Chapter 1
Aurelia
The vodka tasted like expensive hairspray and bad decisions, but I swallowed it anyway, letting the burn sear a path down my throat. It was the only thing keeping me warm.
Burlingham, Vermont, in early December was less of a college town and more of a cryogenic chamber designed to preserve old money and freeze out anyone who didn’t belong.
Sterling University was the crown jewel of the frozen wasteland—a Gothic fortress of gray stone, ivy that looked like skeletal fingers in the winter, and tuition fees that could feed a small country.
I stood on the second-floor balcony of the Alpha Delta Phi house—affectionately known as "The Hive"—and looked down at the chaos below.
The party was a living, breathing organism.
A writhing mass of sweaty bodies, pulsing bass that rattled the fillings in my teeth, and the distinct, cloying scent of desperation mixed with marijuana.
From up here, they all looked like ants. Worker ants. Drones. And I was the queen bee who had lost her wings, teetering on the edge of the hive, wondering if the fall would kill me or just hurt enough to make me feel something.
"Aurelia, get down from there. Seriously."
I didn’t turn around. I knew that voice.
Sloane. My roommate. The only person at this godforsaken school who didn’t look at me and see a dollar sign or a walking scandal.
She was an art major on a scholarship, usually covered in charcoal and righteousness.
Currently, she was sounding like a boring mother hen.
"I'm just getting some air, Sloane," I lied, my voice floaty and detached. The alcohol had done its job, wrapping my brain in a thick layer of cotton. "The air inside tastes like Axe body spray and regret."
"You’re standing on the railing, Aurelia. The railing."
I looked down at my feet. I was wearing four-inch Louboutins—black patent leather, red soles that flashed like warning signals. They were perched precariously on the icy, wrought-iron banister. One slip, one gust of wind, and I’d be a splatter on the frozen patio stones twelve feet below.
The thought didn't terrify me. It thrilled me.
A camera flash went off below. Then another.
I tilted my head, catching the glint of lenses in the darkness of the courtyard. The paparazzi weren't supposed to be on campus—my father paid the University president an obscene amount of money to ensure privacy—but where there was a St. James, there were sharks.
Let them look, I thought, a bitter bile rising in my throat. Let them see Arthur St. James’s perfect little ballerina daughter acting like a tragic mess.
My phone buzzed in the clutch I was gripping so hard my knuckles were white. I didn’t need to look to know who it was. My father’s assistant, likely texting me about the "incident" at the charity gala last week, or reminding me that my weight check-in was Monday morning.
Control. That’s all my life was. A series of controlled movements. Plié. Tendu. Smile. Don't eat that. Don't say that. Don't breathe unless instructed.
I took another swig from the crystal flask I’d stolen from my father’s liquor cabinet before leaving for the semester.
"Watch this," I whispered to no one.
I lifted one leg, extending it behind me into a perfect arabesque. It was muscle memory. My body knew how to balance even when my mind was drowning in Grey Goose. I held the pose, teetering on one stiletto heel, hovering over the abyss.
The crowd below noticed. The music didn't stop, but the roar of conversation shifted. Heads turned upward. Fingers pointed. A collective gasp rippled through the courtyard.
"Is that St. James?"
"She's gonna jump."
"Do it!" some frat bro yelled, laughing.
I smiled, a sharp, brittle thing. I wasn't going to jump.
I was just going to terrify them. I wanted to see the panic in the eyes of the security detail lurking by the hedges.
I wanted my father to get the call at 3:00 AM.
I wanted to be the disaster everyone whispered about because being a disaster was the only thing that felt like mine.
"Aurelia, stop!" Sloane shrieked, lunging for my arm, but she was too far away.
I leaned forward, letting gravity kiss my chest. The wind whipped my platinum hair around my face, stinging my eyes. For a second, I was flying.
Then, the world tilted.
Not because I fell. But because the door behind me slammed open with enough force to crack the wood, and the air pressure on the balcony shifted.
The temperature dropped ten degrees.
I wobbled, my heel skidding on a patch of black ice. My heart hammered against my ribs—a frantic bird trapped in a cage. My arms pinwheeled.
This is it. This is the part where I break.
I didn't hit the stone.
I hit a wall.
A massive, solid, unyielding wall of heat and hardness. An arm—thick as a tree branch and hard as iron—wrapped around my waist, knocking the breath out of me. The grip was instantaneous and bruising. It wasn't a gentle save; it was a capture.
