Chapter 2
Eloise
If I spun fast enough, I couldn't hear the noise. I couldn't hear the expectations. I couldn't hear my father’s voice reminding me that a silver medal was just the first loser.
And I certainly couldn't hear the low, phantom growl that had been haunting my auditory cortex for the last twelve hours.
Thwack.
My blade hit the ice on the landing of a double axel. It wasn't clean. There was a microscopic scrape, a shudder in my ankle. Imperfect.
"Again," I whispered to the empty arena. My breath puffed out in a white cloud, vanishing into the rafters where the championship banners hung. Sentinels. Sentinels. Sentinels. The hockey team owned this school. I was just renting space on their ice.
I reset, skating a lap to build speed. My legs were trembling, not from fatigue, but from a residual, vibrating anxiety that I hadn't been able to shake since the game last night.
Every time I closed my eyes, I saw him.
Jack Sterling.
It was ridiculous. I was a rational person. I was a Kinesiology major with a 4.0 GPA. I understood anatomy, physiology, the mechanics of the human body. I knew that eyes didn't glow gold. I knew that a human male couldn't track a specific person across a crowded arena with a single look.
But the memory of him—standing there like a gladiator in the midst of a slaughter, sweat dripping down that jagged scar—made my stomach do a treasonous flip.
He hadn't looked at me like a boy looks at a girl. Boys looked at me with a polite, terrified appreciation, knowing that I was Dean Vance’s daughter and therefore radioactive. Jack had looked at me like I was a meal. Like I was inevitable.
I pushed off, gathering speed, the wind biting at my cheeks. Focus, Eloise. Nationals are in three months.
I launched myself into the air again.
This time, the landing was worse. My mind drifted—just for a split second—to the width of his shoulders, the brutal size of his hands. My toe pick caught a rut in the ice.
Gravity, which I usually commanded, turned against me. I went down hard, my hip slamming into the frozen surface with a bone-jarring crack. I slid ten feet, ice shavings spraying into my face, before coming to a stop against the boards.
"Dammit!" The curse echoed in the cavernous silence.
I laid there for a second, staring up at the fluorescent lights, waiting for the stinging pain in my hip to subside. This was my life. Fall down. Get up. Pretend it doesn't hurt. Be the perfect, porcelain doll that everyone expects.
"You know, the ice is harder when you fight it."
The voice came from the penalty box. It was a girl’s voice—bright, chirpy, and completely out of place in my sanctuary of self-flagellation.
I groaned, rolling onto my back to see Cami leaning over the glass, a steaming cup of coffee in each hand. She was wrapped in a neon pink puffer jacket that looked like a distress flare against the muted gray of the rink.
"How long have you been there?" I asked, sitting up and rubbing my hip.
"Long enough to see you nail three perfect jumps and then eat shit on the fourth because you were daydreaming," Cami said, grinning. She walked around to the gate and let herself onto the rubber matting, holding out a cup. "Black, two sugars. The fuel of champions."
I skated over, my body aching, and took the cup. "I wasn't daydreaming. I hit a rut. The hockey team tears this ice up. It’s like skating on a gravel road."
"Uh-huh," Cami said, sipping her own latte. "Or maybe you were distracted by a certain six-foot-five grim reaper who stared at you for a full thirty seconds last night like he wanted to wear your skin as a cape."
I choked on my coffee. "That is vivid and disturbing, Cami."
"It was hot," she countered, falling into step beside me as I stepped off the ice to put my guards on. "The whole arena felt it. The air pressure dropped. I thought the glass was going to shatter. Silas told me Jack was in a mood."
I froze, my hand on the latch of the gate. "You talked to Silas?"
Cami smirked, a mischievous glint in her eyes. "I texted Silas. He says the Captain went straight to the showers and then disappeared. Apparently, he was 'leaking pheromones.' Whatever that means in hockey-speak. Probably means he needs to get laid."
I felt heat rush up my neck, hot and prickly. "I don't care about Jack Sterling’s sex life. I care about my father not expelling me if I fail Biomechanics because I’m too distracted to study."
"Your dad isn't going to expel you," Cami said, rolling her eyes. "He’s the Dean, not the Emperor."
"You don't know him," I murmured, sitting on the bench to unlace my skates.
That was the truth. Nobody knew Dean Vance.
They knew the public figure—the charismatic administrator who brought in donors and kept the university prestige high.
They didn't know the man who measured my waistline with his eyes every time I came home for dinner.
