Chapter 1
Jack
The ice didn’t feel cold. It never did. Not when your blood ran at a steady, feverish hundred-and-two degrees, burning with a biological imperative to hunt, to maim, to claim.
To the three thousand screaming fans packed into the rafters of the Ironwood University Arena, the fog rolling off the rink was just physics—warm air hitting a frozen surface. To me, it was camouflage. A thick, swirling mist that smelled of ozone, Zamboni exhaust, and the copper tang of violence.
"Sterling! Watch your six!"
The shout from Silas, my Beta and left winger, cracked through the roar of the crowd, but my wolf had already clocked the threat. I didn’t need eyes in the back of my head; I could feel the displacement of air, the heavy, thudding vibration of skates cutting deep grooves into the ice behind me.
It was a Copperhead. One of Rurik’s boys. A rival pack from two counties over who had somehow managed to get enough of their mongrels onto the visiting team’s roster to turn a standard D1 hockey game into a turf war.
I didn’t dodge. I didn’t weave. I was the Captain. I was the center. And on this ice, I was the fucking mountain they broke themselves against.
I braced, dropping my center of gravity, planting my edges into the ice until my thighs burned with the tension. The hit came a split second later—a cross-check to the kidneys that would have sent a human to the hospital with piss full of blood.
The impact jarred my teeth, a shockwave rattling up my spine, but I didn’t move. I absorbed it. I let the pain feed the beast pacing in the cage of my chest.
Kill, the wolf snarled, its voice a jagged rasp in my mind. Rip the throat. Spill the red.
I gritted my teeth, the enamel creaking under the pressure, and shoved the instinct down. Not here. Not now.
Instead of shifting, I spun. I used the momentum of his illegal hit, swinging my stick low—not to trip, but to leverage.
I slammed my shoulder into his chest, right over the sternum.
There was a satisfying crunch—pads compressing, air leaving lungs, maybe a rib cracking—and the Copperhead winger went airborne.
He hit the ice with a wet thud, sliding ten feet before crashing into the boards.
The crowd erupted. The student section, the "Ironwood Asylum," went feral, banging on the glass, screaming for blood.
They loved the violence. They loved the way the Ironwood Sentinels played—faster, harder, more brutal than any other college team in the league.
They thought we were just corn-fed boys from the Upper Peninsula, built different by the harsh winters.
They had no idea they were cheering for monsters.
I skated away from the crumpled body, my chest heaving, steam rising off my jersey. I reached up and adjusted my helmet, feeling the sweat trickle down my temple, stinging into the scar that ran from my jawline to my collarbone.
"Nice hit, Cap," Silas muttered as we lined up for the face-off, tapping my shin pads with his stick. "But rein it in. Your eyes are flashing."
I blinked hard, forcing the amber glow to recede, willing my irises back to their muddy, human brown. "Tell their winger to stop trying to rupture my spleen, and I won’t have to put him through the wall."
"He’s a stray," Silas grunted, leaning over his stick. "Rurik sent the B-team to test us. They’re sloppy."
"They’re annoying," I growled.
The referee dropped the puck. The crack of stick-on-puck was a gunshot.
The game resumed, a blur of motion and aggression.
I lost myself in it. This was the only place the noise stopped.
The only place the constant, low-level ache of the Hunger subsided.
When I was skating, when I was slamming bodies into the boards, the wolf was satisfied. It felt like hunting.
We were up 4-1 in the third period. It should have been a victory lap. I was cycling the puck behind the net, looking for a passing lane to the slot, when it hit me.
It wasn't a physical blow. It was worse.
A scent.
It cut through the thick, locker-room stench of unwashed pads, adrenaline, and stale beer. It sliced through the cold, dead air of the arena like a razor blade.
Vanilla. Sweet, creamy vanilla. And lavender. Soft, calming, fragile lavender.
My heart stopped. Literally missed a beat, stuttering in my chest like a dying engine. My lungs seized. My skates caught an edge, and for the first time in four years, I stumbled.
The puck skittered away from my stick. The Copperhead defenseman scooped it up, breaking away toward our goal, but I didn’t care. I couldn't move. I stood frozen in the offensive zone, my head snapping up, my nostrils flaring wide, drinking in the air, desperate, starving.
Mine.
The word wasn't a thought. It was a roar. It obliterated my logic, my control, my humanity. It was a command written in my DNA, dormant for twenty-two years and now screaming awake.
