Chapter 1 #2
A corner of his mouth quirked up. It wasn't a smile. It was a baring of teeth. "Liar. Your pulse is visible in your neck. It’s fluttering like a dying bird."
He reached out, his hand hovering near my throat. His fingers were large, calloused, and scarred. A jagged white line cut through his left eyebrow, matching a faint claw mark on his shoulder.
"Why are you here?" he demanded, his gold eyes boring into mine.
"I told you," I whispered, fighting the urge to lean away—or worse, to lean in. "Clinical rotation. I need the hours."
"Not here," he said, his tone harsh. "Not with us. You don't belong in the forest, Mouse. You'll get eaten."
"I can handle myself."
"Can you?" He laughed, a dark, humorless sound. "You can't even handle looking at me."
I realized then that my gaze had been steadfastly glued to his face, terrified to look down. His nudity was a weapon he was wielding with expert precision. He wanted me uncomfortable. He wanted me to flee.
The realization sparked a tiny, unexpected ember of anger in my chest. He was bullying me. He was the big, bad Alpha, and he was trying to chase the little human girl away because he didn't want to deal with her.
I forced myself to take a breath. I forced my shoulders to drop.
"You're dripping on the floor," I said, my voice steadier than I felt.
I walked past him—my shoulder brushing his wet bicep, sending a jolt of electricity through my entire nervous system—and grabbed a thick white towel from the rack on the wall.
I turned back and held it out to him.
"Cover up, Captain Thorne. You'll catch a cold."
The silence that stretched between us was thick enough to choke on.
Oakley stared at the towel in my hand, then back up at my face. The gold in his eyes seemed to swirl, a storm trapped in glass. He looked genuinely surprised, as if the concept of someone giving him an order was foreign to his biology.
Slowly, agonizingly slowly, he reached out. His fingers brushed mine as he took the towel. The contact was brief, but it scorched. His skin was freezing from the ice, but his touch burned.
He didn't wrap the towel around his waist. He just held it, bunching the fabric in his fist, watching me.
"I don't get cold," he said softly. The growl was gone, replaced by a cold, clinical detachment that was somehow scarier. "And I don't need a nursemaid."
"Good," I said, stepping back toward the door, needing to put distance between us before my knees gave out. "Because I'm not here to nurse you. I'm here to fix you when you break."
His eyes narrowed. "I don't break."
"Everyone breaks," I said, reciting the first rule of physiology I’d learned. "It’s just a matter of how much pressure is applied."
Something flickered in his expression. Respect? Annoyance? Hunger? I couldn't tell.
He took a step toward me, and the air shifted again. The playfulness—if you could call it that—evaporated. The predator was back.
"Leave," he commanded. "Go find Varon. Tell him you quit. Tell him the locker room smells too bad, or the boys are too rough, or you missed your mommy. I don't care what you say. just don't come back in here."
"I need this credit," I argued, though my voice wavered.
"And I need my team focused," he snapped. "You are a distraction. A fragile, vanilla-scented distraction that is going to get hurt." He leaned down again, his lips brushing the shell of my ear. "Run along, little bit. Before I decide to hunt."
The threat hung in the steamy air.
I turned and fled.
I didn't run, exactly—I power-walked with as much dignity as I could muster until I hit the double doors of the training room, burst through them, and collapsed against the nearest taping table.
My hands were shaking. My breath was coming in short, shallow gasps.
I looked down at my hand, the one that had brushed his fingers. It was tingling, a phantom heat that wouldn't fade.
Run along before I decide to hunt.
I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to banish the image of him—the water, the scars, the gold eyes. But it was burned into my retinas.
I wasn't going to quit. I couldn't. But God help me, I had just walked into the cage, and the door had clicked shut behind me.
Oakley
The door swung shut behind her, but her scent remained.
It lingered in the humidity, weaving through the steam and the sharp smell of my own aggression. Vanilla. Jasmine. And the distinct, sugary spike of adrenaline.