They didn't know the man who had removed every photo of my mother the day after she left us, erasing her existence because she was "weak. "
Weakness was the cardinal sin in the Vance household. And getting flustered by a hockey player with a bad reputation was the definition of weak.
"I have to go," I said, shoving my skates into my bag. "I have a shift at the library before my afternoon lecture."
"You’re no fun," Cami sighed. "Tonight. Frat party. The hockey house. You’re coming."
"Absolutely not."
"Eloise," she groaned. "You are twenty-one years old. You live in a convent of your own making. Just once, come out. Drink cheap beer. Make a mistake. It’s good for the soul."
"I can't afford mistakes," I said, slinging my bag over my shoulder.
I walked out of the arena, head down, bracing myself against the wind. But as I crossed the parking lot, I couldn't stop the feeling that the mistake Cami was talking about was already in motion. I could feel it in the air—a heaviness, a static charge.
I wasn't just walking to the library. I was walking through a minefield.
The library at Ironwood was a cathedral of silence. It was one of the few places on campus that actually felt older than the university itself, with towering shelves of dark mahogany and stained-glass windows that cast long, colorful shadows across the dusty floor.
It was my second sanctuary. Or, it usually was.
Today, it felt like a trap.
I sat at a secluded table in the back of the stacks, surrounded by piles of anatomy textbooks. The insertion point of the sternocleidomastoid... the torque required for a triple rotation...
The words swam on the page.
I kept looking up. Checking the corners. Checking the shadows.
It was 7:00 PM. The sun had set hours ago—winter in the U.P. meant darkness by 4:30. The library was mostly empty, save for a few grad students comatose on the sofas near the entrance.
My skin felt too tight. It was a sensation I associated with the flu, or extreme exhaustion. A hypersensitivity. The smell of old paper was overwhelming. The hum of the HVAC system sounded like a jet engine.
And there was another smell. Something... faint. Like wet dog and copper pennies.
I rubbed my temples, trying to massage away the headache building behind my eyes. You are paranoid. You are tired. You need to eat something other than coffee and anxiety.
I packed up my bag, my movements sharp and jerky. I needed to get back to the dorm. I needed a hot shower and the safety of a locked door.
As I walked out of the library, the cold hit me like a physical blow.
The wind was howling through the ancient pines that lined the quad, stripping the last of the dead leaves from the branches.
The campus was poorly lit in this section—gothic aesthetic over practical safety—and the shadows stretched long and distorted across the snow-packed path.
I pulled my scarf up over my nose, burying my face in the wool.
Crunch.
The sound of a footstep on snow. Heavy. Distinct. Behind me.
I stopped. The sound stopped.
My heart hammered against my ribs. "Hello?" I called out. My voice sounded thin, swallowed instantly by the wind.
No answer. Just the rustle of pine branches.
I started walking again, faster this time.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
Someone was matching my pace.
Panic, cold and sharp, flooded my system. I wasn't imagining it. I clutched the strap of my bag, my knuckles turning white. The dorms were only two hundred yards away. Just across the quad, past the statue of the Founder.
I broke into a run.
I didn't make it five steps.
A figure stepped out from behind the Founder’s statue, blocking the path.
He was huge. Not Jack Sterling huge, but big enough to block out the light from the lamp post behind him. He wore a heavy canvas jacket, open despite the freezing temperature, revealing a chest that looked like a barrel.
" in a rush, sweetheart?"
His voice was wet, thick, like he had phlegm caught in his throat.
I skidded to a halt, my boots sliding on the icy pavement. I backed up, turning to run the other way—
Another man was behind me. He had emerged from the treeline. Leaner, wiry, with a face that looked like it had been rearranged by a shovel. He was grinning, revealing teeth that looked too sharp, too yellow.
"Dean’s daughter," the wire-thin one said, sniffing the air. "She smells clean. Doesn't she smell clean, heavy?"
The big one in front of me laughed. "Smells like vanilla. And fear."
"What do you want?" I demanded, trying to channel my father’s authority. "My dad is Dean Vance. Campus security is on speed dial."
"Security is asleep," the big one sneered, taking a step toward me. "And we don't care about your daddy. We care about the message."
"What message?" I stammered, backing away until my back hit the rough stone of the statue’s plinth. I was trapped.
"That Ironwood isn't safe," the wire-thin man said, closing in. "That the Sentinels can't protect their territory. Or their pets."
They were talking nonsense. Gang rivalry? Fraternity hazing gone wrong? I didn't care. I reached into my pocket for my phone, my fingers trembling so bad I almost dropped it.