I was yanked back over the railing so violently that my flask flew from my hand, shattering on the patio below.
I slammed into a chest that felt like it was made of granite slabs. The scent hit me before I could look up—cedarwood, cold winter air, and the sharp, metallic tang of skate blades. It was a masculine, dangerous smell that cut right through the vodka haze.
"Let go of me!" I shrieked, my voice shrill.
"Shut up," a voice growled.
It wasn't a request. It was a low, vibrating rumble that started in the stranger's chest and echoed in my own bones.
I looked up. And up.
He was huge. That was my first thought. He blocked out the floodlights of the party, casting me in his shadow.
He had to be six-five, easily, with shoulders that spanned the width of the doorway.
He was wearing a black hoodie with the sleeves pushed up, revealing forearms that were roped with veins and covered in black ink—geometric lines, sharp angles, aggressive runes.
But it was his face that made my breath hitch.
He wasn't handsome in the way the boys I grew up with were handsome. He didn't have the soft, polished look of old money. He looked like he’d been carved out of a mountain with a dull chisel. Sharp jaw, heavy brow, and a jagged white scar cutting straight through his left eyebrow.
His eyes were dark. Pitch black. And they were looking at me with an expression I had never seen directed at me before.
Not desire. Not awe.
Disgust.
"Put me down!" I thrashed, beating my fists against his chest. It was like hitting a parked car.
"You have a death wish, Princess?" he murmured, his voice deadpan. "Or are you just trying to see how much daddy's insurance will pay out for a broken neck?"
The insult stung worse than the cold. "Do you know who I am?" I spat, falling back on the only defense I had.
The corner of his mouth quirked up, but there was no humor in it. "Yeah. I know exactly who you are. You’re a liability."
He didn't wait for a response. He bent down, shifting his grip. Before I could process what was happening, the world flipped upside down.
He hoisted me over his shoulder.
Literally. Over. His. Shoulder.
Like I was a sack of potatoes. Like I was cargo.
"Put me down!" I screamed, kicking my legs. My expensive heels drummed uselessly against his massive chest. My ass was in the air, my face pressed against the rough cotton of his hoodie covering his back.
"Quiet," he said, and started walking.
"This is kidnapping! I'll have you expelled! I'll buy this frat house and burn it down with you inside!"
He didn't even break stride. He marched through the crowded party, parting the sea of drunken students like Moses, if Moses was a pissed-off hockey player built like a tank.
"Make a hole," he barked.
The students scrambled out of the way. I heard laughter. I heard phones snapping pictures. The humiliation washed over me, hot and prickly. Aurelia St. James, the ice princess, being hauled out of a frat party like unruly luggage.
"Jax, grab the coats," the giant commanded.
"On it, Cap," a voice laughed from somewhere in the crowd.
Cap. Captain.
I froze. Oh god. He was one of them. The Sentinels. The hockey team. The gods of Sterling University. My father owned the team. He signed their checks. This brute was on my payroll, technically.
"You're fired!" I yelled into his back. "You hear me? You are so fired!"
He didn't stop until the blast of freezing air hit us. We were outside.
Atlas
She weighed nothing.
That was the first thing that registered. For all her screaming and thrashing, Aurelia St. James was light as a bird. A hollow-boned, fragile thing wrapped in cashmere and entitlement.
But she was heavy in every other way.
She was the kind of heavy that dragged a man down. The kind of heavy that came with lawyers, press releases, and headaches I didn't have the time or the patience for.
I marched across the icy parking lot, my boots crunching in the snow. The cold felt good. It helped cool the rage simmering in my gut.
I hadn't come to the Hive to play hero. I’d come to drag Jax—my defensive partner and the team’s biggest liability—out of a keg stand so he wouldn't be hungover for morning practice. We had a game against Harvard on Friday. I needed my head in the game, not babysitting the donor's daughter.
But when I saw her on that railing...
My stomach had clenched. Not out of concern, but out of a visceral, primal instinct to stop chaos. I hated chaos. My whole life had been chaos—screaming parents, eviction notices, the erratic highs and lows of addiction. I had spent twenty-two years building walls to keep the chaos out.
And here she was. Chaos in high heels. Dancing on a ledge just to see who would look.
"You neanderthal!" she shrieked, pounding on my lower back. Her little fists were annoying, like a moth flapping against a windowpane. "My father will ruin you! He’ll turn you into dog food!"