Chapter 1
Maya
The metronome was a guillotine.
Click. Click. Click.
It sliced through the stagnant air of the practice room, chopping seconds into fractions, dissecting my sanity one beat at a time.
My fingers were bleeding. Not metaphorically—I could feel the warm, sticky slide of fresh blood against the neck of my cello, smearing over the ebony fingerboard.
The callus on my index finger had split three measures ago, right in the middle of the Elgar Concerto in E Minor, but I didn’t stop.
I couldn’t stop.
Stopping meant silence. Silence meant thinking. And thinking led inevitably to the suffocating crushing weight of the text message currently glowing on my phone screen, face up on the music stand.
Mother: The Dean of Admissions will be at the recital on Friday. Do not embarrass us, Maya. Perfection is the minimum requirement.
I pressed the string down harder, welcoming the sting. Pain was clarifying. Pain was a sensation I could control. The vibration of the C-string resonated against my sternum, a deep, mournful growl that felt like the only honest thing in my life.
I was twenty-one years old, a senior at Blackwood Mountain University, and I was a fraud.
To the outside world, I was Maya Sterling: prodigy, scholarship student, the girl with the mahogany hair and the shy smile who never missed a curfew and never drank more than half a glass of white wine.
I was the "Good Girl." The one who color-coded her sheet music.
The one who wore sweaters that covered her collarbones and skirts that hit below the knee.
Inside, I was screaming. I was a porcelain doll packed full of dynamite, waiting for someone to drop me just to see the explosion.
Click. Click. Click.
I groaned, the sound tearing out of my throat as I slammed my bow down onto the strings, creating a discordant screech that bounced off the acoustic foam walls.
It wasn't enough. The room was too small.
The walls of the practice closet were closing in, smelling of lemon polish and old wood and the desperate sweat of a thousand music majors before me.
I checked my watch. 11:45 PM.
The Music Conservatory was technically closed, though the janitors usually turned a blind eye to the seniors practicing late.
But I couldn’t breathe in here. The air was recycled, stale, heavy with the weight of expectation.
I needed air. I needed cold. I needed space where the notes could actually fly instead of dying against the drywall three feet from my face.
I packed the cello into its hard-shell carbon fiber case—white, sleek, looking uncomfortably like a coffin—and slung it over my shoulder.
Blackwood Mountain University was buried in the throat of Northern Vermont, a campus carved out of granite and ancient timber.
It was late October, which meant the world outside was already dead and frozen.
I pushed open the heavy oak doors of the conservatory and gasped as the wind hit me.
It was a physical slap, biting and cruel, smelling of snow that hadn't fallen yet and pine needles crushed under boot heels.
I pulled my scarf tighter, burying my nose in the wool.
The campus was a ghost town. The gothic spires of the academic buildings loomed against the ink-black sky, their gargoyles watching me with stone indifference.
Most students were in the dorms, or at the dive bars in town, living the chaotic, messy lives I was supposed to be avoiding.
I didn't head toward the dorms. My feet carried me instinctively toward the north side of campus, past the dormant fountains and the statue of the snarling wolf that served as the university mascot.
The Arena.
The Blackwood Timber Wolves hockey team was basically a religion around here.
They were undefeated, terrifyingly aggressive, and treated like gods.
But on a Tuesday night, nearly midnight, the arena would be a tomb.
I knew the side door near the loading dock had a faulty lock; I’d seen the figure skaters sneaking in there last year.
I just wanted to play somewhere big. I wanted to hear what my soul sounded like when it wasn't being strangled by acoustic foam.
The heavy metal door groaned as I hauled it open, the sound echoing into the darkness.
I slipped inside, the sudden drop in temperature making my nipples harden against the lace of my bra.
The air inside the arena was different than the air outside.
It was sharper. Cleaner. It smelled of ozone, Zamboni exhaust, and something else—something musky and deep, like wet earth and aggression.
The main lights were off, leaving the cavernous space lit only by the safety lights and the ambient glow of the exit signs. The ice was a vast, glowing sheet of gray glass, stretching out into the shadows.
It was perfect.
I walked down the rubberized matting toward the player’s bench, my boots making soft thuds. I felt like an intruder, a trespasser in a temple dedicated to violence. I unlatched the gate and stepped onto the bench, then carefully made my way to the penalty box area where the acoustics were best.
