I woke up with a start when my very warm pillow moved from beneath my head. I lifted my head and looked around groggily to try to figure out exactly where I was. I noticed that I was lying on a bed that definitely wasn't my own, but after taking a deep breath in I realized that it is Eric's.

I got out of bed and started searching for Eric. When I walked past a room where I heard running water I got an eye full of a very naked Eric taking a shower. All I could do was stare with my mouth hanging open.

If I thought that he looked good with his clothes on I was mistaken he looks fantastic without them.

I quickly walked back into his room and laid back on the bed waiting for him to come out of the shower. He was very engrossed with whatever he was thinking of because he didn't notice that I was watching him.

He came out with a black towel wrapped low around his waist, water droplets running over his defined muscles and his hair dripping down his back. It is taking everything in me not to get up and kiss his bare chest.

When he was finished putting on his jeans he came over to the side of the bed that I was laying on with his jeans still unfastened and kissed my lips softly. "Tris, come on honey it's time for you to get up. I have to get you into the dorm without anyone noticing that you were not there all night. You have your big fight against Four today." I rolled over and looked him in the eye while wrapping my arms around his neck and pulling his lips closer to mine. I kiss him slowly and pull him down on top of me. He doesn't seem to mind me doing this since he laid himself between my legs and held his weight off of me with his arms.

He pulled away from me and kissed me one more time. "Come on babe we can finish this later but right now I need you to focus and get ready for this fight. I don't want you to fight him but Max hasn't given us much of a choice."

"I know Eric but I will be fine you taught me how to defend myself and even if he does get a few good hits in I'm not going to go down that easily."

He pulls me to his chest and kisses my hair. I get up and he grabs my hand and leads me down the stairs toward the dormitory. When we are ready to turn down the last hall before we get to the dorms a door on our right opens and Four pauses in the door way and glares at Eric while raising an eyebrow at me and smirking.

"Apparently you have no sense of self-preservation being that you are always with Eric. I guess I will see you in the ring later."

I felt Eric stiffen beside me and he started to pull away from me once Four began to speak but I tightened my hands in his and leaned closer to him. I just whispered to Eric to ignore him and gave Four the finger as we continued walking down the hall. Eric gave me a quick kiss and watched from the doorway as I climbed into my bed.

A few hours later I was woken up by Christina who was shaking my arm telling me that it was time for us to get dressed and that we had to be in the training room in 10 minutes. I got up, took a super quick shower, brushed my teeth and got dressed. Will, Christina, Al and I headed into the training room. Surprisingly we were the first to arrive.

When I walked in I noticed that all of the matches for the day were already posted on the board on the wall and that Four and I were there first match to take place. Christina looked at me quizzically, "what kind of place is this that the initiates have to fight their instructors?"

I pulled her close to me and explained to her that I had to fight Four in order to be ranked out of this stage of training. It is unfair for me to continue to fight and be ranked against people who are new to this when I had been training with Eric for 2 years. She reached over and gave me a hug.

"Well while I don't like the fact that you had previous training I do like the fact that you are being honest with me. Be careful in there I heard that Four knocked Eric unconscious during the fight for initiation and Eric is terrifying."

"Don't worry Chris, I'm going to give it all I got."

"Listen up! Today we have a fight that is not one that normally would take place in initiation but being that Tris is so advanced in her fighting skills, Max wants her to fight Four and if she wins she will have passed stage one of initiation.

"What hell kind of crap is this? What did you do stiff screw him too?"

He started to move closer to me and backed me into a corner and grabbed my butt. Before I was given a chance to react Eric had Peter lifted off the ground by the front of his shirt and was carrying him out of the room. The rest of the class followed him and the closer we got to the Chasm the more nervous I became. I know Eric and I know his temper and he had warned Peter one too many times.

"What are you doing? This has to be illegal….you can't do this to me."

"SHUT UP! I AM SO SICK OF YOU CONSTANTLY RUNNING YOUR MOUTH SO SHUT IT OR I WILL SHUT IT FOR YOU!"

At this point Peter has started to cry and is still begging Eric to put him down. Eric moves his hand from the front of Peter's shirt to around his neck. He holds Peter over the bar of the Chasm in midair as if he is about to drop him to his death. I start to panic and as much as I hate Peter I can't let Eric do something to him that will cause Eric to possibly face being Factionless or worse dead.

I put my hand on Eric's back and said "Eric, please put him down it's not worth it."

"Tris I'm sick of his smart mouth and his attitude."

"Eric, please I already beat him in a fight I can beat him again just let him go."

In a small whisper of a voice that only he could here "Eric, please I love you I don't know if I can survive without you. Let him go he's not worth it."

I felt the tension leave Eric's body and saw him pull Peter back over the rail and he dropped him to the ground. He turned and looked at me and told everyone to follow him back to the training room.

Peter kneeled on the ground gasping for air with Molly and Drew standing with him looking at Eric with terror in their eyes and glaring at me all at the same time.

Once we all made it back to the training room Four was standing in the ring in a pair of black pants and a skin tight black sleeveless shirt. I must admit that he does have an impressive body. He looked up and caught me looking at him and smirked at me.

"Like what you see Stiff?"

"Don't flatter yourself Four I was just sizing up my competition." He just scoffed at me and made a gesture as if to say "bring it".

