Chapter 179: Flow with It

Silence lingered for a beat after Orion’s brief, flawless display, the kind of silence that tastes like the moment before a bell rings.

Sophia felt it in her bones: the small, electric hush of people who’d just witnessed something beyond ordinary practice. She didn’t clap. She didn’t say anything. Instead she let her breath steady and tried to tamp down the stupid grin that wanted to creep across her face. He’d shown off. Of course he had. He always did. And of course she had liked it.

Nia was the one who broke the quiet. "You expect us to be able to do that?" she demanded, incredulous, hands still on her wooden sword.

Orion let the question hang for a moment, then smiled without mirth. "Not from the start," he said. "That was a picture...a thing to aim at. You won’t begin there. You’ll begin with the pieces that make it up."

He moved down the line with the slow, purposeful patience of someone who’d taught before and learned how fast a body took to habit. "Grip. Stance. Intention," he said, ticking off the three again, softer this time so he could watch their faces. "Grip controls the blade. Stance controls your body. Intention controls the fight. Forget one and the others will betray you."

He turned and demonstrated the simplest thing: how to hold the wooden shortsword with the thumb and forefinger relaxed but sure, the wrist a hinge and not a clamp; how the off-hand counterbalanced the lead, a small, quiet correction that made the weapon feel like an extension and not an intruder. When he finished he moved along the line, touching and correcting shoulders, a thumb at an elbow, the soft pressure of a hand on a wrist.

When he reached Sophia he slowed. Not much, only a hair’s breadth, but it was enough. He bent, the cold on his breath as natural as frost, and his hand hovered near her forearm. "Tilt the wrist down a hair," he murmured, and the words came close to her ear, so close she could feel them more than hear them. "Relax the thumb. Let the blade breathe. I told you before, don’t choke it."

His fingers grazed the back of her hand as he adjusted. The touch was professional, precise, but the air between them was anything but.

Orion inhaled deeply like her scent was his drug. It brought him a sense of calm, the same one she felt in her bones too.

He moved his lips so it was just a few distance from her ear, and traced his tongue discreetly around the back before speaking. "Since when did you become so naughty?"

Sophia glanced around and noticed no one was paying attention to them. They were all focused on their weapons. Nia frowned at her own like if she did hard enough, she would understand exactly how Orion had been able to use his so freely or maybe she would become a swords master from doing so.

But that gave Sophia time to reply. "And since when did you get so boastful?" She muttered at Orion.

"Boastful?" He asked her.

"You’ve been showing off, who are you doing it for?" She asked him.

He smiled. "It seems the person I was doing it for noticed." He told her.

"I want to say I was not impressed." She told him.

"But that would be a lie because you were. I could feel your gaze in me every step of the way." He told her.

"Aren’t you supposed to be training people, alpha? If you spend too much time with me, people will suspect." She told him.

Orion bit back a smile. This was the reason why he had kept her group for last. This connection between them that could make him forget that Holly was paying attention to them.

"Don’t miss me too much, I’ll just be training some other people." He told Sophia.

Hee lips curved as she gripped the sword better. "I’ll be seeing you, I’m part of the people remember?"

Orion chuckled lightly then with one lingering touch, moved to Nia.

"Right foot turns slightly out. Don’t lock the knee, bend it. The pivot comes from the hips, not the ankle." He guided her through a simple shifting drill: step, twist, snap.

Nia tried, then tried again, face flushed, muscles protesting. "I don’t get it," she said finally. "If I’m using this stance then what about the footwork? Aren’t sword styles supposed to have set steps?"

Orion gave a short laugh. "Yes and no." He straightened and faced them. "Longswords have formal footwork. They are long lines with committed advances and reach. It’s different for every fighter. For Axe fighters, their footwork is more about how they distribute their weight. They plant, drive, and let momentum do the work. Shortswords are... more democratic."

"What do you mean?" Joren asked him with intrigue.

"I mean they are not limited to one footwork. You can borrow footwork from any one. You just have to adapt and make it your own." He told them but everyone stared with a frown.

"Watch." He told them.

He moved to the open space and showed them, deliberately contrasting two styles. First he took up a measured, ballroom-like pattern: forward step, pivot, half-lunge, recover. His feet were light, efficient. "That footwork, was for those who fight using longswords," he told them. "They control the distance. Keep them at the end of your reach or inside it on your terms."

Then he shifted, and the rhythm changed. His feet rooted, then drove — a short, heavy stomp that let the hips deliver the cut. "Axe footwork," he said. "Power comes from the whole body; you don’t waste it." The snow kicked up around his boots as he stopped, breath steady. "See the difference? Both useful. Both true."

Sophia watched every shift in his weight like a student marking chord changes in a song.

When he came back to the shortsword he grinned. "Shortswords... take the fine parts. You’ll steal the footwork that suits your frame. The trick is to find the rhythm that lets your body speak the easiest."

Laia rolled her eyes. "So we just... pick what feels nice and call it a day?"

"Not quite." Orion’s voice was patient. "You try. You test. You get corrected. And then you try some more. The body remembers the pattern in ten thousand repetitions. The mind only gets there with patience."