Chapter 1
Zoe
The sound of a blade cutting ice is the sharpest sound in the world. It’s a violent hiss, a scream of metal against frozen water, slicing through the silence of the arena like a knife through silk.
Scrape. Hiss. Scrape.
I took a breath, holding the freezing air in my lungs until it burned, a familiar, grounding ache.
The air in the Northridge University arena—affectionately dubbed "The Ice Box"—always smelled the same: stale popcorn, zamboni exhaust, and the metallic tang of old copper pipes.
To anyone else, it was the smell of a locker room. To me, it was the scent of survival.
I circled the center ice, gathering speed. My thighs burned, the muscles trembling with the accumulated fatigue of a three-hour session, but I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. Not when he was watching.
I could feel his gaze on the back of my neck, heavier than the velvet coat he wore, colder than the ice beneath my skates.
Dean Carmichael didn't stand near the glass like the parents of the younger skaters; he stood up in the shadows of the luxury box, a silhouette of judgment.
My father. The man who held the keys to this university, and by extension, the keys to my life.
Focus, Zoe. Triple Lutz. Back outside edge. Pick. Rotate.
I launched myself into the air.
For a split second, gravity released its hold. I was weightless, a spinning top of chiffon and ambition suspended in the frigid air. One rotation. Two. Three—
My landing leg came down, but the angle was off by a millimeter. The blade chattered against the ice.
My ankle buckled.
I didn't scream. I had trained the noise out of myself years ago. I simply hit the ice hard, my hip taking the brunt of the impact, sliding five feet across the scratches and scars of the rink surface before coming to a stop. The cold seeped instantly through my leggings, biting at my skin.
I lay there for a heartbeat, staring up at the vaulted ceiling, the fluorescent lights humming like a headache.
Get up.
The thought wasn't mine. It was his voice in my head. Carmichaels don't fall. And if they do, they don't let anyone see them bleed.
I scrambled to my feet, ignoring the throbbing protest in my left hip. I smoothed my practice skirt, lifted my chin, and looked up at the box. The silhouette turned and walked away.
He hadn’t even waited to see if I was injured. He had seen the failure, and that was enough to dismiss me.
A bitter, hollow laugh bubbled in my throat, but I swallowed it down. I skated to the boards, grabbing my water bottle with shaking hands. My fingers were pale, the knuckles red from the cold. I looked like a porcelain doll left out in a storm—fragile, breakable, expensive.
"You okay, Z?"
I jumped, water splashing onto my chin.
Mia, my roommate and the only person on this campus who didn't treat me like a delicate piece of glass, was leaning over the boards. She was wrapped in a parka that looked like it had been stolen from an arctic expedition, her dark curls fighting a losing battle against the static electricity.
"I'm fine," I lied. It was my automatic setting. "Just missed the edge."
"You hit the ice like a sack of potatoes," Mia deadpanned, checking her phone. "And you’ve been out here since five a.m. If you don't stop, you’re going to snap something. And then who will I have to complain to about organic chemistry?"
"If I snap something, at least I won't have to skate at Regionals," I muttered, stepping off the ice. I sat on the bench and began unlacing my skates. The relief was immediate, the blood rushing back into my crushed toes.
"Speaking of snapping," Mia said, her voice dropping an octave, "you need to check your phone. The chaotic energy of this campus has officially peaked."
I frowned, peeling off a sock to inspect a blister. "What happened?"
"A pipe burst in North Hall. Like, a catastrophic, Old Faithful style burst. The third floor is currently a swimming pool."
My stomach dropped. "North Hall? That’s our dorm."
"Correction," Mia said, finally looking up from her screen, her eyes wide. "That was our dorm. They’re evacuating the whole wing for mold remediation. It’s going to take months."
I stood up, one boot on, one off. "Where are we supposed to sleep, Mia? The Hilton?"
"I’m crashing with my boyfriend," she said, flapping a hand. "But you… well, since you’re the Princess of Northridge, your dad pulled some strings."
I froze. Whenever my father pulled strings, it usually felt like a noose tightening. "What did he do?"
"You know those luxury duplexes on the edge of the woods? The ones usually reserved for the staff or the 'special' athletes?"
"The Hive?" I whispered. The rumors about those cabins were legendary. They were secluded, surrounded by the dense Minnesota pine forest, and usually occupied by the hockey team. The hockey team that walked around campus like gods, terrifying and beautiful and utterly untouchable.
