How to Train Your Channeler

[Oriena]

“Saved you,” Ori repeated flatly, like she was testing how stupid it sounded out loud. “That’s generous.”

She didn’t slow, didn’t break stride. When she glanced at him, her eyes were cutting, not unkind but stripped of patience. “Ezekiel doesn’t save people. He trades in them.”

In her experience, Ezekiel’s brand of salvation was exactly why he was a cunt. He rented people out and called it mercy. But Sasha clearly called it purpose, and if he wanted to cling to debts and gratitude then that was his business. She wasn’t here to argue with a man who mistook predators for patrons. Nor was he the only one here who owed Ezekiel. Ori just had a clearer idea of how the so‑called Angel of the Undercity liked to collect.

Still, the word lingered. Owe. It felt sour, suddenly persistent. And not because of Ezekiel.

Because of her.

It hadn’t been said, but it hung there in all its shitty obviousness now: in the way Sasha followed when she told him to move, in the way he fell into direction like it was safer than choosing for himself. Sasha folded into obligation in exactly the same way he folded into fear. The same way he’d thanked her earlier, like pain was just the cost of being rescued. Accepted without question.

“I’m going to make sure it never finds another skull,” she snapped in answer, jaw tight. “Yours included.”

The words came out sharper than the question deserved, not because she minded him asking, but because of what sat beneath it. Ori used people. Always had. Leverage, favours, fear, want: tools like any other. She didn’t lie about it, didn’t apologise for surviving the only way the world had ever made room for her.

Using someone wasn’t what bothered her.

Her hand slid from his arm to his wrist, thumb pressing there, catching the quick stutter of his pulse under her touch. She didn’t yank him closer. Didn’t need to. She felt the way he keyed into it – the way attraction and uncertainty tangled in him like crossed wires. Like he braced for impact and hoped for it all at the same time.

The recognition sparked back at her before she could stop it. The heat in her flared low and sharp, unwelcome, irritating, and impossible to ignore. Not the easy appetite she was used to. Not the casual indulgence of bodies she could take and discard without thinking. This was the kind of desire that made her suddenly aware of how close she was, of own pulse answering his, of the space between them charged and thin.

It pissed her off.

Ori stopped, turned fully toward him, close enough that he’d feel the heat of her, the danger in it – and the fact that she knew exactly what this was doing to him. She pushed closer, just enough that his back brushed the damp stone behind him. Just enough that there was no clean space left to retreat into. She didn’t look away. Didn’t soften. If anything, her thumb pressed harder, claiming the rhythm like it belonged to her, like she hadn’t just felt her own body react in kind.

“You don’t owe Ezekiel shit, Sasha. And you sure as fuck don’t owe me either.” Her gaze didn’t flinch, sharp enough to flay, intense enough to burn without the power. “I didn’t rip that thing out of your head to put you in my debt. I don’t need payment. I don’t need gratitude. And I don’t need you offering yourself up like today bought you a leash.”

The words were blunt, almost cruel. She knew he was lost. She knew he was grateful. But there was something raw under her anger which she refused to acknowledge. The ghostly echo of that boot jammed against her throat; the whispered promise of worthlessness; a memory that wasn’t even her own but which still fired her blood. Only in this scenario, it was her fucking boot. She paused; measured, intentional. Close enough that the line between threat and invitation stayed razor-thin.

“If you want me,” she finished, voice low and dangerous, “it’s because you want me. Not because you’re scared. Not because you’re polite. And not because you think getting to keep your brain inside your skull means you owe me your fucking body.”