"You know the weaker person can occasionally win, right?"

She confused me with this comment. "You claiming to be weak?"

"No, you are, as your ass is provably down." She smiled at me with those impossibly perfect teeth. "I mean you keep approaching this like you're better than me at anything, so you're not coming at me like you would my father--who you fight better against than you do me."

"But why? I get why he's better."

"Do you? The same testosterone flows through your veins, your build is bigger, your muscles firmer, the only obvious thing he has on you is experience."

"That does not mean that the muscles are stronger."

"No."

I thought about it, truly thought it out. "There's something different about you and your dad. You're not normal."

"Good for you, now what do you think it is?"

"Why are you always holding back in these conversations...holding back." I looked at her. She never broke a sweat, she made every move look effortless, everything was done as if she had all the time in the world. "Somehow you and your father are holding back, severely...and it's not natural, which makes it more than natural."

"I think you're looking for the word Supernatural, babe." She smiled as she finally offered her hand to help me up.

I realized that this hand up meant far more than just aid to stand. We'd been together for a good half a year, and I liked who she was as a person. I had no hesitation, clasping her hand, in return. "What are you then?"

"Shapeshifters, something close to a wolf, so close that we call them one and the same thing."

"Werewolves," I grimaced. "No wonder I never get anywhere against either of you. So, why bother with a weak human?"

"You're my mate. Dad figured it out long before we met, so he wanted a hand in shaping your character...but nothing really chips your arrogance."

My experience with the werewolf genre was more like American Werewolf in London and the Howling rather than Twilight. "Mates? You mean friends or something worse?"

She smacked my arm--the fact that it didn't fall off told me how softly she hit me. "Is being my boyfriend really all that bad?"

"Honestly? You're my favorite person."

"Well, that's what mates are, the person who is supposed to be your favorite."

~~~

Once things were out in the open, the way we trained changed. For one, a win for me would be surviving to 10 rounds. For two, I was learning to block against much faster opponents. Training, now, was just to survive their world.

It benefitted me--not that I could automatically win, but that I could survive long enough for help to come, and possibly some fool would underestimate me enough for me to gain some advantages. That and Coach and my girlfriend were trained. I would be going up against the untrained, quite often--if anything happened.

So, another half-year rolled round, and I was getting good enough to be noticed. I mean, if I'm blocking shots from weres, then predicting where some guy in the ring will aim to hit does get easier to do. I often make it 7 rounds before I make a mistake that takes me out--either shifter in the ring. We all know they're still toying with me, though.

I should have noticed that my girl was slowing down. I should have. Just dancing along in a regular sparring match and I give her a good kidney check--I rarely manage to get in body shots, but they were more frequent than getting her face. She had a thing for protecting her face.

And she crumpled. Not long enough to go down for the count. She was quick to get back up, and into the stance.

I couldn't shake the feeling. "I yield."

"Why?" She cocked her head to the side, not breaking anything else in her posture quite yet.

"You know this isn't right." I turned and looked towards her father who was busy training another fighter. After I won a few fights, his clientele list started picking up. I mean, his own time in the ring will bring new faces to try him out but if he can't reproduce his skills in another, no one sticks around. Even worse, I certainly couldn't mimic his style--too long, not were strong. We had to work on what worked for me.

"Coach!" I never called him by name in the gym, not since I started fighting. "Could you come see a sec?"

"Why did you stop?" Apparently he didn't listen to everything we did, though he could hear it all.

"She dropped after a hit and then popped back up like nothing was wrong...but I can't shake the feeling that something is off."

Weres pride themselves in extrasensory talents, so just a feeling is rarely brushed off without at least a cursory investigation. Coach cocked an eyebrow and sniffed. "Ah, she's pregnant."

I just punched my pregnant girlfriend. No wonder I felt off. That bond did all sorts of crazy things, but right now, it was killing me. No questions, we went to their pack's doctor and found out that, though fine, if we had continued the match, we would run the risk of losing them.

No, we weren't sure how many there were. But weres have a high occurrence of multiples, so it's safe to assume that there's more than one. It wasn't only her sparring with me that we had to be careful with--her training under her father needed to be curbed a bit, possibly wait on taking over her father's role to the pack, as well. All this hinged on our next appointment...

And I had a fight to prepare for in less than two weeks, down a sparring partner, and concerned with a bigger future than I had planned up to this point.

Honestly, I never needed to fight--I had a decent day job as an early shift manager in one of the local plants--Union, lots of money to sit there and tell people to quit doing their jobs the wrong way. Not a lot of room for growth, but that's another story. The point is that I didn't have to fight and I had a family to think about, where it was all for fun not much beforehand.

So, I retired. Fought my last contract out and quit before I ever stepped up to the next tier of fights, where I could be paid to compete.

Nobody with a passion for boxing would get it, save for Coach because that was his grandbabies.

But then, this was never my dream--honestly the both of them gave me so much more than I ever expected when I set out to join a gym.

~~~

Graham Toole, mate to the future Epsilon of Anino ng Buwan Angkan (as accepted by the registry program) out of Virgina. Alpha Eric Abalos heads the pack. They are predominantly derived from the Philippine were migrants in the USA.