Chapter 6
Stan
There were no frat boys curling five-pound dumbbells in the squat rack. No cheerleaders on the elliptical machines. Just the hum of the industrial HVAC system, the smell of rubber mats and stale chalk, and the rhythmic clank-hiss-clank of the leg press machine.
I had six hundred pounds loaded on the sled. It was an obscene amount of weight. Enough to crush a normal man’s femur.
I pushed.
My quads burned. The veins in my neck bulged against the strain.
I grit my teeth, welcoming the pain. Pain was simple.
Pain was binary. It was either there, or it wasn't. It didn't ask questions about morality.
It didn't taste like vanilla and sin. It didn't look like Rachel Miller panting on my desk, her head thrown back in ecstasy.
Push.
The sled slammed to the top of the rail. I let it drop, the metal plates crashing together with a sound like a gunshot.
I lay there for a moment, chest heaving, sweat stinging my eyes. I stared at the ceiling tiles, counting the water stains.
One. Two. Three.
It didn't work. The numbers dissolved, replaced by the memory of her face. The way her pupils had blown wide, eclipsing the iris. The way her internal muscles had clamped around my fingers, milking me, desperate and greedy.
I groaned, scrubbing a hand over my face.
"Get it together, Kowalski," I muttered to the empty room.
I was hard. Again.
I had been in a state of semi-permanent erection since I walked out of The Hive last night.
My body was betraying me. The Wolf didn't understand why we had stopped.
To the Wolf, the act was initiated. She had submitted.
She had slicked herself for me. We should have knotted.
We should have bitten. We should be in a nest right now, sleeping off the post-coital haze of a mating bond.
Instead, I was alone in a gym, trying to bench press my sexual frustration away.
It wasn't working.
The door to the weight room creaked open.
I didn't need to look to know who it was. The scent hit me first—chlorine, cheap body spray, and wet dog.
Rizzo.
"Jesus, Cap," Rizzo’s voice echoed off the mirrors. "You trying to tear a quad? That’s six plates aside."
I sat up slowly, wiping the sweat from my forehead with the hem of my shirt. "Early bird gets the worm, Riz."
"Early bird gets a hernia," Rizzo countered, dropping his gym bag on a bench. He looked at me, his eyes narrowing. He sniffed the air, his nose twitching.
I tensed. I hadn't showered since I dropped Rachel off. I had gone straight to the rink, skated until the ice melted, then came here. Her scent was faint, buried under layers of sweat and ozone, but to a Delta like Rizzo, it might as well be a neon sign.
"You smell... intense," Rizzo commented, walking over to the dumbbell rack. He picked up a thirty-pound weight and started doing lazy bicep curls. "Like you fought a bear. Or... something else."
"I smell like work," I snapped, standing up. I towered over him, using my height to end the line of questioning. "Something you should try."
Rizzo chuckled, unbothered. "Defensive. Classic Beta behavior. So, did you finish that paper? Or are we going to have to rig the academic probation system again?"
"It's done," I said, walking toward the water fountain. "Mostly."
"Mostly?"
"I have a tutor."
Rizzo paused mid-curl. "The Mouse? You actually went through with it?"
"She has a name, Rizzo. Use it."
"Rachel," Rizzo corrected, holding his hands up in mock surrender. "Did she actually help, or did you just stare at her tits for three hours?"
I slammed my water bottle down on the fountain. The plastic cracked. Water sprayed over my hand.
Rizzo went still. The humor vanished from his face, replaced by the sharp, alert look of a packmate recognizing a threat.
"Whoa," he whispered. "Okay. Sore spot. My bad."
I stared at the water dripping from my fingers. My control was fraying. It was like trying to hold back a tsunami with a chain-link fence.
"She helped," I said, my voice low and dangerous. "She's smart. And if you disrespect her, or if any of the boys give her a hard time at practice today... I will make you run stairs until your lungs bleed."
Rizzo studied me. He saw the tension in my jaw, the amber bleeding into my eyes. He nodded slowly.
"Understood, Cap," he said quietly. "She's off limits. Pack protection."
"No," I corrected, turning to look him in the eye. "Not Pack protection. My protection."
Rizzo’s eyebrows shot up. That was a distinction. Pack protection meant she was a friend of the family. My protection meant she was property. It meant she was the Mate of a high-ranking wolf.
"Does she know that?" Rizzo asked softly.
"She knows enough," I lied.
She didn't know. She thought I was just a moody hockey player with a praise kink. She didn't know that by touching her, by tasting her, I had essentially painted a target on her back for every rival pack in the territory.
