Chapter 4
Mikey
Coward.
The word had weight. It wasn't just a collection of sounds; it was a physical object, heavy and jagged, lodging itself in the center of my chest. It had been twelve hours since Lydia Cross had whispered it in the dark, and it was still twisting in my gut, tearing things open that I had spent years trying to stitch shut.
I had four hundred pounds on the bar.
Down. The metal groaned. My pectorals stretched, burning with the strain.
Up. The plates clanged. A release of breath. A momentary silence.
Coward.
I gritted my teeth, my jaw aching from the pressure. She didn't understand. She saw a man backing away from a kiss. She didn't see the monster backing away from the throat. She didn't know that kissing her wouldn't have been a soft, romantic moment. It would have been a catalyst.
If I had tasted her—really tasted her—I wouldn't have stopped. The Wolf would have taken the wheel. I would have marked her. I would have dragged her into that bed and knotted her until she smelled like nothing but me. And then, when the clarity returned, I would have been the one responsible for ruining the Coach’s niece, the one human who looked at me like I was a person instead of a weapon.
I wasn't a coward. I was a martyr.
I racked the bar with a deafening crash that echoed through the empty gym. I sat up, gasping for air, sweat dripping from my nose onto the rubber floor.
My phone buzzed on the bench next to me.
Coach Cross: Office. 8 AM. Don't make me come find you.
I wiped my face with my shirt, staring at the screen. The "Feral Madness" my father had succumbed to hadn't started with violence. It had started with obsession. A fixation that narrowed the world down to a single point.
I looked at the text, but I was thinking about Lydia’s mouth.
I was already showing symptoms.
Coach’s office smelled like stale coffee and disappointment.
He didn't yell. Mac Cross was too scary to yell. He just sat there, looking like a polar bear wearing a polo shirt, tapping a red pen against his desk.
"You want to tell me why I found my playbook on your nightstand this morning?" he asked.
I sat in the chair opposite him, keeping my posture rigid. "I was studying the defense."
"At a party?"
"It was quiet in the basement."
Mac stopped tapping the pen. He leaned forward, the leather of his chair creaking under the strain of his massive frame. "Lydia brought it back to me. She looked... rattled, Holt. She looked like she’d seen a ghost."
I kept my face impassive. "She came to get the book. I gave it to her. She left."
"Did you touch her?"
The question was soft, dangerous.
"No," I lied. I hadn't touched her skin, not really. But I had touched her space. I had breathed her air. I had cornered her.
Mac held my gaze for a long, uncomfortable minute. He was sniffing the air, looking for the lie. But I had showered three times since last night. I smelled like Irish Spring and bleach.
"Good," Mac grunted, leaning back. "Because we have a problem, Mikey. A real problem."
He slid a piece of paper across the desk. It was a printout from Dr. Aris. My midterm grade.
D-
"I'm failing," I stated, staring at the red ink.
"You're drowning," Mac corrected. "And the Board is watching. We have the Northern trip coming up next week. Three games. Five days on the road. If you aren't passing by the time we get on that bus, you aren't getting on it. You stay here. You sit on the bench. And the scouts? They stop calling."
My hands curled into fists on my knees. The NHL scouts were my lifeline. Without a contract, I had no money. Without money, I had no future. I would just be another feral wolf rotting in a state-run facility, losing his mind in a padded room.
"I'm trying, Coach," I said, my voice tight. "The material... it doesn't stick. I read the words, and they slide right off my brain."
"That's why you have a tutor," Mac said. "Lydia says you two have a standing appointment. Tuesdays and Thursdays."
I flinched. "Can I get a different tutor?"
"Why?" Mac’s eyes narrowed. "Is there a problem with Lydia?"
Yes. She smells like my mate. She calls me a coward. She makes me want to burn the world down.
"No," I said quickly. "No problem. Just... maybe someone with a different teaching style."
"Lydia is the best in the program," Mac said, tone final.
"And she's the only one I trust to keep her mouth shut about the fact that my star defenseman can't pass a basic anatomy quiz.
You stick with her. You do whatever she says.
If she tells you to memorize bone structures while standing on your head, you do it. "
He pointed the red pen at me.
"Fix this, Mikey. Or you're done."
The library was quiet. Too quiet.
It was the kind of silence that had teeth. The hum of the fluorescent lights sounded like a swarm of bees in my ears. The scratching of pencils from the tables nearby sounded like claws on chalkboard.
