Living Nightmare Read Free Page B

weight around that no one could see. Maybe he was. As leader of the Theronai, the man probably had a lot on his plate.
    Yet he still found the time to train with her nearly every day. No one had ever taken that kind of time with her before. Not the uncle who took her in when her parents died, and sure as hell not her own father. But things were different since the Sentinels had taken her in. The ancient blood running in her veins allowed her to become a Gerai—a human who aided the Sentinels in their war—but that didn’t mean they had to put a roof over her head or pay for her education. They could have left her to make her own way, but thanks to Thomas—a Theronai who had sacrificed his life to save another—she now had a home at Dabyr. And a future.
    She found herself craving the time she spent with Joseph, soaking up everything he had to teach her. She desperately wanted to make him proud, though she knew she was a long way off from that kind of miracle.
    “You were going to chop my head off,” she argued. “What did you want me to do?”
    “Ducking would have worked. Not being in the way of my sword when it comes at you is always a good option.”
    Carmen shoved herself away from him in frustration and stepped to the far edge of the practice mat. She was panting, sweating like crazy, and feeling like she was about to fall over. Joseph wasn’t even winded.
    He’d told her several times that she was going to regret asking him to train her, and now she was beginning to believe him. Not that she could ever let him know. He’d be way too smug and self-satisfied and she’d have to kill him for real then.
    She couldn’t give up learning to fight. There were too many evil things in the world—things that stole people from their loved ones. Someone needed to kill them, and even though she was only one puny human, she intended to be the deadliest puny human the Synestryn had ever seen.
    But the training wasn’t going as fast as she’d hoped. She needed to be out there, fighting the good fight. Right now. Frustration weighed down on her, making her anxious and impatient. “This is pointless. It’s not like the things I’ll be fighting use swords, anyway. Teeth and claws, sure, but not swords.”
    The worry lines around his mouth deepened with his frown for a second before his expression went back to the neutral, patient mask he always wore while teaching her. “It’s good for your reflexes, builds your strength, and even if the things you fight don’t use a sword, you need to. It’s the best weapon for the job, next to magical firepower. Besides, I’m in charge of what you learn. You don’t like it, you can always walk away.”
    “Nice try. No thanks.”
    Joseph shrugged. “Your call. Just like it’s your call when you let me read Thomas’s note.”
    Thomas. Just the mention of his name made her insides shrivel a little with sadness. He’d been good to her when no one else seemed to care whether she even existed. She’d known him for only a few hours, but those hours had changed her life. Sometimes, she thought she’d fallen in love with him.
    “I’m not ready,” she told Joseph.
    “It’s been months since his death.”
    Months since he’d handed her a note she’d been unable to read. It was his death wish—his dying wish—and she’d promised Thomas she’d let Joseph read it first.
    Carmen wasn’t ready for that. What if it was full of pity for the slutty teenager who’d come on to a man way too old for her? Way too good for her? She’d thrown herself at Thomas, but he hadn’t taken the offer. He’d treated her with respect—something no other man had ever done before him. What if that had all been an act and the note said not to trust the whacko kid who would slide her tits over anything with a penis? What if it said to keep her away from other teens so her trampy ways didn’t rub off on the young, impressionable girls?
    Not that she’d done anything like that. She’d kept her