I unpacked the cello. The air was so cold I could see my breath pluming in front of me in rhythmic puffs. I sat on the wooden bench, spread my knees, and settled the instrument between them.
When I played the first note, it was like a prayer answering itself.
The sound soared. It climbed up into the rafters, bouncing off the steel beams and the championship banners, coming back to me richer, darker, haunting.
I closed my eyes. I forgot about my mother.
I forgot about the Dean. I played something I wasn't supposed to play—not Elgar, not Bach.
I played something improvised, a jagged, weeping melody that mirrored the cold ache in my chest.
I played for the girl I wasn't allowed to be. The girl who wanted to be touched, the girl who wanted to be messy, the girl who wanted to be ruined.
I didn’t hear the door open. I didn’t hear the footsteps.
I only realized I wasn’t alone when the hairs on the back of my neck stood up, a primal, biological warning that screamed: Predator.
I froze, my bow hovering inches above the strings.
The silence that followed wasn’t empty. It was heavy. It was the kind of silence that happens right before the lightning strikes.
"You have five seconds," a voice rumbled from the shadows, low and rough, sounding like gravel grinding together, "to give me a reason why I shouldn't throw you out into the snow."
Leo
The beast was scratching at the back of my throat.
I stood in the tunnel leading to the locker room, a towel draped loosely around my waist, water dripping from my hair onto my shoulders. The shower hadn’t helped. The cold spray usually numbed the itch, quieted the noise in my head, but tonight, the Wolf was restless.
We had won the game against hapless Maine State 6-0, but it hadn’t been enough.
The violence on the ice hadn’t been enough.
I had checked a winger into the boards in the third period, felt his ribs crack under my shoulder, and instead of satisfaction, I’d felt a surge of adrenaline that made my vision blur red.
My blood was too hot. My skin felt too tight, like a suit two sizes too small.
I had sent the rest of the pack home to The Hive. I couldn’t be around them right now. When I got like this—when the Alpha in me started bleeding into the Human—I became dangerous. I needed silence. I needed the ice.
Then I heard it.
A sound. A low, mournful vibration that seemed to seep through the concrete walls of the locker room. Music.
It irritated me instantly. This was my territory. The arena was the only place I could let the control slip, where I could let my eyes bleed to gold without terrifying a freshman. Someone was in my house.
I followed the sound, my bare feet silent on the rubber mats. I didn't walk; I prowled. The predator in me assessed the threat before my human brain could catch up.
Intruder. Unknown scent. Female.
I stepped out into the arena bowl and stopped.
She was sitting in the penalty box, of all places. A small thing. Even from fifty feet away, in the dim light, she looked breakable. She was wrapped in layers of wool and denim, clutching a cello like it was a lifeline.
And the scent.
Goddamn it.
It hit me harder than a slapshot to the throat. Even over the smell of the ice and the lingering sweat of the game, her scent was blinding. Vanilla bean. Warm honey. And underneath that, something sweeter, rarer.
Purity.
She was untouched.
The Wolf in my head stopped pacing and slammed against the front of my consciousness, snarling a single command: Mine.
I shoved the beast down, locking it behind the iron bars of my discipline. I couldn’t afford this. I couldn’t afford her. I was Leo Vance, Captain of the Blackwood Timber Wolves, and I was the son of a man who had gone Feral and ripped his own throat out. I didn't do "mates." I didn't do "soft."
I spoke, my voice a weapon. "You have five seconds to give me a reason why I shouldn't throw you out into the snow."
She froze. The music died abruptly, leaving the echo hanging in the vast space. She turned her head slowly, her eyes wide, trying to pierce the shadows where I stood.
"I..." Her voice was a tremble. A whisper. "I didn't know anyone was here."
I stepped out of the tunnel and into the slice of light falling from the exit sign.
I watched her pupils dilate. I knew what she saw.
I was 6'5" of scarred, shifting muscle, wearing nothing but a damp towel.
My hair was wet and black, hanging in my eyes.
The tattoo on my left arm—the dark forest that covered the Pack Mark—rippled as I clenched my fist.
"Can you read?" I asked, walking toward her.
I moved too fast. I knew I did. Humans moved with a clumsy, halting cadence. We moved like water. I closed the distance between the tunnel and the penalty box in three strides, hopping the boards effortlessly to land on the ice.