Chapter 6
Oakley
Gravity was the only law that never changed. It was honest. It was brutal. It didn't care if you were a human, a wolf, or a goddamned mess of a man trying to outrun his own biology.
Four hundred and five pounds of iron plates sat on the deadlift platform, mocking me.
The university gym was quiet, the pre-dawn hour belonging only to the obsessed and the insomniacs. I was both. The air smelled of chalk dust, stale rubber, and the metallic tang of old sweat that had permeated the walls over decades. It was a familiar scent, one that usually calmed me.
Today, it did nothing.
I bent down, gripping the knurled steel bar. The metal bit into my calluses, a welcome sting. I braced my core, flattened my back, and pulled.
The weight rose. My hamstrings screamed. The veins in my neck bulged.
Up.
Hold it. Feel the strain. Feel the way the muscles threaten to tear.
Down.
The plates slammed into the rubber mats with a thunderous crash that echoed through the empty weight room.
I didn't let go. I reset. I pulled again.
One.
I saw her face. The way her eyes had rolled back.
Two.
I felt the heat of her slick skin against my hand. The way she had clamped down on my fingers, pulsating, alive.
Three.
I heard the sound she made—that broken, desperate whimper right before she shattered.
"Fuck," I roared, dropping the bar at the top of the lift. The crash was louder this time, shaking the floorboards.
I backed away, pacing the small confines of the platform, my chest heaving. Sweat dripped from my nose, landing on the grey rubber. My hands were shaking, and it wasn't from the weight.
It had been twelve hours since the library. Twelve hours since I had crossed a line that I had sworn—on my blood, on my pack, on my sanity—that I would never cross.
I had touched her.
And not just a casual touch. I had been inside her. I had tasted her pleasure on my lips. I had marked her with my scent so thoroughly that if any other male got within ten feet of her today, they would know exactly who she belonged to.
Belonged to.
The thought sent a surge of possessive warmth through my chest, followed immediately by a bucket of ice-cold dread.
She didn't belong to me. She couldn't. She was Faye Sommers. Kinesiology major. Human. Fragile. The girl who organized her highlighters by color gradient.
And I was the son of Elias Thorne. I was a genetic cocktail of violence and instability waiting for a detonator.
I grabbed my water bottle, squeezing it so hard the plastic crinkled loudly. I downed half of it, the cold water doing nothing to put out the fire in my gut.
I had told myself it was just a moment of weakness.
Just a release of tension. The pressure of the season, the academic probation, the Rut cycle—it was a perfect storm.
I had told myself that once I touched her, the mystery would be gone.
The obsession would fade. I would realize she was just a girl, and I could go back to being the cold, distant Captain.
I was an idiot.
Touching her hadn't extinguished the fire; it had poured gasoline on it. Now I knew. I knew how soft she was. I knew how responsive she was to my praise. I knew that she wasn't afraid of the Wolf; she welcomed him.
"You're going to break the floor, Oak."
I spun around.
Jax was leaning against the squat rack, arms crossed over his chest. He was wearing a hoodie with the sleeves cut off, his hair a mess of blonde bedhead. He held a protein shake in one hand and looked entirely too awake for 5:30 AM.
"Go away, Riot," I growled, turning back to the bar.
"Can't," Jax said, stepping onto the platform. "Spotter's code. Besides, I could smell your panic from the parking lot. You smell like burnt ozone and guilt."
I glared at him. "I'm not panicked. I'm training."
"You're deadlifting four plates without a belt," Jax pointed out, nodding at the bar. "That's not training. That's self-harm. What's going on?"
"Nothing."
Jax took a sip of his shake, watching me with those deceptively intelligent blue eyes. He was the Beta for a reason. He was the peacemaker, the observer. He saw things I missed because I was too busy staring at the target.
"Did you talk to the trainer?" he asked casually.
My heart skipped a beat. A literal, physical skip. "What?"
"Faye," Jax clarified. "Did you talk to her? About the tutoring? Is she helping you not fail out of school?"
"Yeah," I said, grabbing a towel to wipe my face, hiding my expression. "We studied last night. In the library."
"Studied," Jax repeated.
"Yes. Studied. Utilitarianism. Moral imperatives. Boring shit."
"Uh-huh." Jax walked closer, sniffing the air theatrically. "Is that why you smell like her shampoo? And... something else?"
I froze.
I hadn't showered fast enough. Or maybe the scent was just embedded in my pores now.
"I gave her a ride home," I lied, my voice tight. "It was snowing. Her scent got in the truck."
