The speed was horrifying.
One mont Katerina was standing fifty ters away. The next she was on Eve, her enhanced movent leaving afterimages, her fist driving toward Eve’s face with enough force to shatter bone.
Eve’s instincts kicked in....her parents’ knowledge surging forward without conscious thought. She twisted, felt the displaced air as Katerina’s fist missed by centiters, and created distance with a burst of succubus speed that surprised even herself.
Katerina smiled...a fierce, delighted expression that suggested the fight might actually be interesting.
"Good," she said. "You’re not completely useless. This might actually be fun."
She ca again, and this ti Eve was ready.
What followed was brutal, technical, and beautiful in its violence.
Katerina fought like soone who’d spent three centuries perfecting the art of breaking things....efficient, economical, every movent serving a purpose. No wasted motion. No hesitation. Just relentless, overwhelming pressure designed to break opponents through sheer sustained assault.
Eve fought like soone desperately trying to stay alive.
She dodged, blocked, created distance when Katerina got too close, used energy constructs to keep the warrior at bay. The knowledge her parents had passed to her was there...bat techniques, defensive positions, counters to specific attacks....but accessing it consciously while under active assault was like trying to read a book while being punched in the face.
Katerina’s energy projection was constant, aggressive, designed to destabilize. Eve could feel it battering at her consciousness, trying to trigger emotional responses....fear, arousal, the instinct to submit or flee. Her succubus nature was processing it, converting the hostile energy into sothing she could feed from, but it was uncomfortable, almost painful, like swallowing fire.
They’d been fighting for maybe three minutes when Katerina landed her first real hit....a palm strike to Eve’s sternum that sent her flying backward, skidding across the packed earth, the breath knocked completely from her lungs.
The crowd made sounds....gasps, cheers, depending on who they were supporting.
Eve struggled to her feet, tasting blood where she’d bitten her tongue on impact. Through the bond, she felt her mates’ fury and fear, felt them fighting the instinct to interfere.
Katerina didn’t give her ti to recover. She closed the distance again, and this ti Eve couldn’t dodge fast enough.
What followed was...educational.
Katerina demonstrated exactly why she commanded military forces. She broke through Eve’s defenses systematically, landed hits that were calculated to hurt without doing permanent damage, pushed Eve around the arena like a cat playing with a mouse.
Eve tried everything Raphael had taught her. Energy whips....Katerina snapped them like thread. Projection techniques....Katerina’s ntal shields were impenetrable. Defensive constructs....Katerina shattered them with casual contempt.
Five minutes in, Eve was bleeding from a split lip and a cut above her eyebrow. Her ribs ached from multiple hits. Her left wrist throbbed from a block that hadn’t quite worked.
Ten minutes in, she was starting to understand what "overwheld" actually ant.
Katerina was....she was just better. At everything. Every technique Eve tried, Katerina had seen before, had countered before, had probably invented the counter for. The experience gap wasn’t just significant....it was existential.
From the stands, Eve could hear pack mbers making sounds of distress. Could feel through the bond her mates’ helpless rage, their desperate desire to protect her warring with the knowledge that interference would an imdiate disqualification.
"Is this all you have?" Katerina asked, not even breathing hard despite the sustained combat. "Parlor tricks and basic defensive moves? This is what the great Seraphim heir brings to challenge ?"
She grabbed Eve by the throat, lifted her off the ground with one hand...her combat enhancent making her strong enough to toss Eve like a ragdoll. "Pathetic. You’re not worthy to command warriors. You’re barely worthy to be called Luna of that pack of yours."
She threw Eve across the arena.
Eve hit the ground hard, rolled, struggled to her feet on shaking legs. Blood dripped from the cut above her eyebrow, tracking down her face. Her body was screaming with pain from multiple hits. Her power reserves were depleting faster than she could replenish them through feeding on Katerina’s hostile energy.
She was losing. Badly.
And everyone watching knew it.
Through blurred vision, Eve saw Lady Seraphine in the stands....the faction leader’s expression carefully neutral, but her pale eyes assessing, calculating whether her new alliance had been a mistake.
Saw Raphael, his face tight with concern but also...sothing else. Expectation. Like he was waiting for sothing.
Saw her mates, all three of them on their feet, held back only by pack discipline and the knowledge that interference would harm rather than help.
Katerina was walking toward her with unhurried confidence, clearly preparing to end this. To break sothing decisively enough that Eve either submitted or fell unconscious, making victory official.
"I gave you three days to prepare," Katerina said. "Three days to find whatever edge you thought you had. This is the result? This is the best the lost heir can do?"
She grabbed Eve by the front of her leather armor, lifted her partially off the ground.
"When this is over," Katerina continued, "you’re going to publicly acknowledge that you’re not ready for the throne. That you need more ti, more training, more growth before anyone should take your claim seriously. And then....if you’re smart....you’ll withdraw from Court politics entirely. Find a nice pack to hide in. Let the adults handle governing."
Her fist drew back, clearly preparing for the finishing blow.
And sothing in Eve.....sothing that had been watching, waiting, assessing....finally had enough.
The knowledge ca flooding forward.
Not hesitant. Not uncertain. Complete and devastating and absolutely sure of itself.
Her mother’s combat techniques, perfected over two hundred years. Her father’s strategic brilliance, accumulated through centuries of political warfare. The combined power of the Seraphim royal line, passed down through generations and condensed in the dreams they’d given her.
All of it, activated by genuine need.
Eve’s eyes flooded with green light....brighter than they’d ever glowed before, bright enough that several people in the stands flinched.
And she moved.
Her hand ca up and caught Katerina’s descending fist....not struggling against the superior strength, but redirecting it, using the warrior’s own montum against her in a technique that was pure Lilith Seraphim.
Katerina’s eyes widened...the first genuine surprise Eve had seen from her.
Eve twisted, used leverage rather than strength, and threw Katerina.
Actually threw her. Tossed the five-hundred-year-old warrior across the arena like Katerina had been tossing Eve.
The crowd exploded into noise.
Katerina hit the ground, rolled with predatory grace, and ca up with an expression that had shifted from contempt to genuine interest.
"There you are," she said, and for the first ti, she sounded pleased. "I was beginning to think Azrael’s daughter had inherited nothing but his pretty eyes."
Eve didn’t respond with words. She was beyond words.
What followed was different.
Eve stopped fighting defensively, stopped trying to avoid damage, stopped playing the role of overwheld young heir struggling against impossible odds.
She attacked.
Her mother’s techniques flowed through her like water....energy constructs that were more sophisticated than anything she’d created before, moving in ways that suggested genuine mastery rather than basic competence. Projection abilities that actually affected Katerina, making the warrior’s movents hesitate fractionally as emotional manipulation found microscopic gaps in her legendary shields.
And the feeding....Eve stopped trying to just process Katerina’s aggressive energy. She started drinking it. Pulling from it actively, converting the hostile projection into fuel that replenished her depleting reserves faster than the combat was draining them.
Katerina noticed....her expression shifting from interest to sothing that might have been concern.
"You’re feeding from my combat energy," she said. "That’s....that shouldn’t be possible. That energy is weaponized specifically to prevent that kind of processing."
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