Lachlan
Training used to be about punishment and escape—two sides of the same coin. These days it felt like preparation. I'd wake, stretch, run the same blocks down the same streets, and every knocked-over cone, every sprint, every bag I hit had a reason now: not only to win, but to make sure no one could ever take me by surprise.
Ria sat in the corner of the ring during mittwork, arms wrapped around herself, eyes steady like a lighthouse. Her presence was an anchor. When Chiron pushed me harder—angles I hadn't worked, breathwork that scraped the inside of my lungs—I kept thinking of the people who made the sound of my life more than any title could.
After training, we sat on the rusted steps outside the gym. Detroit smelled like rain and old gum, like the city had been stitched together from smaller losses. I breathed deep.
"You think they'll actually show?" I asked.
Ria laced her fingers together. "If they're smart, yes. If they're shortsighted, they'll send a salesman and a lawyer. If they're dangerous, they'll send men with cash and threats."
I chewed the inside of my cheek. "I don't want to go."
"You don't have to." She said it like a shield. "Not now. Not if you don't want to."
"And if I do?" I asked. "What if they offer what I don't even know I might need? Education, safety—stuff that sounds like sense when a man's tired."
She looked at me like the answer lay on my skin. "Then you ask hard questions. You bring someone who remembers what they look like in blood. You take the offers with a lawyer, or not at all. You stay the Ghost. You don't become a prince for someone else's altar."
There it was again—the idea of choice like a blade. I'd never been good at choosing things for myself. I'd always been better at choosing who to fight.
Samson's name flickered in my head like a burned-in lamp. The champion who called me a dog and promised to show me the difference between myth and god. He wanted a fight. He wanted me to be the thing he could smash to prove his legend.
I squinted at the skyline. The lights of the city looked small compared to what I'd felt under San Diego's cage lights. The world was already making decisions about me. I could either let them decide, or I could keep deciding for myself.
Chiron's plan was simple and ugly: keep moving, don't isolate, make them work for access to me. I added another layer: train in public, show no fear, let the world see that I belonged to myself.
That night, when the gym emptied and the city hummed, I walked to the old ring in the back and wrapped my hands the way my father used to. The dream would come back sometimes—Thailand, voices, the smell of fish sauce and rain. It felt like a thing that wanted to tug me in two directions at once.
I hit the bag until the lights blurred. Not to make a headline—not to be seen—but to make something inside me stop listening to the noise.
When my arms finally fell, exhausted and steady, I thought of Makii's hand on my shoulder, of Ariel's forehead on his back. I thought of Ria's steady warmth and Chiron's ledger of promises. I thought of Samson and his empire, of belts and cameras, and of being skinned like a prize for show.
I rolled my shoulders, and the ache of the fight settled into me like a new scar. Somewhere, men were deciding what I was worth. Somewhere, a man in a suit might be polishing a plan. But for now—the now that I could touch—I had breath, earth, and a choice.
I walked home in the rain, footsteps slow. I could hear the echo of my father's warning and feel the heat of the ring where blood had taught me to be careful. I didn't know what tomorrow would bring, but I knew this much: the world would find out whether I would be taken, or whether I would take my own name and keep it.
And for the first time since the bell in San Diego, I slept without waking to the sound of commands.