I sat in the glass-walled study room—The Penalty Box—waiting.
It was 4:05 PM. She was late.
Lydia was never late. She was precise. She counted heartbeats. She organized tape rolls by color.
I tapped my foot against the leg of the table, a rapid, jerky rhythm. My skin felt too tight for my body. The Wolf was pacing, agitated by the anticipation.
Where is she? Is she hurt? Is she avoiding us?
Then the door opened.
She didn't look at me. She walked in, threw her bag on the floor, and sat down. She was wearing a thick turtleneck sweater today, hiding her neck. Hiding the skin I had almost marked.
Her face was pale, her lips pressed into a thin line. She looked exhausted.
"Open your book to page one-hundred," she said. Her voice was flat. Clinical. "Musculature of the lower back."
No 'hello'. No 'how are you'. Just business.
"Lydia," I started.
"Page one-hundred, Holt," she interrupted, finally looking at me. Her whiskey eyes were cold. "I have a Chem lab in an hour. We don't have time for chit-chat. And honestly? I don't have the energy for your mood swings."
I shut my mouth. The "Coward" accusation hung between us, invisible but palpable.
I opened the textbook. The page was a dense block of text and diagrams. Latin names. Origin points. Insertion points. Innervation data.
I stared at it.
Latissimus Dorsi. Thoracolumbar fascia.
The letters started to swim. They vibrated on the page.
It wasn't that I couldn't read. I could read fine when I was calm. But when I was stressed? When my cortisol levels were spiking because the girl I wanted was sitting three feet away hating me? My brain went into survival mode. It filtered out the non-essential data.
Reading was non-essential. Tracking the movement of her chest as she breathed? Essential. Listening to the catch in her breath? Essential.
"Read the first paragraph," Lydia ordered.
I stared at the block of text. It looked like static.
"I can't," I muttered.
"Don't be difficult," she sighed, clicking her pen. "Just read it. We need to go over the fascia layers."
"I said I can't," I snapped, slamming the book shut.
The sound cracked through the small room like a gunshot. Outside the glass, a few students jumped and looked over.
Lydia flinched, but she didn't back down. She glared at me. "Why? Because you're bored? Because you think you're too good for this?"
"Because the letters are moving!" I hissed, leaning forward. "Because when I look at this page, all I see is noise. Because my head is so full of... of everything else that I can't focus on a goddamn paragraph about back muscles!"
I ran a hand through my hair, gripping the roots. The shame was hot and acidic in my throat. I hated admitting weakness. I hated it more than anything.
"I'm failing, Lydia. Coach showed me the grade. If I don't get a B on this next test, I'm out. No playoffs. No scouts. No draft."
I looked out the window, away from her.
"And if I don't get drafted," I whispered, the confession tearing out of me, "I don't get the signing bonus. And if I don't get the bonus, I can't afford the facility."
Silence.
It stretched out, heavy and suffocating.
"What facility?" Lydia asked. Her voice had changed. The ice was gone, replaced by a soft, hesitant confusion.
I laughed bitterly. "The asylum, Lydia. The high-end, private care facility in Switzerland that specializes in Degenerative Shifter Psychosis."
I looked back at her. Her eyes were wide.
"You know who my father was?" I asked.
She nodded slowly. "James Holt. He was an Enforcer too. He played for the Blackhawks."
"He was a monster," I corrected. "He went Feral when I was fourteen. It took six officers and three tranquillizer darts to take him down. He didn't know who I was. He tried to rip my throat out."
I traced the scar on my jaw unconsciously.
"It's genetic," I said flatly. "The Feral Madness. It skips a generation sometimes, but not in my line. It’s coming for me. Maybe in ten years. Maybe in two. But it’s coming. And when it does... I need to be somewhere safe. Somewhere I can't hurt anyone. And that kind of safety costs millions."
I leaned back in my chair, exhausted. I had never told anyone that. Not Jagger. Not Coach. Just her.
"So, yeah," I said, staring at the ceiling. "I'm a coward. I'm terrified. I'm trying to secure a future where I don't eat my own family. And reading about the Latissimus Dorsi feels really fucking insignificant right now."
I waited for her to run. I waited for the pity. I waited for her to look at me like I was a broken thing.
Instead, I heard the scrape of a chair.
