Chapter 2
Rory
The iron bar bent.
It wasn't a metaphor. The Olympic bar draped across my shoulders, loaded with four plates on each side, actually warped under the force of my grip. I could feel the steel yielding, a subtle surrender against the trapezius muscles screaming in protest.
Down.
Squat. The weight compressed my spine, threatening to crush me into the rubber floor mats.
Up.
Explode. The metal clanged, a violent, satisfying sound that echoed through the empty weight room.
Four a.m. The witching hour for the restless, the haunted, and the hungry.
I racked the weight with a snarl, the sound ripping from my throat before I could catch it. I stepped back, my chest heaving, sweat dripping from my nose onto the black floor.
It wasn't enough.
Five hundred pounds of iron, and it wasn't enough to silence the noise in my head.
It had been six hours since I slammed the door in her face. Six hours of pacing my bedroom floor like a caged animal. Six hours of listening to the soft, maddening sounds of her existence through the shared wall.
Click. A light switch.
Creak. A floorboard.
Splash. Water running.
And the scent.
Even here, across campus in the athlete’s training facility, deep in the sub-basement where the air smelled of bleach and testosterone, I could still smell her. It was branded into my olfactory bulb. Vanilla. Freesia. And that underlying, biological sweetness that screamed compatible.
My Wolf was pacing inside my ribcage, a shadow overlapping my own nervous system. He didn't want to squat. He didn't want to be in this gym. He wanted to be back at the cabin, tearing through the drywall to get to the little blonde thing that smelled like home.
She is not home, I told him, wiping my face with a rough towel. She is a trap.
"You're going to owe the department a new bar, you know."
The voice came from the doorway. Jaxson Miller. Of course.
I didn't turn around. I grabbed my water bottle, squeezing it so hard the plastic crinkled loudly. "Go away, Jax."
"Can't," he said, his voice cheerful, gratingly awake for this hour. He walked into the room, the heavy thud of his boots announcing his presence. "As your goalie, it’s my job to stop things from getting past the defense. As your best friend, it’s my job to stop you from stroking out before the season opener. "
Jax leaned against the squat rack, crossing his arms. He was wearing a flannel shirt over a hoodie—the standard Minnesota uniform—and eating an apple. The sound of the crunch was deafening in the quiet room.
"You look like hell, Rory."
"I feel like hell," I muttered, moving to the bench press. I needed to keep moving. If I stopped, the thoughts would catch up.
Jax sniffed the air. He frowned, his nose twitching. He took another sniff, deeper this time, his playful demeanor vanishing instantly.
"Whoa."
I froze.
Jax pushed off the rack, walking closer, invading my personal space. He circled me, sniffing blatantly now. "Rory. What is that?"
"Sweat," I snapped. "Cedar. Go away."
"No," Jax said, his voice dropping to a low, serious rumble. "That’s not sweat. That’s… sugar. It’s female. And it’s stuck to you like a second skin."
He stopped in front of me, his golden-brown eyes wide. "Did you… did you find someone?"
"No."
"Don't lie to me. You smell like you rolled around in a bakery run by angels. That’s a mark scent, Rory. That’s the scent a Wolf picks up when he finds a potential—"
"Don't say it," I warned, turning on him. A low growl vibrated in my chest, involuntary and dangerous.
Jax held up his hands, palms open. "Okay. Okay. I won't say the M-word. But seriously. Who is she? Did you hook up? Is that why you're here at four in the morning trying to bench press a Buick?"
I sat on the bench, putting my head in my hands. The exhaustion washed over me, heavy and gray. "I didn't touch her. I didn't hook up. I just… met her."
"And?"
"And she’s the Dean’s daughter."
Jax choked on his apple. He coughed, hacking loudly, and thumped his chest. "Zoe? Zoe Carmichael? The Ice Princess?"
I looked up, glaring at him. "Don't call her that."
"Oh boy," Jax whispered, running a hand through his hair. "You're defending her already. This is bad. This is catastrophic. Rory, she’s human. She’s the human. Her dad signs our scholarship checks. If he smells this on you…"
"He won't," I said, though the fear coiled tight in my gut. "Because I’m not going to pursue it."
Jax looked at me with a mixture of pity and skepticism. "Rory. You know how the biology works. If your Wolf has decided she’s the one, you can't just 'not pursue it.' You'll go crazy. You'll go into a rut. You'll end up howling outside her window."
"I am not my father," I said, the words coming out sharper than the blade of a skate.
The room went silent.
Jax’s expression softened. He knew the history.
Everyone in the pack knew, though no one spoke of it.
