Chapter 8
Rachel
The energy inside the Blackwood Mountain Arena was a physical weight.
It pressed against my chest, vibrated in my teeth, and made the fine hairs on my arms stand up. Three thousand people were packed into the bowl—students, alumni, locals, and scouts. The air smelled of popcorn, winter coats, and collective anxiety.
I stood behind the home bench. Technically, I was "working." I had my clipboard, my medical bag, and a towel draped over my shoulder. My job was to hand out water bottles, track hydration levels, and be ready if someone started bleeding.
But tonight, my job felt less like athletic training and more like prayer.
I looked down at the ice.
Stan was warming up.
He was a terrifying silhouette against the white surface. He skated with a lazy, deceptive power, his long strides eating up the neutral zone. He wasn't wearing his usual practice jersey. He was in the game blacks—the matte black jersey with the gold Kodiak bear on the chest.
Number 55.
I looked down at my own chest. Underneath my grey trainer’s polo, tucked against my skin, I was wearing a black t-shirt. His t-shirt. The one I had stolen.
He had asked me to wear his jersey. I couldn't—staff rules strictly forbade showing bias. But I could wear his shirt. It was my secret armor. My silent pledge of allegiance.
"He looks focused," a voice said beside me.
I turned. It was Doc Halloway, the team physician. He was an older man, human, but he had been with the team for twenty years. He knew about the shifters—or at least, he knew enough not to ask why their bones knit in hours instead of weeks.
"He looks tight," I corrected, watching Stan stretch near the blue line. "His left shoulder is dropping slightly. He's guarding it."
Doc Halloway glanced at me, impressed. "Good eye, Miller. Keep watching that. If he takes a heavy hit to the boards, pull him for an eval."
"Pull Stan Kowalski in the middle of the North Dakota game?" I laughed nervously. "Doc, he'll eat me."
"Better he eats you than ends his career," Doc said grimly. "North Dakota plays dirty. They have a couple of... aggressive boys on their line. Big boys."
My stomach clenched.
I looked back at the ice just as Stan turned toward the bench.
He wasn't looking at the coach. He wasn't looking at the jumbotron.
He looked straight at me.
Through the wire mesh of his cage, his eyes found mine instantly. It was uncanny. In a sea of faces, he locked onto me like a homing missile.
He tapped his stick against his shin pads—once, twice.
I see you.
I nodded, a microscopic movement. I see you too.
The buzzer sounded. The lights dimmed. The crowd roared.
"Ladies and Gentlemen!" the announcer boomed. "Welcome to THE DEN!"
The game began.
Hockey is a violent sport. I knew that. I had studied the physics of it—force equals mass times acceleration.
But knowing the physics and watching the man you were secretly falling in love with get slammed into a Plexiglas wall at twenty miles per hour were two very different things.
The first period was a bloodbath.
North Dakota came out swinging. Literally. Within three minutes, there was a fight near the goal crease. Stan broke it up, hauling a North Dakota winger off his goalie by the back of the jersey like a rag doll.
The crowd went wild. BUTCH-ER! BUTCH-ER!
I hated it.
I stood by the gate, clutching a water bottle so hard the plastic crinkled.
Every time Stan was on the ice, my heart rate spiked.
I watched him move. He was incredible. He was faster than everyone else, anticipating plays before they developed.
He didn't just defend; he controlled the geometry of the game.
He angled skaters into the corners, stripped the puck with surgical precision, and launched breakouts with passes that landed flat on the tape from eighty feet away.
But I also saw what the crowd didn't.
I saw the way he grimaced when he checked a player. I saw the way he rolled his left shoulder between shifts. I saw the feral, amber light growing in his eyes.
He was leaking control.
Midway through the second period, it happened.
Stan had the puck behind his own net. He was waiting for the line change, head up, scanning the ice.
He didn't see the North Dakota enforcer coming from his blind side.
Number 44—a massive guy, easily 230 pounds—came in like a freight train. He didn't play the puck. He played the man. He launched himself, leaving his feet, his elbow coming up high.
"Stan!" I screamed. It was involuntary.
Stan turned at the last second. He saw it coming. He braced himself, turning his back to take the hit on his shoulder blades rather than his chest.
CRUNCH.
The sound was sickening. It wasn't the thud of pads. It was the crack of impact against bone and glass.
Stan hit the boards face-first. His helmet slammed into the glass right in front of where I was standing. He crumbled to the ice.
The whistle blew.
The crowd went silent.
"Get up," I whispered, my hands gripping the top of the dasher boards. "Get up, Stasiu. Please."
For three seconds, he didn't move. He lay face down on the ice, motionless.