Mine.
The thought slammed into my brain with the force of a checked puck.
I snarled, a guttural sound that ripped from my throat, and hurled the towel she had given me across the room. It slapped wetly against the tile and slid to the floor.
Mine. Mine. Mine.
The Wolf was pacing inside my chest, scratching at the back of my ribs, demanding I go after her.
It wanted to chase. It wanted to sink teeth into the soft curve of her neck where that pulse had been fluttering so frantically.
It wanted to pin her to the floor and cover her scent with mine until every male within a fifty-mile radius knew she belonged to the Pack Alpha.
"No," I gritted out, bracing my hands on the edge of the sink. I stared into the mirror.
The face staring back wasn't fully human. My pupils were blown, the gold irises dominating the white. My canines had lengthened, cutting into my bottom lip. A thin trickle of blood ran down my chin.
"Control," I whispered to the reflection. "Control, you feral piece of shit."
This was exactly what I had feared.
My father’s blood ran hot and cursed through my veins. The Thornes were powerful, yes, but we were unstable. We were prone to the madness—the moment when the Wolf consumed the Man. That was why I lived my life by a strict code. Routine. Discipline. Pain.
The ice baths were supposed to numb the fire. They were supposed to freeze the instincts so I could function as a captain, as a student, as a man.
But one look at her—one breath of that maddeningly sweet, innocent scent—and the ice had boiled.
A human. Of all the things the universe could have thrown at me to test my resolve, it had to be a human. Small, breakable, and terrified.
She had stood there, clutching her clipboard like it could save her from me. She had looked at me with those wide, hazel eyes, and instead of running screaming, she had handed me a towel.
You'll catch a cold.
The absurdity of it made a laugh bubble up in my chest, dark and twisted. She had no idea what I was. She had no idea that I could have snapped her in half with one hand, or that the urge to do so—and the urge to breed her—were warring violently in my skull.
"Captain Thorne?"
I whipped my head around.
Jax stood in the doorway, helmet tucked under his arm, his nose crinkled. My Beta. My best friend.
"Whoa," Jax said, stepping back, his hands raising in a placating gesture. "Easy, big guy. You're leaking pheromones like a busted pipe. It smells like a turf war in here."
"Get out," I warned, turning back to the sink to splash freezing water on my face.
"I saw a girl running out of here like her ass was on fire," Jax said, ignoring my command, as he always did. He walked over, leaning against a locker. "Cute. Tiny. Smelled like... cookies? Is that the new trainer?"
"She's leaving," I said, grabbing my track pants from the bench and yanking them on. My hands were shaking. I clenched them into fists. "I told her to quit."
Jax let out a low whistle. "Coach isn't gonna like that. We need a trainer, Oak. Miller graduated, and nobody else applied. It’s her or we’re taping our own ankles."
"I don't care," I snapped. I shoved my feet into my boots, not bothering with socks. "She can't be here. It's not safe."
Jax watched me, his expression sobering. He saw the tension in my shoulders, the way I was tracking the door she had exited through.
"Not safe for her?" Jax asked quietly. "Or not safe for you?"
I slammed my locker shut, the metal groaning under the impact.
"If she stays," I said, my voice low and final, "I'm going to ruin her."
Jax didn't laugh. He knew my history. He knew the fear that lived in the center of my chest.
"Well," Jax said, pushing off the locker. "You better hope she scares easy. Because she didn't look like the quitting type. She looked..." He paused, searching for the word. "Stubborn."
I closed my eyes, inhaling one last time. Her scent was fading, but the imprint of it was stamped on my brain.
Stubborn.
God help us both.
I pushed past Jax, storming out into the corridor, heading for the exit. I needed to run. I needed to shift and tear through the woods until my muscles screamed and the Wolf was too exhausted to think about hazel eyes and vanilla skin.
But as I walked out into the biting cold of the Michigan evening, I knew it wouldn't work.
The hunt had already begun.