I walked onto the mat with my head held high and with what hopefully looked like confidence. Inside I was shaking like a leaf. Eric walked to the edge and grabbed my elbow, "watch him he fights in the same manner that he has taught the initiates to. Don't feel guilty about hurting him he is an opponent like anyone else."

I pulled my hair up and into a tight bun on the back of my head, no need to leave temptation dangling from the back of my head. I also made sure that my belly button ring was covered before I even came to the training room. I give Eric and Christina one last glance before walking into the center of the mat and getting to the stance that Eric taught me.

Four raises his eyebrows at me and says in a very low voice I think that he may only want me to hear, "I'm sorry that I have to hurt you. I don't want to bruise your pretty face".

I look up at him and notice that he has a look of remorse. While I was looking at him he took the opportunity to try to sweep my legs from under me. I quickly jumped to avoid the movement and land a punch to his jaw that made him stagger back a bit.

He counters and hits me in my ribs on the right side, it was hard enough to cause me to make an audible grunting sound. I get back into my stance and I fake a punch to his face and when he went to block the hit and counter it I catch him in the ribs with a good kick.

He knocks me on to my back and attempts to pin me but I use my hips to push him up and when I get him up far enough to swing my legs up and over his shoulders. I use both of my legs to flip us and roll him onto his back. I don't waste any time getting as many hard hits in as I can before he can recover.

He reaches up and back hands me hard enough that my vision blurs a bit, but I don't let him get any more of an upper hand on me than that. As soon as we got to our feet he caught me off guard by grabbing me around the waist and body slamming me, knocking the wind out of me but I knew that I couldn't stay down there. So I let him think that he won and when he leaned down to check on me I used the heel of my hand to break his nose and then I hit him in three pulse points consecutively and knocked him unconscious. He fell on top of me his weight pinning me to the floor. I tried to push him off but the dead weight was too much, so I shouted out "guys a little help here, he's out cold."

There was an audible gasp in the room before I felt his weight being lifted off of me and I looked into to Eric's eyes. He scratched the side of his eyebrow and smirked at me. He grabbed my hand and helped me up.

"The winner of this match is Tris. Congratulations you have passed this portion of initiation."

I gave Eric a huge bright smile and went to sit beside Christina and Will. When the next fight began Eric came to stand beside us to observe the match.

"Hey Eric is it ok if I miss the rest of the matches? I really feel bad about what I did to Four and I wanted to check on him. Also I want to get a new tattoo?"

"Tris he's a big boy he can take care of himself but because I know that it is going to keep eating away at you I'm not going to keep you. Besides I trust you."

"Thanks Eric, I will catch you at lunch?"

"Yeah I will see you there."

I left the training room and was making my way to the infirmary I noticed Max leaning against the rail of the chasm.

"Hey Max, how are you doing today?"

"I'm okay Tris how are you? Did you have your match with Four yet?"

"I'm actually great thanks for asking and yes I did have my match with Four."

"Well how did it go? I see that you only have a few bruises?"

"I won actually. I knocked Four out." I said this while looking down with a blush on my face and scuffing my boot against the ground.

"Wow congratulations, you are the first person to knock out Four. I'm sure that Eric is proud, he can't say enough about you."

I tried to play coy but my persistent blush gave me away. "Does he now? I hope that he is only saying good things about me."

"To be honest, he always has good things to say about you. Between me and you I've never seen him speak about anyone the way he does about you…. Or show the level of concern that he does."

"Hmm, to me he's just plain old Eric to me. Well I was just on my way to check on Four. I'm still not used to this hurting people that are not necessarily a danger to me thing yet. See you around Max and thanks again for letting me test out of initiation early."

Before Max can even respond I start to jog toward the infirmary. When I walk in I ask the nurse at the desk where I can find Four and with a raised eyebrow she points the way to me.

When I get closer to Four's room I hear him speaking to someone…"Man you look like you got your butt whooped."

"Thanks Uriah you are such a great friend." "Aww don't be such a spoil sport Four, at least she touched you…. Even if it was painful."

I could hear Uriah crack up laughing. "Yeah, well that's the closest we are going to get to any kind of touching, I keep asking myself if she and Eric are together. The way that he looks at her, it's as if she is the only girl in the world.

"Well we can easily find out what the relationship is between the two during a good old game of Candor or Dauntless. I will arrange it for tonight since she passed the first stage and we should celebrate Dauntless style."

"Ok, Uriah but don't make it too obvious ok."

I chose that this would be a good moment to knock on the door.

I hear Four's baritone voice say "come in".

When I opened the door to say that Uriah and Four looked surprised to see me would be an understatement.

"Well hello Ms. Tris, I've heard so much about you from my man Four here. Congratulations on winning your match."

I gave Four an odd look and then look over to Uriah and say "thank you".

"How about tonight we celebrate Dauntless style, party in my brother's apartment. Say 7pm?"

"I don't know I'm not much of a partier. If I come can I bring a friend?"

Uriah and Four share a pointed look and Four just shrugs.

"Yeah sure bring your friends."

Ok, well Four before I leave "how are you feeling?"

"I feel like I got my ass kicked but I'm good. It means a lot that you came to see me Tris."

"No problem Four, I guess I will see you guys later."

I turned and walked out the door. I need to tell Eric, Will, Christina, and Al about the party tonight.