Chapter 4
Rachel
I woke up drowning in cedar and smoke.
For a disorienting, heart-stopping second, I thought I was back on the frozen porch of the shifters’ lodge, pressed against the rough log wall with Stan Kowalski’s mouth hovering inches from mine. My body jolted awake, adrenaline flooding my veins, my hand flying up to touch my lips.
They were bare. Cold.
I wasn’t on the porch. I was in my dorm room. The morning light was filtering through the cheap, thin curtains, casting a grey pallor over the piles of textbooks and laundry that littered the floor. Chloe was snoring softly in her bed across the room, a mound of blankets with one foot sticking out.
But the smell... the smell was real.
I looked down. I was wearing it.
The black t-shirt was huge on me. It swallowed my frame, the hem hitting mid-thigh.
It was soft, worn thin from countless washes, but the fabric seemed heavy, weighted with the memory of the body that usually occupied it.
It smelled like him. Not just the detergent or the woodsmoke of the party, but the deep, musk-heavy scent of man.
It was intoxicating. It was frightening.
I pulled the collar up over my nose and inhaled before I could stop myself.
Cedar. Ozone. Violence.
"You are pathetic, Rachel," I whispered to the empty room.
I sat up, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed. My head was clear—I hadn't drunk enough last night to be hungover—but my emotional state was a wreck.
I replayed the scene on the porch for the hundredth time. The way his eyes had glowed. The way he had shielded me from the cold with his own body. The things he had said.
I don't see a trainer. I see a mate.
What did that even mean? "Mate." It sounded archaic. Primal. Like something out of a nature documentary, not a conversation between two college students. And yet, the way he had said it... with that low, vibrating growl... it had made my insides turn to liquid heat.
I needed to take the shirt off. I needed to wash it, fold it, and return it. Or burn it. Burning it seemed safer.
But I didn't take it off. instead, I got up and walked to the mirror.
I looked ridiculous. My hair was a tangled mess, my eyes were shadowed with lack of sleep, and I was wearing the jersey of the most dangerous man on campus like a nightgown. And yet... I looked different. My cheeks were flushed. My pupils were dilated. I looked like a woman who had been marked.
"Stop it," I hissed at my reflection.
I stripped the shirt off, shivering as the cold dorm air hit my skin. I folded it carefully—too carefully—and shoved it into the bottom of my gym bag. I put on my armor: grey leggings, a sturdy sports bra, a baggy Blackwood University sweatshirt.
I had a shift at the training center in an hour.
I had to face him.
The campus rumor mill moved faster than light speed.
By the time I walked into the athletic complex, I could feel the eyes on me. A group of cheerleaders near the juice bar stopped talking as I walked past, their whispers trailing off into pointed stares.
"Is that her?"
"The mouse? Really?"
"I heard he carried her out of the party."
"I heard they hooked up in the woods."
I kept my head down, clutching my bag strap until my knuckles turned white.
This was exactly what I had spent three years avoiding.
I didn't want to be a main character. I wanted to be background noise.
I wanted to get my degree, get my doctorate, and disappear into a quiet life of fixing broken knees and rotator cuffs.
I swiped my badge at the entrance to the training wing. The beep was a welcome sound of normalcy.
The Sanctuary was quiet. It was Sunday morning. The team had a "recovery day," which usually meant they rolled in around noon, hungover and grumpy, demanding IV fluids and massages.
I went to the office area to check the schedule. I needed to know when he was coming in. I needed to mentally prepare.
The door to the academic advisor's office—a small glass-walled room adjacent to the coaches' offices—was open.
Voices drifted out. Loud voices.
"You can't be serious."
That was Stan. His voice wasn't the low, seductive rumble from the porch. It was tight, frustrated, and laced with panic.
"I am serious, Mr. Kowalski. Dead serious."
That was Mrs. Gable, the academic coordinator for the athletic department. She was a stern woman who terrified linebackers more than opposing tackles did.
I froze. I shouldn't eavesdrop. It was unethical. It was rude.
I stepped closer to the wall, hidden by a row of filing cabinets.
"It's a required elective, Stan," Mrs. Gable said, her voice sharp.
"Philosophy 201: Ethics of the Modern World.
You need the credits to graduate. More importantly, you need a passing grade to maintain your NCAA eligibility for the spring semester.
If you fail this midterm, you are benched. Period."
Silence. heavy, suffocating silence.
"I can't write the paper," Stan said. His voice sounded different now. Smaller. The arrogance was gone. "I read the prompt. I read the book. It doesn't... the words don't stick. It's just noise."
