"Onyx." Dex chose his words carefully. "He performed well this morning. Significantly better than the older juveniles."

"He did," Morholt confirmed. No inflection.

"I understand we shouldn’t coddle him. He’s a dragon, not a pet, regardless of what those two think." Dex paused. "But the laps. The reprimand."

Morholt’s expression didn’t change.

"Why the harshness with her?" Dex asked. The question was direct, Commander to Colonel.

"Orders from King Tiberon," Morholt answered. "Given while you were in Orosia. After training her, I see why."

Fin stepped forward, arms folded. "What does that mean?"

Morholt looked between the Commander and the Alpha King, two of the most powerful men on the continent, both asking him the same question with the same protective edge in their voices.

He was either unintimidated or too disciplined to show it.

"It means, Frostborne is the most creatively disobedient trainee I have encountered in twenty-three years of military service."

Dex blinked.

"She doesn’t break rules," Morholt continued, hands clasped behind his back. "She finds the edges where rules stop existing and walks straight through them."

Fin’s brow rose. "Examples."

"The climbing wall. Fifty feet. The warriors scale it in under thirty seconds using upper body strength. She studied the wall before attempting it, and mapped every stone that jutted out further than the others."

Morholt’s jaw tightened. "She created a route that no one else had noticed and scaled it without breaking a sweat. Didn’t break a rule. Just rendered the exercise irrelevant."

"The obstacle course," Morholt continued. "There’s a rope section over a water pit. On the first day, she fell in, as expected. On day two, she brought a rope from the equipment rack with her and created a grappling line to bypass the section entirely. Vaelor used it after her, and all the cadets behind them followed."

He exhaled through his nose. "When I reprimanded her, she asked if there was a written rule. There isn’t. I checked."

Gav, who had appeared at some point during this conversation because the man had a sixth sense for entertainment, snorted.

"Don’t get me started on the damn pole." Morholt’s voice flattened. "No one can climb it on their first day. That’s the point. It’s fifty feet with no handholds and requires upper body strength."

He shook his head and stared at the ground, as if he were reliving a memory. "Frostborne used the storage shed roof to gain fifteen feet of height, and another damn rope to make a grappling line. Rang the bell on her first attempt."

Dex’s lips were visibly twitching.

Fin was no longer trying to hide it. He was grinning.

"She continues to treat my obstacle course like a puzzle. I didn’t build it to be solved by a loophole. I built it to be suffered through."

"It’s one thing that she does it. But it’s an issue when all of the warriors behind her copy. I’ve had to create rules and change the damn obstacle course more times in the last few weeks than I have in a decade because of Frostborne."

Morholt dropped to a register that suggested this particular memory caused him physical pain. "Don’t even get me started on the matter of her Alpha speed."

He looked directly at Dex.

"I was not aware she had it. And she hid it."

Dex frowned. "She hid that she could use alpha speed?"

"For weeks. She ran every lap at the same pace as Vaelor. Last place. I’ve never heard of a woman having Alpha speed. Shame on me for not asking."

His jaw worked.

"Then one morning, Vaelor had stumbled on a root. She blurred, catching Vaelor’s arm before she hit the ground and steadied her, and in doing so, moved at a speed that was not consistent with anything she had demonstrated previously."

"She’d been holding back to stay with Vaelor," Gav said. It wasn’t a question. "Sounds right."

"When I confronted her about it, she said, and I quote, ’Elara is my best friend. I’m not leaving her behind.’ As if that was a satisfactory military explanation."

"I ordered her to run at her actual full speed. Her time is first in the entire regiment, outside of you, Commander."

The silence stretched.

"It sounds like you’re not training a standard soldier, Colonel. You’re training a strategist," Fin said.

"That might be. But, to answer your question about the clapping," Morholt said, circling back to the morning’s infraction. "They clap for everything. Every damn incremental improvement. They also hug after exercises."

He said the word hug like it was a foreign concept that had been introduced to his training field without his consent.

"I have considered issuing a formal directive on physical contact during training hours and I am not confident it would change anything. The hugging is just demoralizing."

Gav was dying. Quietly, politely, but dying.

"I have trained warriors for over two decades," Morholt continued. "I have never had trainees who applaud each other during combat exercises. I have never had a trainee map an obstacle course like a military campaign and have the balls to ask which regulation was violated. And I have never had someone finish in last place on purpose."

He looked at Dex. Then at Fin.

"King Tiberon warned Halvek and I. We underestimated the warning."

Across the field, Serena and Elara had finished their sparring rotation. They were walking back toward the water station.

As they passed the juvenile dragon group, both of their heads turned in perfect synchronization.

Onyx was still performing flawlessly, sitting in formation with his chest puffed out, waiting for them to notice.

They noticed.

Both gave him a silent small clap, hands close to their bodies, barely visible, a covert gesture of parental pride executed with the subtlety of a spy operation.

Onyx wiggled.

Morholt saw it.

He chose, for the first time in his career, to look the other way. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Aegon spoke in Dexmon’s mind.

Aegon: That’s our mate.

Dex: I’m not upset.

Aegon: Oh I know. You’re turned on and can’t show it.