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The next few days went by somewhat smoothly. I hadn't really spoken to Eric since our conversation in the infirmary. He had pointed out the flaws in my interpretation of the combat methods that Four had began to teach us, but that was it. I caught myself looking at him more often than usual. His softer tone still echoing in my head. Maybe he wasn't as cold as people thought.

Our training routine had only slightly changed. Instead of shooting in the morning and knife throwing in the afternoon, now it was both in the morning and combat training in the afternoon. We would have an hour or so of instruction from Four and then he would send us to the bright orange punching bags to practice.

Today, unfortunately, was the first day of actual fighting. We were told that our performance would weigh heavily on how we were going to be ranked during the first phase. No pressure, right?

"Who do you think they're going to pair us up against?" Olivia asked Kristen and I as she walked beside us. I could tell she was nervous, but I couldn't blame her. Her fighting over the couple of days hadn't been great, but coming from Amity, it was expected. She should still make the cut though.

"I don't know to be honest," I shrugged as we walked into the training room after lunch. Knowing Eric, I was expecting the worst. My fighting had surprisingly been pretty good. My brother was astounded at this fact, but didn't expect anything less. He told me that he too had caught on pretty fast at the fighting aspect of training during initiation, so it was only expected that I did as well. He said it was probably due to the fact that we were trained to pay close attention to the things we were taught when we were younger due to our overbearing father.

Our trio was the first to return to the training room. Eric stood with his back to us as he paired names together on the chalkboard. I couldn't see my name yet so I turned my attention to Four, who was cleaning up some of the knives from earlier. I excused myself from the girls and made my way over to him.

Without a word, I began to help him clean up the scattered knives. It felt so natural and familiar. It reminded me of when we used to wash the dishes after supper. It was something I always looked forward to at the end of the day. We would just work together, sometimes in silence, sometimes in conversation. We would talk about our day and other little things.

After I had gathered so many knives that I had no room left in my hands, I looked up at him, giving him all the metal that I had collected. He gave me a thankful, yet grim look.

"What is it?" I asked, just barely loud enough for him to hear. I followed his eyes as he looked over my shoulder. I briefly caught sight of a scowl that was firmly planted on Eric's face before he turned away from us.

"He's having you fight Seth," My eyes dragged across the chalkboard, searching for my name. Sure enough, just as Four said, it was paired with Seth's. I was good, but Seth was better. And bigger. And stronger. I was fucked. "Watch his eyes," Four pulled my attention away from the board as he spoke.

"Huh?"

"Seth. He looks at the exact point he's about to aim for. It's one of his major flaws in his fighting. Use it to your advantage when you're defending yourself." Four looked around, making sure no one was paying too much attention to us.

I nodded as we finished collecting all the fallen knives. I made my way back over to the group of initiates that had started to trickle in over the past five or so minutes. My eyes found Seth as he entered the room. I sized him from head to toe. He was at least a foot taller than me and I knew for a fact that he would love nothing more then to finish what he started months ago. I didn't have Jake to protect me from him now.

I noticed as his eyes found his name on the chalkboard he immediately turned to seek me out. When his eyes found mine, he gave me a wickedly cruel smile. My breath caught in my throat. He would enjoy this more than he should. He wasn't going to let me conceded. He was going to keep going until he knocked me completely unconscious.

"Listen up," Eric's voice quieted the conversations between initiates. "As you know, today is the first day you will be scored on your combat skills against your fellow initiates," I looked at Four as Eric proceeded. "You'll fight until one of you can't continue."

"Or one of you concedes," Four chirped in.

"According to the old rules. The new rules, is that no one concedes. A brave man never surrenders," Eric's cold grey eyes found mine. He slightly smirked. That's when I knew he pinned me against Seth on purpose. He wanted to see me suffer at the hands of the Candor boy. But why?

The smirk on his face quickly disappeared as Four said something to him in a hushed tone that obviously pissed him off. He shook off Four's comment and focused back on the group of initiates in front of him. "Mathew. Kristen. You're up first." Mathew was the other Amity boy that had transferred over with Olivia. He was tall and had broad shoulders, but I could tell by the look on his face that he wasn't keen on having to fight Kristen. His blue eyes hid behind his blond bangs as he made his way through the crowd.

"Wish me luck," Kristen sighed as she made her way to the raised platform that I had fought Eric on not too long ago.

To be honest, it was a good fight. Kristen definitely almost had Mathew on more than one occasion, but in the end, Kristen ended up on the mat conscious due to a swift and powerful blow to the chin. My heart sank as I saw my friend laid out on the mat like that. It sank a little more at the sight of Mathew's guilt ridden face.

After a minute or so, Kristen came to and Four helped her to her feet. He told Mathew to take her to the infirmary so that they could both get checked out.

"Seth. Alex. You're up." My eyes shot up to meet Four's. He gave me a reassuring nod as I walked to platform, standing face to face with Seth. My heart began to pound a little bit harder as Eric gave the go ahead. All my previous confidence in my fighting ability flew out the door as Seth gave me that sickly wicked smile.