"Half of one is empty," Mia said. "It shares a wall with one of the players, but it’s a separate unit. Your dad already had your stuff moved. You’ve got the key waiting at the front desk."
I sank back onto the bench. The hockey players at Northridge weren't normal jocks. They were… different. Massive. Silent. There was a predatory energy to the Timber Wolves that made the hair on my arms stand up whenever they entered the cafeteria. They moved like a pack. They stared too intensely.
And now I was going to be living in the woods with one of them.
"Which one?" I asked, my voice barely audible over the hum of the zamboni rolling out onto the ice.
Mia checked her phone again, scrolling through a text. She grimaced. "Uh. Unit 4B."
"Who is in 4A, Mia?"
She looked at me, and for the first time, I saw genuine pity in her eyes.
"Rory Thorne."
The name hit me harder than the ice had.
Rory Thorne. The Enforcer. Number 66.
I had seen him around campus, mostly from a distance.
You couldn't miss him. He was six-foot-five of pure, unadulterated menace.
He didn't walk; he stalked. He had black hair that looked like he cut it with a knife, and eyes that were so dark they looked like voids. There were rumors about him—that he’d sent a guy to the ICU just for looking at him wrong, that he didn't speak, that he had a temper that could burn the stadium down.
He was a monster.
And I was the Dean’s perfect, virgin daughter, about to sleep on the other side of his wall.
Rory
The blood was singing in my veins. It was a chaotic, thrumming rhythm, a drumbeat that demanded violence.
Kill. Maim. Break.
The Wolf was close to the surface tonight. Too close.
I stood in the tunnel, the darkness wrapping around me like a second skin, listening to the roar of the crowd. It was deafening—thousands of humans screaming for blood. They thought they were cheering for a game. They didn't know they were cheering for predators.
"Rory."
I didn't turn. I kept my eyes fixed on the sliver of bright white ice visible through the tunnel opening.
I adjusted my shoulder pads, the plastic armor digging into my traps.
My body felt too tight for my skin. My bones ached with the urge to shift, to snap, to rearrange themselves into something lethal.
"Rory, look at me."
I turned my head slowly. Jaxson Miller, our goalie and the only person in this pack I didn't currently want to throttle, was staring at me through his mask. He had it pushed up on his forehead, his golden-brown hair plastered to his skull with sweat.
"Your eyes," Jax whispered, his voice low enough that the humans working security couldn't hear. "They're flashing."
I blinked hard, forcing the beast down, forcing the molten gold to recede back into the dark brown of my human guise. It was getting harder. Every day, the leash snapped a little more.
"I'm fine," I grunted. My voice sounded like gravel grinding in a blender.
"You're in a pre-rut haze," Jax hissed, grabbing my jersey and yanking me closer. "You smell like ozone and murder. If you lose it out there tonight, if you shift on the ice… it’s over. For all of us."
"I said I'm fine." I shoved him off, the power of the shove sending him stumbling back into the concrete wall.
He looked at me with genuine fear. Not fear of me, but fear for me.
"The Dean is watching," Jax warned. "Don't give him a reason to put you down."
I bared my teeth in a smile that wasn't a smile. It was a threat display. "Let's go play."
We skated out.
The cold hit me first, a delicious shock to the system. Then the noise. Then the smell.
The sensory overload was agonizing. I could smell everything. The cheap perfume of the girls in the front row, the stale beer spilled in section C, the fear radiating off the opposing team’s center. They were the Badgers—a human team. Weak. Fragile. Breakable.
The game was a blur of violence.
I lived for the contact. The moment my shoulder collided with a chest, the moment the vibration of impact rattled my teeth—that was the only time the Wolf went quiet. It was a release valve.
Bam. I checked a winger into the boards. He crumpled.
Bam. I cleared the crease, lifting a guy off his skates and throwing him to the ice.
The whistle blew. A penalty. Roughing. Again.
I skated to the box, the shame and the rage warring in my gut. I sat down, spitting blood onto the floor mat. My hands were shaking inside my gloves.
It was the Curse. I knew it.
My father had been the Alpha of our pack until the day he wasn't. Until the day the human side of him eroded away, leaving only a feral beast that couldn't distinguish friend from prey.
He had slaughtered three pack members before they put him down.
I was ten years old. I watched the light go out of his eyes, and I saw the exact same monster living in the mirror every morning since.
I was twenty-two now. The age he had been when the symptoms started. The aggression. The lack of control. The constant, burning need to breed and fight.