Lydia moved. She didn't leave. She dragged her chair around the small circular table until she was sitting right next to me.
Our knees bumped. She didn't pull away.
"Give me your hand," she said.
I looked at her. "What?"
"Give me your hand, Mikey."
It was a command, but it was soft.
Hesitantly, I extended my right hand. It was scarred, calloused, the knuckles swollen from years of fighting.
She took it. Her hand was impossibly small and warm against mine. She flipped it over, palm up.
She took her pen—a blue felt tip—and uncapped it.
"You can't learn from the book," she said quietly, focused on my skin. "Your brain is re-wired for threat detection. Visual processing of static text is the first thing to go when a predator is stressed. You need tactile input. You need to feel it to know it."
She pressed the tip of the pen to the base of my thumb. The ink was cold; her fingers were warm.
"This," she said, drawing a line down my wrist, "is the Flexor Carpi Radialis."
She traced the line of the muscle on my own skin.
"It flexes the wrist and abducts the hand." She pressed her thumb into the muscle belly on my forearm. "Feel that? Flex for me."
I flexed. The muscle jumped under her thumb.
"Good," she whispered. "Now, this one..." She drew another line, agonizingly slow. "Is the Palmaris Longus."
I watched her. I wasn't looking at the ink. I was looking at the way her hair fell over her face. I was feeling the heat of her body pressed against my side.
For the first time all day—hell, for the first time in months—the noise in my head stopped.
The screaming of the crowd, the growling of the Wolf, the fear of the future... it all went silent. All that existed was the sensation of the pen on my skin and the sound of her voice.
"Is it working?" she asked, looking up through her lashes.
"Yeah," I croaked. My throat was dry. "Yeah, it's working."
She drew a few more lines, turning my arm into a living diagram. Then she capped the pen. She didn't let go of my hand.
"You're not your father, Mikey," she said fiercely.
"You don't know that."
"I know physiology," she argued. "Genetics are a predisposition, not a destiny. Stress triggers the gene expression. Isolation triggers the madness."
She squeezed my hand.
"You're isolating yourself. You push everyone away because you think you're protecting them. But you're just accelerating the burnout."
"I'm dangerous, Lydia," I warned her. "You saw what happened in the basement. I almost..."
"Almost," she interrupted. "But you didn't. You stopped. That's not madness. That's discipline."
She took a deep breath, looking down at our joined hands.
"I can help you pass this class," she said. "I can teach you like this. Tactile. Practical. But you have to do something for me."
"Anything," I said. The word was out before I could check it.
She looked at me, her expression serious.
"The Northern Trip," she said. "I have to go. Uncle Mac wants me to manage the hydration protocols for the team. But... it's five days on a bus with thirty shifters who are going to be high on adrenaline and pre-rut hormones."
She swallowed. "I saw the way Davis looked at me at the party. I saw the way the other guys look at me. I'm not scared of them individually, but... in a pack? In confined quarters?"
She shivered.
"I need a buffer," she said. "I need someone who scares them more than they scare me."
I understood immediately.
"You want protection," I said.
"I want a bodyguard," she corrected. "We sit together on the bus. We room near each other at the hotels. You keep the guys off my back. You make sure Davis and Jagger and the rest of them know I'm off-limits."
"I already told them you were off-limits," I growled.
"Show them," she said. "Be my shield, Mikey. And I'll be your brain. I'll get you that A. I'll get you to the draft."
She looked at me, waiting. It was a business deal. A transaction.
But as I looked at her—at the vulnerability she was trying so hard to hide, at the fear she had admitted to—I knew it was more than that.
She was offering me an anchor. She was offering to step into the darkness with me and hold the light.
"Deal," I said.
"Deal," she echoed.
She started to pull her hand away, but I tightened my grip. Just for a second.
"Lydia?"
"Yeah?"
"I'm not going to let anything happen to you," I swore. It was a vow. A blood oath. "On that trip... nobody touches you. Nobody even looks at you wrong. Or I bury them."
She smiled. It was a small, fragile thing, but it hit me harder than a fist.
"I know," she said.
She pulled her hand free and picked up the pen again.
"Okay. Give me your other arm. Let's do the extensors."
I rolled up my left sleeve, exposing the skin. I leaned back, watching her draw on me, and for the first time in my life, the monster inside me didn't feel like a curse.
It felt like a guard dog. And it had finally found something worth guarding.