My world narrowed to a pinpoint. The noise of the arena faded. The cold seeped into my bones. Panic, cold and sharp, clawed at my throat.
Then, he moved.
He pushed himself up to his knees. He shook his head like a wet dog. He looked dazed.
Rizzo was there instantly, grabbing Stan’s jersey, shouting at the ref. A scrum broke out around them—shoving, punches thrown—but Stan didn't join in. He stayed on his knees, one hand clutching his head.
"Doc!" I yelled, turning to the bench. "He's hurt!"
"Miller, get out there!" Doc Halloway barked.
I didn't hesitate.
The ref opened the gate. I stepped onto the ice.
It was slippery—my sneakers had no grip compared to skates—but I ran. I ran/slid across the ten feet of ice to where Stan was kneeling.
"Stan," I said, dropping to my knees beside him. The ice instantly soaked through my pants. "Look at me."
He looked up.
His eyes were terrifying.
The pupils were gone. His irises were glowing a bright, incandescent gold. His face was contorted in a snarl, his lips pulled back to reveal teeth that looked... longer. Sharper.
He wasn't dazed. He was shifting.
The hit had triggered his defense mechanism. The Wolf was trying to come out to protect the host.
"Don't touch me," he growled. It was a guttural sound, low enough that the refs probably thought he was just groaning in pain. But I heard the animal in it.
"Stan," I whispered urgently, leaning in close so my body blocked him from the cameras. "It's me. It's Rachel. Look at me. Breathe."
"Too much," he rasped, his hands clawing at the ice. "Too loud. Want to... kill."
He was losing it. Right here on center ice. In front of three thousand people. In front of the scouts.
If he shifted now—if even a claw popped out, or if his eyes were caught on the Jumbotron—it was over. His life. The team. The secret.
I had to ground him.
I did the only thing I could think of.
I took off my glove. I reached out and placed my bare hand on the back of his neck, right where the hair met the skin.
His skin was burning hot.
"Vanilla," I whispered. "Rain. Safety. Come back to me."
He froze.
He inhaled sharply, his nose twitching. He smelled my skin. He smelled the pheromones of the mate he had claimed.
The gold in his eyes flickered. It dimmed, turning back to amber, then to a muddy brown.
He blinked. The snarl vanished, replaced by a grimace of pain.
"Rachel?" he croaked.
"I'm here," I said, my voice shaking. "You took a hit. You're okay. But you need to get off the ice. Now."
He nodded slowly. "Help me up."
I grabbed his arm. Rizzo appeared on his other side. Together, we hauled 240 pounds of unsteady wolf-man to his feet.
The crowd cheered as he stood up. They thought he was tough. They didn't know he was fighting a war inside his own skin.
We got him to the bench. He slumped onto the wood, head down.
"Concussion protocol," Doc Halloway announced. "He's done for the night."
"No," Stan growled, looking up. "I'm fine. Just a stinger."
"You're done, Kowalski," Coach Wolfowitz said, looming over him. The Alpha’s voice was final. "Go to the locker room. Take Miller with you. Get checked out."
Stan looked at the Coach. A silent communication passed between Alpha and Beta. Get control before you expose us.
"Fine," Stan spat.
He stood up, grabbing his stick. He smashed it against the boards as he walked down the tunnel—a display of anger for the crowd, but I knew it was frustration at his own weakness.
I grabbed my medical bag and followed him into the dark tunnel.
The locker room area was empty. The roar of the game was muffled here, a distant thunder.
Stan didn't stop at the main locker room. He walked past it, down the hall to the equipment room—"The Cage."
He kicked the door open and disappeared inside.
I followed him, closing the door behind me and locking it.
The room was dark, lit only by a single security bulb. It smelled of leather, sweat, and tape.
Stan was standing in the middle of the room. He had ripped his helmet off and thrown it into a pile of shin pads. He was pacing. Like a caged animal.
"Stan," I said softly.
He spun around.
"I almost turned," he said. His voice was raw. "I almost shifted right there on the ice, Rachel. I felt the fur. I felt the snout pushing out."
He was shaking. Violent tremors wracked his massive frame.
"But you didn't," I said, walking toward him. "You controlled it."
"You controlled it!" he shouted. "You touched me and the Wolf... he just sat down. Like a puppy. It's terrifying."
He backed up until he hit the metal shelving units. He slid down to the floor, pulling his knees to his chest. He looked small.
"I'm a liability," he whispered. "My dad was right. I shouldn't be playing. I shouldn't be near people."
My heart broke.
I dropped my bag and walked over to him. I knelt on the floor between his spread legs.
"Hey," I said. "Look at me."
He wouldn't look up. He was hiding his face in his hands.
I reached out and pried his hands away.