"You're playing with fire, Stan," Rizzo warned, his voice devoid of its usual mockery. "The Council won't like it. A human? Carrying your scent?"
"The Council can go to hell," I grabbed my towel. "I'm going to shower. Be ready for drills in twenty minutes. I want to see speed today."
I stormed out of the weight room, leaving Rizzo staring after me.
I walked down the hallway, my heart hammering against my ribs.
Fire, I thought. I'm not playing with fire. I'm burning alive.
12:30 PM - The Dining Hall
The athlete dining hall was a study in segregation.
The football players took the tables near the windows, loud and boisterous. The swimmers clustered near the salad bar, shivering in their parkas. And the hockey team—the Kodiaks—owned the back corner, the "Wolf's Den," where the lighting was dimmer and the tables were secluded by half-walls.
I sat with my back to the wall, facing the room. It was habit. Tactical positioning.
My plate was piled high with rare steak and eggs—protein for the metabolism that burned twice as fast as a human's. I cut a piece of meat, the knife scraping against the ceramic, but I didn't eat it.
My eyes were scanning the room.
I wasn't looking for threats. I was looking for her.
I spotted her near the entrance.
She was standing in the stir-fry line. She looked tired. Her hair was pulled back in a messy bun, escaping in wisps around her face. She wore a grey cardigan that looked three sizes too big—security blanket behavior.
She was tapping her foot nervously.
My vision narrowed. The noise of the cafeteria—the clatter of trays, the roar of conversation—faded into a dull buzz.
I watched her move. I watched her reach for a pair of tongs. I watched the way she bit her lower lip as she decided between peppers and onions.
Beautiful.
It was a ridiculous thought. She was just a girl in a cardigan getting lunch. But to me, she was the only thing in the room in color. Everyone else was grey-scale.
Suddenly, she stopped moving. She stiffened.
She felt it. The weight of my gaze.
Slowly, she turned her head. Her eyes scanned the room, bypassing the football table, bypassing the swimmers, until they locked onto the back corner.
She found me instantly.
Our eyes met across fifty feet of crowded cafeteria.
The air between us snapped tight.
I saw her cheeks flush a brilliant, tell-tale pink. She dropped the tongs. They clattered onto the metal rail. She fumbled to pick them up, looking flustered.
She was thinking about it. She was thinking about the desk. She was thinking about my fingers.
I felt a surge of possessive pride so strong I almost groaned aloud. Good. Remember it.
I didn't smile. I didn't wave. I just stared at her, taking a slow bite of my steak, holding her gaze.
She grabbed her tray and hurried toward the exit, abandoning the stir-fry line entirely. She was running.
I stood up.
"Where you going, Butcher?" Johnson asked, his mouth full of potatoes.
"Forgot something," I muttered.
I left my tray and followed her.
I caught up to her in the corridor outside the library. It was a high-traffic area, students rushing between classes, but I moved through the crowd like a shark through water.
"Rachel."
She jumped, spinning around. She clutched her bag to her chest—her armor.
"Stan," she breathed. Her eyes darted around the hallway. "You can't... you shouldn't sneak up on people."
"I wasn't sneaking," I said, stepping into her personal space. I angled my body to shield her from the passing stream of students, creating a small, private eddy in the current. "You ran away from lunch."
"I wasn't hungry," she lied. Her stomach growled audibly.
I raised an eyebrow.
"Okay, fine," she hissed, lowering her voice. "I couldn't eat. Because you were looking at me like... like you were going to drag me across the table and finish what you started last night."
I leaned down, bracing one hand on the locker bank beside her head. "And would that be so bad?"
"Here?" She gestured wildly to the students walking by. "Stan, people are watching. Do you know what the rumors are already saying? That I'm your 'puck bunny.' That I'm sleeping my way to a grad school recommendation."
The words hit me like a physical blow.
"Who said that?" My voice dropped to a lethal whisper. "Give me a name."
"It doesn't matter who said it," she said, her eyes wet. "It's what it looks like. You're the King of Campus. I'm just the staff. If we do this... if we're actually doing this... I have everything to lose."
She was right.
In my arrogance, in my hunger, I hadn't thought about the human cost. I had only thought about the Wolf's needs. I hadn't thought about her reputation, her scholarship, the fragile ecosystem she had built to survive.
I pulled my hand back, stepping away to give her room. The loss of proximity hurt physically, an ache in my chest.
"I won't let them hurt you," I said. It sounded weak, even to my own ears.
"You can't stop people from talking, Stan," she said softly. "And we can't... we can't act like last night didn't happen. But we also can't do it again. Not unless you're sure."
"Sure about what?"