when it came to sport kinda infuriated me. Then there was them.
Watching the Vanguards playing sport was a painful thing. While they could be restless or find it hard to focus in the classroom—well, Haze, Fen, and Ryan did—on the field was a whole other thing. They were demons on the football field, the basketball court, or whatever sport we were forced to play. I’d be trying to follow the instructions, thinking if I focussed hard enough, I’d uncover the secrets of how to be good at sport. But then the boys would strip their shirts off, moving like panthers in pack formation, and like every other girl there waiting on the sidelines, I would just sigh.
Like I did right now. One of Fen’s boots was planted against the line, the other supporting his weight behind him. His T-shirt stretched over his body, revealing his epic musculature to everyone here, or so it felt, before his hand whipped forward, sending the axe flying through the air.
Thud!When the head buried itself into the wood, Fen turned to me with that same boyish grin on his face, and somehow, that made everything all right. Even if he was Alpha Vanguard now, he was still my Fen.
My Fen.
Sometimes, you want something for so long, you get tied to the wanting and don’t really know what to do with the having.
He was my Fen if I wanted him—he’d made that clear. If I went over and slid a hand up the back of his shirt, the way I’d always dreamed, that smile would only grow wider. He wanted me to touch him, discover him, in all the ways I’d thought about as a teenager, and to be blunt, all the ways I’d wanted to since. So when he turned to me with an expectant look in his eyes, my nipples pulsing traitorously, I had to remind myself why we were here.
That’s right—throwing axes.
I ambled over and grabbed an axe as directed from the bucket, hefting it slightly to get a feel for it. Not super heavy or anything. Bjorn smiled encouragingly but seemed to sense that he shouldn’t get too close, if the sidelong look he shot at Fen was anything to go by.
“You might want to try the two-handed throw first…” he started to say, but Fen moved in, stepping up and then pressing his front against my back, those strong arms going around mine.
“You know you could let me just have a go first,” I said, pretending like this wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be.
“And where’s the fun in that?” he murmured against my hair. “I wanna stay right here for as long as I can. All right, thumbs running along the shaft.” I snickered at that word, demonstrating with exaggerated care that I had the proper grip. “Don’t hold it too tight. Aim it where you want it to go, and then…”
He didn’t direct my throw, just supported me as I made it, my heart in my throat as soon as the axe left my fingers, but that reassuringclunksound as the blade bit into the wood was everything.
“Well done!” Bjorn said. “All right, let’s do a few practice rounds, try each of the different throws, and then we can try something a little more competitive.”
I’d heardabout axe throwing before and just dismissed it as some kind of hipster bullshit, but now that I was having a go, I was beginning to see the appeal. In some ways, it was a perfect sport for a beginner, as the learning curve wasn’t that high. I snuck looks at the other lanes, saw big men performing more complex throws, but at its heart, it was a deceptively simple activity. Then Bjorn started to make things more challenging.
Our axes were all stowed away safely when he produced some balloons, tying them to different parts of the target, giving us new areas to focus on.
“Five balloons,” Bjorn said with a grin. “Whoever ends up with the most popped wins.”
“A competition? Care to make this interesting, Red?” Fen asked in a low purr.
“What, you want to create a pot?” I asked, reaching for my wallet, but he just shook his head.
“Money doesn’t really interest me,” he said, his eyes sliding over me, thankfully with his back to Bjorn. My eyebrow jerked up in response to his innuendo.