They knew that Elias Thorne hadn't just been a bad Alpha; he had been a cautionary tale.
He had fallen for a human woman—my mother—and when the mating bond didn't settle right, when the clash between his feral nature and her fragile humanity became too much, he snapped. He broke her. Then he broke the pack.
I had his blood. I had his temper. And lately, I had his instability.
"You aren't him," Jax said softly. "But you're punishing yourself for crimes you haven't committed yet. You're isolating yourself in that cabin, training until you pass out… it’s not healthy."
"It keeps the beast tired," I said, standing up. "Tired is safe."
"Safe is boring," Jax countered, though he didn't smile. "Look, just… be careful. The Dean moved her into the duplex next to you, didn't he? I heard the rumors about the flood."
I nodded, grabbing my gym bag.
"Shared wall?" Jax asked, wincing.
"Shared wall."
"God help you."
By ten a.m., the campus was awake.
I hated the daylight. The sun was too bright, reflecting off the snowbanks that lined the walkways of Northridge University, blinding me. The noise was worse. thousands of students trudging to class, their voices a cacophony of inane chatter.
“Did you see his story?”
“I’m failing stats.”
“It’s so cold I can’t feel my face.”
I moved through the crowd like a shark through a school of minnows. People parted for me. They always did. It was the size, sure—I was six-five and built like a tank—but it was also the aura. Predators don't have to announce themselves; prey animals just know.
I kept my head down, hoodie up, headphones on with no music playing. I just needed to dampen the sound of the world.
I was heading to the Biology building for a required lab. Ironically, Human Anatomy. I knew more about anatomy than the professor did. I knew exactly where the carotid artery pulsed. I knew how much pressure it took to snap a radius. I knew the exact chemical scent of fear, lust, and ovulation.
As I crossed the quad, the wind shifted.
It hit me again.
Sugar.
I stopped dead in the middle of the path. A student behind me bumped into my back, bouncing off like he’d hit a brick wall.
"Watch it, man," he grumbled, then saw who I was. His eyes widened. "Uh, sorry. My bad. Sorry, Thorne."
I didn't acknowledge him. My entire being was focused on the scent trail.
It was faint, weaving through the cold air, but it was there. She was nearby.
My head turned, tracking it against my will.
Across the quad, near the library steps, I saw her.
Zoe.
She looked different in the daylight. Less like a ghost, more like a revelation. She was wearing a white coat today, with a ridiculous fuzzy hat that should have looked stupid but instead made her look unbearably cute. She was clutching a stack of books to her chest, her head bent against the wind.
But she wasn't alone.
A guy was walking with her. A human. Tall, lanky, wearing a Northridge debate team jacket. He was leaning in close. Too close. He was saying something that made her smile.
A sharp, hot spike of jealousy drove itself into my chest. It was irrational. It was immediate. It was violent.
Mine, the Wolf snarled. Kill him.
I clenched my fists in my pockets, digging my nails into my palms until the skin broke. The pain grounded me.
She is not yours, I recited the mantra. She is a person. She is allowed to talk to people. She is allowed to smile at people who aren't monsters.
But then, the guy reached out. He touched her arm.
A low, vibrating sound started in my throat. I couldn't stop it. The people nearest to me stepped back, looking around confusedly, wondering where the growl of a large dog was coming from.
I had to leave. Now.
I turned on my heel, abandoning class. I couldn't sit in a lecture hall right now. I was too volatile. The leash was fraying.
I marched back toward the woods, toward the duplex, needing the silence of the trees.
The driveways of the Hive duplexes were long, winding paths through the pines. By the time I reached ours, the adrenaline had faded into a dull, throbbing ache in my temples.
I just wanted to sleep. I wanted to turn off the lights, put on noise-canceling headphones, and pretend the girl with the violet eyes didn't exist.
I crested the hill and saw the cabin.
And there she was again.
Fate, it seemed, had a twisted sense of humor.
Zoe was standing in the shared driveway. Her car—the sensible white sedan—was parked at an awkward angle, half in the plowed area, half in a snowbank. The trunk was open.
She was struggling with a box.
It was a large plastic tote, clearly heavy. She had it pulled halfway out of the trunk, but her boots were slipping on the patch of ice that coated the asphalt.
I stopped at the edge of the woods, watching.
Help her, the Wolf commanded.
Ignore her, the Man pleaded.
She heaved the box, her face turning pink with exertion. Her feet slipped again. She let out a small frustration noise—a soft mph sound that drifted across the quiet air.
She was so small. The coat swallowed her. She looked utterly ill-equipped for the brutality of a Minnesota winter, let alone the brutality of living next to me.