"Then get a tutor."
"I don't do tutors. I'm not some dumb jock who needs his hand held."
"You are currently a failing jock who is about to lose his captaincy," Mrs. Gable snapped. "The paper is due on Friday. It's 30% of your grade. If you don't turn in something coherent, don't bother lacing up your skates for the playoffs."
A chair scraped violently against the floor.
"Fine," Stan growled. "I'll figure it out."
"See that you do."
Heavy footsteps approached the door. I panicked. I couldn't be seen standing here. I looked around wildly—there was nowhere to go.
Stan stormed out of the office.
He looked like a thunderstorm contained in human skin. He was wearing a grey hoodie with the hood up, jaw clenched so tight I could see the muscles spasming. He was staring at the floor, radiating fury.
He almost walked right into me.
He stopped inches from my face. I gasped, backing up against the filing cabinets.
Stan’s head snapped up. His eyes—those terrifying, beautiful amber eyes—locked onto mine. For a second, I saw the flash of the predator. The instinct to strike out at whatever was in his path.
But then he recognized me.
And the anger drained out of his face, replaced by something far more unsettling.
Humiliation.
He realized I had heard.
"How much?" he asked. His voice was rough, like gravel in a blender.
"What?" I squeaked.
"How much did you hear, Miller?" He took a step closer, looming over me. But it wasn't the sexy, caging move from the hallway. It was defensive. He was trying to use his size to hide his shame.
"I... just the end," I lied badly. "About the... the paper."
He squeezed his eyes shut and let out a harsh breath through his nose. He dragged a hand down his face, looking exhausted.
"Great," he muttered. "Just great. Go tell the locker room. Tell Rizzo. Tell them the Captain is too stupid to write an essay about 'Moral Relativism.'"
He tried to push past me.
"Stan, wait."
I reached out. I didn't think. I just acted. My hand shot out and grabbed the sleeve of his hoodie.
He froze. He looked down at my hand like it was a foreign object. Then he looked up at my face.
"Don't touch me," he warned, but there was no heat in it. Just weariness. "I'm not in the mood for the 'it's okay' speech."
"I'm not going to give you a speech," I said, surprised by the steadiness of my own voice. "And I'm not going to tell the locker room. Patient confidentiality applies to everything I hear in this hallway, as far as I'm concerned."
He scoffed. "This isn't medical."
"It's stress," I said. "Stress affects recovery. So, it's medical."
He stared at me, searching for the lie. He didn't find one. His shoulders slumped slightly, the tension bleeding out of his frame just enough to make him look human.
"It doesn't matter," he said, shaking his head.
"I can't do it. My brain doesn't work that way.
I look at the page and the letters just...
swim. I can memorize a playbook in ten seconds.
I can calculate the trajectory of a puck mid-air.
But this?" He gestured vaguely toward the academic office. "It's impossible."
I looked at him. Really looked at him.
Stan Kowalski. The Butcher. The monster who terrified the entire conference. Standing in a hallway, defeated by a Philosophy 201 essay.
It was tragic. It was endearing.
And it was my opening.
I needed clinical hours. I needed him to trust me so I could treat his shoulder without him threatening to knot me on the table. And he needed a grade.
"I can help you," I said.
He blinked. "What?"
"I took Phil-201 last year," I said. "I got an A. I actually... I kind of liked it."
He looked at me like I had just admitted to enjoying root canals. "You liked it?"
"It's logic," I explained, stepping away from the filing cabinet. "It's just an argument structure. Premise A plus Premise B equals Conclusion C. It's not poetry, Stan. It's math with words."
He stared at me. The silence stretched between us, filled with the hum of the vending machines and the distant sound of ice being resurfaced in the arena.
"You want to tutor me," he said flatly.
"I want to make a deal," I corrected.
His eyes narrowed. The amber flared. He was interested. "A deal?"
"I need four hundred clinical hours to graduate," I said, crossing my arms over my chest to hide the fact that my heart was pounding. "Coach assigned you to me. But every time I try to touch your shoulder, you get... weird. You threaten me. You make it impossible to do my job."
He had the grace to look slightly ashamed. He looked away, rubbing the back of his neck. "I told you. My control is... volatile."
"Well, I need you to control it," I said firmly. "I need you to let me treat you. Without the growling. Without the 'stay away from me' speeches. I need you to be a model patient."
He looked back at me, a corner of his mouth ticking up. "And in exchange?"