Chapter 2
Leo
Control is not a state of mind. It is a physical architecture.
The Wolf doesn't care about architecture. The Wolf wants to burn the fortress down.
I woke up before the alarm, my body humming with a restless, kinetic energy that felt like a low-grade fever.
My sheets were tangled around my legs, damp with sweat.
The room—my "den" on the top floor of Blackwood Manor—was freezing.
I kept the windows open year-round, even now, with the Vermont autumn turning violently into winter.
The bite of the frost usually helped ground me.
Today, the cold did nothing.
I rolled out of bed, my feet hitting the hardwood floor with a heavy thud.
I scrubbed a hand over my face, feeling the grit of exhaustion in my eyes.
I hadn't slept. Not really. Every time I drifted off, the darkness behind my eyelids shifted, forming the shape of a girl with mahogany hair and eyes that looked like they held too many secrets.
Maya.
The name was a splinter in my mind. Festering.
I walked to the dresser, grabbing a black t-shirt. As I pulled it over my head, I froze.
The scent.
It was faint, clinging to the skin of my hands, woven into the very air of the room because I had brought the memory of it home with me. Vanilla bean. Warm honey. And that maddening, cloying sweetness of untouched female.
My upper lip curled involuntarily. A low growl vibrated in my chest, a sound that wasn’t human.
Find her. Claim her. Keep her.
"Shut up," I grated out into the empty room. My voice was a wreck, gravel rubbing against sandpaper.
I looked at my reflection in the mirror above the dresser.
The man staring back looked like a disaster.
Dark circles bruised the skin under my amber eyes.
My hair was a jagged mess. The scar on my chest—the souvenir from a challenge I’d won three years ago against a rival Alpha—looked inflamed, the tissue pulling tight against my sternum.
But it wasn't the physical exhaustion that scared me. It was the eyes.
For a split second, the irises weren't hazel-gold. They were pure, incandescent yellow. The color of a predator staring at a rabbit.
I looked away, gripping the edge of the dresser until the wood creaked. This was exactly why I had rules. This was why I didn't date humans. This was why I didn't date anyone.
My father had been a great man once. A strong Alpha.
But he had let the beast take the wheel.
He had indulged the instincts, fed the hunger, until the line between man and wolf dissolved.
He went Feral when I was eighteen. I still remembered the sound of my mother screaming.
I still remembered the smell of the blood in the hallway—coppery and hot.
I was the one who had to stop him. I was the one who had to put him down.
I carried his blood. I carried his gene. Every time I felt that slip of control, that slide into the red haze, I saw his face.
I wasn't going to let that happen to Maya Sterling. I wasn't going to let her become collateral damage in my war against biology.
I needed coffee. I needed caffeine strong enough to kill a horse, and then I needed to hit the gym until I couldn't feel my arms.
I left the room, the heavy oak door clicking shut behind me.
The Hive—what the student body called the Blackwood Manor—was quiet at 6:00 AM, but it was never truly silent. A pack of twenty wolves living under one roof meant there was always a hum of activity, a subsonic frequency of awareness.
The house smelled of us. It was a dense, heavy scent of musk, cedar, damp earth, and testosterone. To a human, it probably smelled like a locker room and expensive cologne. To me, it smelled like responsibility.
I walked down the grand staircase, the wood groaning under my weight. The kitchen was a cavernous space with industrial appliances and two massive refrigerators stocked entirely with raw meat and protein shakes.
Silas was already there.
My Beta—and the team’s best defenseman—was sitting at the granite island, nursing a mug of coffee.
He was shirtless, wearing low-slung grey sweatpants, his blonde hair sticking up in seventeen different directions.
He looked like a laid-back surfer, but I knew better.
Silas was the only one on the team fast enough to keep up with me, and the only one stupid enough to call me out.
He didn't look up from his phone as I entered. "You smell like stress and bad decisions, Cap."
I ignored him, walking straight to the coffee pot. "Morning to you too, Silas."
"I'm serious," Silas said, setting his phone down. He spun on the barstool to face me. "The air pressure in the house dropped when you walked in. The pups are already on edge. Jax is hiding in the basement."
"Jax is hiding because he skipped leg day," I muttered, pouring the black sludge into a mug. I took a sip. It was scalding hot. I welcomed the burn.
"Leo," Silas said. His voice lost the joking lilt. It was the voice of a Beta addressing his Alpha. "What happened last night? You came back from the arena looking like you wanted to murder the sky."