My vision tunneled. The roaring crowd faded into a dull buzz. The bright stadium lights blurred. All I could focus on was that scent. It was a trail of breadcrumbs leading straight to my undoing.
I slowly turned, scanning the stands. The wolf was clawing at the back of my eyes, trying to force the shift. My gloves creaked as I strangled the shaft of my stick, the composite material groaning under the pressure of my grip. If I didn't find the source, I was going to tear this arena apart.
Where are you?
My gaze raked over the student section—faces painted gray and blue, mouths open in screams I couldn't hear. No. Too much cheap perfume and marijuana.
I looked higher. The VIP boxes. The Dean’s box.
And then I saw her.
She was standing behind the glass, separated from the chaos by a pane of Plexiglas that might as well have been tissue paper to a wolf of my size.
She was small. That was the first thing my brain registered.
Tiny. Delicate. A gust of wind would knock her over.
She was wrapped in a pristine white wool coat that looked ridiculous in a hockey arena, like a snowflake that had drifted into a slaughterhouse.
Her hair was platinum blonde, pulled back so tight it pulled at her temples, revealing a neck that looked impossibly soft.
Pale. Breakable. Human.
The realization was a bucket of ice water dumped over the fire in my blood.
Human.
The Pack Laws were absolute. We did not mix. We did not mate. Humans were fragile, fleeting things. They couldn't handle the violence of our lives, the roughness of our coupling, the terrifying reality of what we were.
But the wolf didn't care about laws. The wolf saw the pulse fluttering in her throat from fifty feet away. The wolf smelled the sweetness of her skin and decided, right then and there, that we would burn the world down to taste it.
She was looking down at the ice, her expression tight, lips pressed into a thin line of distaste. Her eyes—wide, blue, innocent—locked onto mine.
Even through the helmet, even through the distance, I felt the connection snap into place like a deadbolt sliding home. The air between us shimmered.
I watched her breath hitch. I saw her small hand come up to clutch the collar of her coat, as if she suddenly felt a chill that had nothing to do with the temperature.
"Jack! What the hell are you doing?"
Silas’s shoulder slammed into mine, shaking me out of the trance. The buzzer sounded. The game was over. We had won, apparently.
I didn't celebrate. I didn't raise my stick to the crowd.
I just stood there, panting, staring up at the girl in the glass tower, while my body violently reorganized itself around a singular, terrifying new purpose.
"Cap?" Silas’s voice was low, edged with panic. He could smell it on me now. The sudden, overwhelming scent of Rut. "Jack, your eyes. You’re glowing."
I tore my gaze away from the girl, looking down at the scarred ice beneath my skates. My reflection stared back—predatory, feral, hungry.
"Get me off the ice," I rasped, my voice sounding like gravel grinding in a mixer. "Before I climb into the stands and carry her out with my teeth."
Eloise
I hated hockey.
I hated the noise—the relentless, thumping bass of the organ, the primal roaring of the crowd that sounded less like school spirit and more like a riot waiting to happen. I hated the cold that seeped through the soles of my boots and settled into my bones, making my joints ache.
But mostly, I hated the violence.
I was a skater. I lived my life on the ice, just like them. But where I carved lines of precision and grace, striving for the perfect geometry of an axel or a spin, they brought chaos. They gouged the ice I worshipped. They turned a canvas into a battlefield.
"Daddy says you have to stay for the alma mater," Cami whispered, nudging my arm. Cami was my roommate, a girl whose entire personality revolved around which hockey player was currently ignoring her texts. "He’s watching."
I glanced up toward the luxury box at the top of the arena. My father, Dean Vance, stood there with a donor, a glass of scotch in his hand. He offered me a tight, curt nod. It wasn't a greeting; it was a directive. Smile. Be seen. Be the perfect daughter.
I forced a smile onto my face, though it felt like a mask threatening to crack. "I’m staying," I murmured, clutching the lapels of my white coat tighter. "I’m here."
Down on the ice, the buzzer blasted, signaling the end of the game. Thank God. The Ironwood Sentinels had won again, beating the visitors into submission. The crowd was vibrating, a sea of grey and navy blue.
I looked down at the players celebrating near the goal. They looked gargantuan in their armor. Shoulders too wide, thighs like tree trunks. They moved with a terrifying speed, considering their size. Animals. They were all just animals.
Especially him.
Number 9. Sterling.