"You scared, Stiff?" Seth mocked as we began to circle each other. "You don't have your little Dauntless boyfriend to protect you anymore, do ya?" I saw his eyes focus on the left side of my face. He swung, but I knew it was coming thanks to my brother's intel. I diverted his fist and his smirk turned into a scowl. "I'm gonna finish what I should have finished then," he growled.

I threw a punch, but he deflected it easily. He returned my offensive action and his fist connected with my nose before I had a chance to look at his eyes. I felt blood begin to drip from my nose. I stumbled and before I had a chance to regain my composer he kicked me in the gut, bringing me to my knees. I wanted to vomit at the impact of his foot. He brought up his foot to connect it with my face, but I ducked, sticking my leg out to knock him off his feet. He fell backward onto his back with a thud. I jumped back up to my feet, bringing my leg back and kicking him as hard as I could into his side multiple times. By the third time, he grabbed my leg and knocked me off balance.

This time, I was on the ground. He straddled my hips and brought his fist to my face once again. I brought my hands up to defend my face, trying to think of a way out of this. I brought knee to my chest and kicked him in the groin, just as I did Eric. Seth was slower to get up compared to Eric. I wiggled my way from under him and made sure that when he got up that I was behind him. As much as it pained me to do so, I was going to take a page out of Eric's book.

I jumped onto Seth's back as he got up, wrapping my legs around his waist and my arms around his neck. Before he realized what I was doing, I got the choke hold locked in. He squirmed and squirmed, trying to pry my fingers apart, but I was holding on like my life depended on it. I slowly felt him begin to fade as his body became heavy under me and he sank to his knees. I released him as his body fell to the floor. He didn't move once he hit the mat. I did it. I beat him.

My veins filled with lead as the adrenaline began to dissipate. I waved Four away as he came to check on me. His face was cold, but his eye were filled with concern. I staggered a little as I made my way away from Seth's unconscious body. Unlike Mathew, I felt no guilt whatsoever. I wiped the blood from my nose as I looked around the room. My eyes found just the man I was looking for and I dragged my tired body in the young leader's direction.

"Why did you put me up against him?" I hissed as I came face to face with Eric. It wasn't loud enough for the others to hear, I made sure of that.

"Next time," he gave me a smug smirk. "think twice before you decide to throw a knife at me." Ugh! What a hypocrite! What an asshole. That happened days ago. I was sure that if he was going to get back at me for that he would have done it right then and there, not out of the blue days later.

"I've still got stitches in my side thanks to you and I'm the one who needs to think twice about throwing knives at people?" My voice was still hushed, but the edge in them was sharp enough to compete with that of a knife. "You're un-fucking-believable."

"I'll take that as a compliment," he patronized, his smug smirk never leaving his face. A scowled made its way to my features as I rolled my eyes and brushed past him.

Once I was out of the training room, I wasn't sure where to go. I didn't want to go to the infirmary because I knew that's where they took Seth and the last thing I wanted to do was be in the same room as him.

I walked a little ways down the hall and sat along the cool wall. The icy feeling of the stone sent a shiver up my spine, but the frigid surface was welcome as it iced my achy muscles. I closed my eyes and leaned my head against the wall. I'm not sure how long I had been sitting there, but a little while later I heard a set of foot steps approach me. I was too comfortable to care who it was and didn't bother to look up.

I finally pried open my eyes as I felt their body heat next to me as they slid down the wall. I smiled at the sight of the familiar face .

"Well you look like hell," Jake said as he examined my face.

"You really know how to make a girl feel good about herself, don't you?" I chuckled. I felt a warm sensation drip down my right side. I looked down and saw a dark patch of liquid in my shirt. I popped my stitches. Great. "I'm guessing you won your fight, seeing that you seem perfectly fine besides that nasty shiner."

"Yeah, I had to fight Dean," I knew Dean. As a matter of fact, I was friends with him. Dean wasn't nearly as fast as Jake so I wasn't surprised to hear that Jake pulled out a win. "Who'd you go up against?"

"Seth," Jake didn't seemed to recognize the name. "That stupid Candor boy you saved me from." Jake's eyes grew wide.

"Are you kidding me? Who paired you two up?" Jake seemed completely taken back by the fact that I was matched up with Seth.

"Eric."

Jake sighed and shook his head. "I told you that all the mouthing off you did would come back to bite you in the ass," I knew it would. I just didn't want to admit to Jake that he was right.

"I won though, so I'm sure that threw a wrench in his little plan for me to get the shit beat out of me," It would have been much more satisfying if I hadn't used one of Eric's methods to beat him, but hey, a wins a win.

"Congrats, but that's not the point," Jake frowned. "Now I'm not saying that you should kiss his ass, but just stay off Eric's radar for a while, yeah?"

"Ha! That's not gonna happen. It's to late to steer clear of that asshole now. Not only am I on his radar, but I'm dead smack in the center of his sights."

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