Jax studied me for a long, uncomfortable moment. The silence stretched, heavy and knowing. He knew I was lying. He knew something had shifted. But he also knew the code. You don't push an Alpha when he's cornered unless you want to get bitten.
"Okay," Jax said slowly, backing off. "Just be careful, Oak. That girl... she's got eyes like a Disney princess, but this is real life. If you mess with her, and then you leave her when the season ends..."
"I'm not going to leave her," I snapped.
The words were out before I could stop them.
Jax’s eyebrows shot up into his hairline. "Whoa. Okay. That's... new."
"I meant," I corrected, scrambling to recover, "that I'm not going to mess with her. She's my tutor. It's a professional arrangement. I need the grade."
"Right," Jax said, a slow grin spreading across his face. "Professional. Just like you deadlifting a Volkswagen at dawn is professional."
He clapped me on the shoulder, his grip firm.
"Just remember who you are, Cap," Jax said, his voice dropping the joking tone. "And remember who your dad is. We don't get the fairy tale endings. We get the hard ones."
He turned and walked away toward the cardio machines.
I watched him go, the words settling in my stomach like lead weights.
Remember who your dad is.
As if I could ever forget.
By noon, the campus was alive.
The snow had stopped, leaving the world coated in a blinding, pristine white. The sun was out, reflecting off the drifts with a glare that required sunglasses.
I walked toward the student union, my head down, music blasting in my headphones. I was trying to create a bubble. If I couldn't hear them, I couldn't smell them, I couldn't sense them.
But the bubble burst the second I walked into the cafeteria.
The noise was a physical wall—laughter, shouting, the clatter of trays, the hiss of espresso machines. The smell was a chaotic mix of pizza, fried chicken, and hundreds of different perfumes and colognes.
I grabbed a tray, moving mechanically through the line. Chicken breasts. Rice. Vegetables. Fuel.
I scanned the room for an empty table in the back corner, my usual spot.
And then I saw her.
It wasn't like in the movies where the crowd parted. It was more subtle than that. It was a magnetic pull, a realignment of my internal compass. North was no longer a direction; North was wherever she was standing.
Faye was in line for the sandwich station, about thirty feet away. She was wearing a thick cream-colored sweater and jeans, her hair down today, cascading over her shoulders in soft, chestnut waves. She was laughing at something the girl next to her—Sloane—had said.
She looked... normal.
She looked like just another student grabbing lunch between classes. She didn't look like a girl who had been undone on a library table twelve hours ago. She didn't look like she was carrying the weight of a secret that could ruin my season.
I stood there, holding my tray, paralyzed by the sight of her.
I wanted to walk over there. I wanted to slide my arm around her waist, pull her back against my chest, and bury my face in that hair. I wanted to bite the spot on her neck where I knew her pulse was beating.
As if she felt the weight of my stare, Faye stopped laughing. She turned her head slowly, scanning the crowd.
Her eyes found mine instantly.
The smile dropped from her face. Her lips parted slightly. Even from this distance, I saw the flush rise on her cheeks, turning her skin a delicate shade of pink.
She remembered.
She was remembering exactly what I was remembering. The heat. The friction. The way she had begged.
The air between us crackled. It was invisible, but it was there, a high-tension wire strung across the cafeteria. People were walking through it, oblivious, but for us, it was a physical connection.
Sloane nudged her, saying something, but Faye didn't look away. She held my gaze, her eyes wide and dark. She looked terrified. And hungry.
I took a step toward her. I couldn't help it.
"Thorne!"
A body slammed into me from the side.
I braced myself instinctively, not dropping my tray, but the spell was broken.
It was Carter, a linebacker from the football team. Human. Loud. Obnoxious.
"Watch where you're going, man," Carter laughed, slapping my arm. "You look like you're sleepwalking."
"Move, Carter," I growled, stepping around him.
But when I looked back at the sandwich station, Faye was gone.
She had run.
I stared at the empty space where she had been, a hollow ache opening in my chest.
Coward, the Wolf hissed at me. You scared her off.
No. I hadn't scared her off. The reality had. The daylight. The people.
Last night, in the dark, we could pretend we were just a man and a woman. But here? In the light of day? She was a student, and I was the monster everyone warned her about.
I threw my uneaten lunch in the trash and walked out.
The day dragged.
I sat through lectures, took notes I wouldn't remember, and nodded at people I didn't like. My phone buzzed in my pocket every hour, but I ignored it. I knew who it was.
The name on the screen would be Father.