Chapter 2
Oakley
Control was not a state of being. It was a physical weight, a collar of iron forged in the fires of discipline that I clamped around my own throat every single morning.
I woke up before the sun. That was the rule. If I was awake before the light hit the snow-laden branches of the pines outside my window, I was ahead of the Wolf. If I let the sun wake me, the beast would be scratching at the back of my eyes, hungry and disoriented.
My room in the attic of Blackwood Lodge was a fortress of solitude. Soundproofed walls. Reinforced steel doorframe. The air was kept at a constant sixty degrees because I ran hot—a furnace that never quite banked its coals.
I sat up, the sheets pooling at my waist, and immediately, my nose twitched.
Vanilla.
It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. She wasn’t here. Faye Sommers—the little human with the big eyes and the death wish—was miles away, likely tucked into a dorm room bed, safe in her fragile, human world.
But the phantom scent of her was seared into my olfactory memory. It clung to the neurons of my brain like tar. Vanilla, soft skin, and that sharp, delectable spike of fear that tasted like sugar on the tongue.
I groaned, dragging a hand down my face, feeling the roughness of stubble.
My body was hard. Painfully so. The erection tenting the sheets was a throbbing reminder that my biology didn't give a damn about my logic.
My Wolf didn't care that she was human. It didn't care that she was off-limits.
It only knew that we had found something that smelled like Home, and I had been stupid enough to let her walk away without claiming it.
"Fuck," I breathed into the silence.
I threw the covers off and hit the floor, ignoring the cold of the hardwood. I dropped and started counting. Push-ups. One. Two. Three.
I needed to burn it out. I needed to replace the want with pain.
My father used to say that a Wolf without a mate was a gun with a hair trigger.
He was right. But my father was also a monster who had leveled an entire town block when his control snapped.
I had watched him tear through drywall and steel like it was paper.
I had watched the light go out of his eyes, replaced by a hollow, consuming madness.
I wouldn't be him. I would rather die than be him.
Fifty. Fifty-one. Fifty-two.
My muscles burned, the lactic acid flooding my system, but it wasn't enough. The image of her in the steam-filled room kept playing on a loop behind my eyelids. The way her mouth had parted. The way she had held that towel out like a peace offering to a dragon.
Stubborn.
Jax was right. She had looked terrified, yes, but she hadn’t broken eye contact. Most humans couldn't hold an Alpha’s gaze for more than a few seconds without their primal survival instincts forcing them to submit, to look down, to bare their necks.
She hadn’t looked down. She had looked right into the fire.
I pushed off the floor, sweat dripping from my nose, and stalked to the shower. Cold water again. It was becoming the theme of my existence.
The kitchen of Blackwood Lodge was a chaotic sensory nightmare that usually didn’t bother me, but today, it felt like an assault.
The Lodge was massive, a sprawling gothic log cabin that housed the starting line-up of the Timberwolves. It was designed for Shifters—oversized furniture, reinforced beams, and an industrial kitchen that looked more like a butcher shop.
When I walked in, the smell of raw meat and testosterone hit me like a physical slap.
Jax was perched on the counter, shirtless, gnawing on a literal ribeye steak he had seared for maybe thirty seconds. Beside him, Kael, our goalie—a massive Kodiak bear shifter—was inhaling a mixing bowl full of scrambled eggs.
"Captain on deck," Jax mumbled around a mouthful of beef, grinning. "You look like shit, Oak."
"Morning to you too," I grumbled, moving past him to the coffee pot. I poured it black, dark as crude oil.
"He's grumpy," Kael observed, his voice a deep bass rumble. He pointed a fork at me. "Is it the Rut? You smell... edgy. Like you want to fight or fuck."
"Watch it, Bear," I warned, leaning back against the counter and taking a scalding sip of coffee. "I'm fine."
"He's not fine," Jax said, swallowing. "He met a girl."
Kael’s eyebrows shot up. "A girl? Oak doesn't meet girls. Oak scares girls. Oak stares at girls until they cry and transfer to State."
"She didn't cry," Jax said, looking at me with annoying perceptiveness. "She walked into the Ice Room while he was naked. And she lived to tell the tale."
I slammed the mug down on the granite countertop. The ceramic cracked.
Silence descended on the kitchen.
"Enough," I said, my voice low. The command was laced with Alpha authority, the kind that made the hair on the back of their necks stand up. "We have a game against Northern on Friday. Focus on the ice. Not on my dick."
"We're just saying," Jax said, raising his hands in surrender, though his eyes were dancing with amusement.
