Chapter 2
CONNOR
The most humiliating thing about being an alpha is having your instincts played like a cheap ringtone by a girl who won’t even look at you. Case in point: Grace Davis. Reason: my own fucking decisions.
I know it.
She knows it.
The rest of the pack knows it.
So there’s nothing I can do but take my turn at being humiliated. Deserved.
The moment she stepped out for rehearsal this morning, her scent turned the air in the Reverie Arena sticky and electric. Every cell in my body became a fuse primed to detonate at the barest hint of roses, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Not after prep camp. Not after rejecting this perfect, scent-matched omega because… Because why?
That’s a brilliant question I’ve been asking myself for months now.
Chiefly, fear. It’s a cowardly but true answer. But taking the rejection to the level we did was supremely uncalled for. Grace wasn’t looking for instant pack bonds and marriage and pups. She just wanted to know if we’d be interested. And now we’ve all but burned that interest.
Deserved, I remind myself again.
Last spring, the three of us—me, Zev, Fowler—made her life at prep camp a living hell.
Worse, we thought we were doing her a favor.
Rejected the bond in a desperate bid for control, for normalcy.
For the stupid hope that a scent match could be out-skated or ignored, that I could muscle through the bond like it was a torn ligament so we could all focus on our role in Reverie or the lives outside of it we were trying to put back together. Zev and Fowler especially.
Grace sweeps off the ice after practice with her chin up, gold-blonde hair shifting around her shoulders in the slight breeze.
She doesn’t spare me a single glance. My inner alpha balks at my omega’s disrespect.
Which is fucking laughable considering our own actions.
And the fact she’s not my omega. Zev, Fowler, and I made sure of that.
I shove my blades into my mesh bag and jam my beanie down over my hair. It’s so I’m not tempted to watch her retreat down the tunnel to the ladies’ locker room. It doesn’t work. My eyes aren’t watching, but every nerve ending still points magnetic-north to Grace, my body’s own broken compass.
She’s not my omega. Or Reverie Pack’s omega. But my inner alpha hasn’t gotten that memo yet.
It’s not just my body acting up, though. My mind’s running a speed-skate marathon of what-ifs and if-only’s. I replay the moment we rejected her—God, I can’t even think of it without my stomach eating itself. She looked at us with this perfect combination of fury and heartbreak.
The image seared itself into my brain.
“Earth to Jones.”
I jump and nearly launch the mesh bag into orbit.
Zev is at my elbow, hands in pockets, looking bigger than any normal human should.
He’s in his standard off-ice uniform from his summer high school coaching job—sweats and a battered coaching windbreaker.
His face is unreadable, but that’s Zev. He could be two seconds from laughter or homicide, and you’d never know the difference.
“Didn’t hear you,” I mutter. I look for Fowler, but he’s lagging behind, poking at the vend-o-matic like a raccoon caught in a Doritos factory.
“She’s back,” Zev whispers.
I nod, not trusting my mouth.
We walk to the end of the rink, where the cold air fights against the sickly warmth of Grace’s afterimage. When I glance back, she’s fully gone. The tunnel is empty. Her lingering roses scent the only evidence she was here at all.
She was here, right? The last eight hours weren’t some wild hallucination?
I want to punch something.
Zev leans against the wall. “Are you gonna talk to her?”
“She won’t even look at me unless Hannah directs it,” I snap, then regret how quick it comes out. “She… probably wants me dead. All of us dead.”
Fowler lumbers over. He’s the only person alive who could get banished from the NHL for being too reckless and then promptly get hired as a firefighter for the same reason. “She didn’t say anything?”
“She hasn’t said a word to me since…” I trail off. We all know since when. “It’s not like she rushed over to talk to you idiots, either.”
Zev sighs in a way that’s dangerously close to resignation. “Maybe she’ll change her mind.”
I whip around at him. “‘Change her mind?’ We rejected her, dumbass. She’s not ‘changing her mind.’”
Zev swallows hard. Fowler looks just as miserable. Because the truth is that the moment that last conversation with her during prep camp was over, we realized we fucked up. Her ghost has haunted us since.
And now she’s here, and her omega scent lingers like a final sting.
Zev shifts his weight. “We could have handled it better, yeah.”
Understatement of the year.
“Could have handled it at all,” Fowler adds. “Instead of ghosting her after we told her off.”
I want to defend myself. Hell, I want to defend all of us. But the words curdle in my mouth and I just stand there, clutching the mesh bag so hard the plastic cuts into my palm.
Sometimes you don’t get to fix mistakes. They’re just mistakes, and you live with the consequences.
Fowler squares up to me. “So what? Are we just going to ignore her for the next three months? Are you even going to be able to do the show without losing your shit?”
Hell if I know. “I have to do the show whether I lose my shit or not.” I glance between the two of them. “Grace wants nothing to do with us, so let’s just keep our heads down and to ourselves.” Best behavior, every single one of us.
“And if that’s not enough?” Zev’s voice is so low I almost miss it.
I shrug. “What else is there? I don’t think she’s interested in a do-over.”
Fowler snorts. “She’s an omega and has to work with you every day. She can probably successfully ignore the rest of us, but you?” He shakes his head.
My brain spits up an image of Grace in the final scene of Act Two, where she’s supposed to fall into my arms and let me “rescue” her. The closest I’ll ever get to the real thing, even if what I’m rescuing her from are our own actions.
I want to ask what they would do, but the answer is too obvious. Ignore it all as best they can. And hope that none of us end up in rut, or she in heat.
“Did she smell different to you?” Fowler asks softly.
“She always smells the same.” My words are more defensive than I mean them to be. She’s their potential omega, too. “Like the world’s last perfect rose.”
Zev frowns. “She smells more pointed now. Like she’s on edge.” He meets my eyes. “Can you handle that?”
He means, will I go off the rails? Will I pull some alpha bullshit and make it worse?
Fowler cracks his neck, then shoves his hands in his pockets. “Well, I don’t know about you two, but I’ve had a long day at the firehouse and an early shift tomorrow. Should we get dinner?”
Zev claps his hands together once. “Let’s get pizza.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Let’s eat.”
Typical Reverie Pack fashion. Ignore. Ignore. Ignore.
That’s all we ever do. Maybe that’s why we’re such great friends.
We trudge out the side door. The night slaps us with a fresh burst of cold. Grace’s scent lingers in the foyer, almost sweet enough to make my heart stop. I wonder if she’s already gone, or if she’s somewhere close, sitting in her car, refusing to look at the arena.
Does she hate us, or does she just wish we’d disappear?
How many times can you break something before it stays broken?