I leaned my hips against the counter, staring into the black depths of my coffee. I could lie. I could tell him I was just worked up about the playoffs. I could tell him the Feral itch was just a seasonal thing.
But Silas would smell the lie. Betas were designated peacemakers, emotional barometers. He could probably smell Maya on me from across the room.
"I found a civilian in the arena," I said, keeping it vague.
Silas raised an eyebrow. "A puck bunny? Breaking in? Usually they just wait by the bus."
"No," I said, my jaw tightening. "A student. A music major. She was practicing."
"And?"
"And I kicked her out."
Silas studied me. He took a slow sip of his coffee, his blue eyes dissecting my posture. "You kicked a girl out into sub-zero temperatures because she was playing an instrument?"
"It’s our territory, Si. You know the rules. No humans in the facility after hours. We can't risk a shift happening in front of a witness."
"Right," Silas drawled. "Safety first. So why does your aura currently feel like you're about to shift and tear the kitchen apart?"
I slammed my mug down. Coffee sloshed over the rim, burning my hand. I didn't flinch. "Because she didn't leave, Silas! She didn't run. I gave her the Alpha voice—I gave her the look—and she just sat there and looked at me like I was a puzzle she wanted to solve."
Silas went very still. "She didn't run from the Alpha voice?"
"No."
"That's... rare." Silas leaned forward, his expression sharpening. "What's her name?"
"Doesn't matter."
"Leo."
"Maya," I snapped. The name felt heavy in the air, weighted with possession. "Her name is Maya."
Silas let out a low whistle. "Well, shit. If she resisted the command, that means two things. One, she’s got a spine of steel. Or two..."
Or two, the bond is already forming, and she instinctively knows I would never actually hurt her.
I didn't let him finish the sentence. "Drop it. It's handled. She’s gone. I scared the hell out of her. She won’t be back."
Silas looked unconvinced. He opened his mouth to argue, but at that moment, Jax—our goalie and resident chaos demon—stumbled into the kitchen. He was wearing sunglasses indoors and clutching a bag of frozen peas to his forehead.
"Why is it so loud in here?" Jax moaned, sliding into a chair. "And why does it smell like aggressive sexual tension?"
Silas snorted. "Leo met a girl."
"I did not meet a girl," I growled, pushing off the counter. "I evicted a trespasser."
"Same thing," Jax mumbled, pressing the peas to his eye. "Was she hot?"
I didn't answer. I couldn't answer. Because if I tried to describe her—the curve of her throat, the way her scent hit the back of my palate like a drug—I would give everything away.
"I'm going to class," I announced, grabbing my backpack from the floor.
"You have a protein shake mustache," Jax pointed out helpfully.
"I hate both of you," I said, and stormed out the back door.
The campus of Blackwood Mountain University was designed to make humans feel small.
The buildings were massive slabs of grey stone, looming over the winding paths like silent judges. The trees were ancient sentinels, stripping the sky of light. I walked through the quad, my headphones on, blasting heavy metal to drown out the noise of the student body.
To a shifter, a crowded campus is a sensory minefield.
I could hear everything. The heartbeat of the girl walking ten feet in front of me (too fast, she was late). The whispered conversation of the couple on the bench (they were breaking up). The smell of anxiety sweating out of the pores of the freshmen during midterms.
It was an assault. Usually, I could tune it out. I could dial down the sensory input until it was just white noise.
But today, the dial was broken.
I felt hyper-exposed. My skin was prickling. Every time a girl with dark hair walked by, my head snapped toward her, my nostrils flaring, searching for that specific note of vanilla and honey.
It was pathetic. I was the Alpha of the strongest pack in the Ivy League, and I was sniffing the air like a lost puppy.
I had Advanced Kinesiology in the Science Center. I sat in the back row, hood up, arms crossed over my chest. The professor was talking about leverage and biomechanics. I stared at the back of the head of the guy in front of me, fighting the urge to growl at him for tapping his pen.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
It sounded like a gunshot in my sensitive ears.
I reached into my bag to grab my notebook, needing something to crush in my hands. My fingers brushed against something smooth and cool. Something that didn't belong to me.
I froze.
I pulled it out slowly.
It was a black, leather-bound folder. Embossed in gold foil in the corner were the initials M.S.
Maya’s sheet music.