"If you need to... blow off steam... maybe you should just go find a puck bunny.
Break your vow for a night. Nobody would blame you.
You've been celibate since August, man. It's unnatural. Your Wolf is going to eat your brain."
"I don't do casual," I said, the lie tasting like ash. I could do casual. Physically, I was capable. But mentally? My Wolf didn't understand 'casual.' If I slept with someone, I marked them. I claimed them. And I wasn't going to claim some random jersey-chaser just to scratch an itch.
"And I'm handling the trainer situation," I added, turning to leave. "I'm going to see Varon. By noon, Miss Sommers will be a memory."
Jax hopped off the counter. "You're firing her? Just because she saw your junk?"
"I'm firing her," I said, grabbing my leather jacket from the hook by the door, "because she's human. And this house? This team? We aren't safe for humans. especially not one who smells like..."
I cut myself off.
"Like what?" Kael asked.
"Like trouble," I lied.
I walked out into the snow, the heavy oak door slamming behind me.
Ironclaw University was beautiful in a stark, violent sort of way.
The campus was carved out of the wilderness, the gothic stone buildings rising from the snowdrifts like jagged teeth.
It was cold, brutally so, but the cold centered me.
It numbed the constant, low-level buzz of aggression that ran under my skin.
I walked to the Athletic Complex, my boots crunching on the packed ice.
Students parted around me like a stream around a boulder.
I could smell them as I passed—fear, anxiety, lust, caffeine.
The sensory input was a constant roar. Being a Wolf meant never knowing true silence.
You heard every heartbeat, smelled every hormonal shift.
Most of the student body knew to stay out of my way. I wore my reputation like armor. The brooding Captain. The rich boy with the famous last name and the bad attitude. I let them think I was an asshole. It was safer than them knowing I was constantly restraining the urge to violence.
I reached Coach Varon’s office and didn't bother knocking. I pushed the door open.
Coach Varon was a Wolf, an old one. His hair was silver, his face lined with the scars of a thousand on-ice brawls. He was sitting behind his desk, watching game tape. He didn't look up.
"You're late, Thorne."
"I was running," I said, dropping into the leather chair opposite him. "We need to talk about the trainer."
Varon paused the video. He looked at me, his eyes a faded, steel grey. "Faye Sommers. Top of her class. High recommendations from the Dean of Kinesiology. What’s the problem?"
"She's human," I said flatly.
"So is the Dean. So is half the faculty."
"She's a female human," I corrected, leaning forward. "And she's small. Varon, you know what the locker room is like after a win. You know what the energy is like during the Rut cycle. It's a liability. If one of the boys loses control..."
"Then you do your job," Varon snapped. "You're the Alpha. You keep them in line."
"I can't keep them in line if I'm distracted," I growled, the truth slipping out.
Varon studied me for a long moment. He leaned back in his chair, the leather creaking. He took a deep sniff of the air, and his eyes narrowed.
"Ah," he said softly. "I see."
"You see what?"
"She got to you."
My jaw tightened until my teeth ached. "She walked in on me in the Ice Room. It was unprofessional."
"It was an accident," Varon countered. "And she didn't quit. She called me this morning to confirm the taping schedule. She said you were 'intense' but she could handle it."
Intense.
"I don't want her there," I said, my voice rising. "Get me a Beta. Get me a human male. I don't care. Just get her out."
Varon stood up, signaling the end of the meeting. "No."
I stared at him. "No?"
"Miller graduated. The other applicants were garbage. Sommers is the only one with the grades and the hands to do the soft tissue work you guys need. We are chasing a National Title, Oakley. I need my team healthy. I need their hamstrings loose and their shoulders mobile. She stays."
"Coach—"
"She stays," Varon barked, his own Alpha voice flashing. "And you are going to treat her with respect. If I hear you're bullying her, you're benched. I don't care if your last name is on the damn building."
I stood up slowly, the Wolf inside me bristling at the challenge. I wanted to flip the desk. I wanted to tear the room apart.
But Varon was right. He was the Coach. On the ice, his word was law.
"Fine," I spat. "But on your head be it."
"Get to class, Thorne," Varon said, turning back to his screen. "And try not to eat the staff."
I spent the rest of the day in a fog of agitation.
I sat through my Business Ethics lecture without hearing a word, my leg bouncing under the desk with enough kinetic energy to power a small city. I broke two pencils. The girl sitting next to me—a squirrel shifter—moved three seats away because I was radiating so much hostility.