Chapter 1
Riley
The cold at Ironclad Mountain University wasn’t just a temperature; it was a living, breathing entity that tried to crawl inside your lungs and freeze you from the inside out. But it wasn’t the cold that made my hands shake as I adjusted the focus on my binoculars.
It was the monsters.
Down on the ice, the violence was a blur of steel blades and black jerseys.
The sound was deafening—the crack of composite sticks against pucks, the feral roar of three thousand students, and the wet, meaty thud of bodies colliding at twenty miles an hour.
This wasn’t normal hockey. This was Apex hockey.
And here, in the secluded wilderness of British Columbia, the rules of the NCAA were treated more like loose suggestions than law.
I stood in the shadowed corner of the media box, far away from the press and the scouts, clutching my clipboard against my chest like a shield.
My official title was Student Assistant to the Athletic Director for Statistical Analysis.
It was a fancy way of saying I was the math nerd allowed to exist in the kingdom of beasts because I could calculate Corsi ratings and fenwick scores faster than a computer.
I was invisible. I made sure of that. I wore oversized gray hoodies three sizes too big, drowning my figure in shapeless cotton.
I kept my brown hair pulled back in a severe, headache-inducing bun.
I wore glasses I didn’t technically need because the frames acted as a barrier between my eyes and theirs.
Because if they saw me—really saw me—I was dead.
"Jesus, did you see that hit?" The voice belonged to Jacobs, the actual announcer, who was currently practically salivating over his microphone. "Thorne just decapitated him."
I didn’t need to look at the replay screen. I had seen it live.
Number 55. Spike Thorne.
They called him "The Butcher," and looking at him now, prowling the defensive zone, it wasn’t hard to see why.
He was massive, even for a Shifter—six-foot-five on skates, with shoulders that spanned the width of a doorframe.
While the other players glided, Thorne stalked.
There was a predatory heaviness to his movements, a lethal conservation of energy that terrified me even from fifty feet up behind tempered glass.
He had just leveled a forward from the visiting team—a bear shifter from the Southern tech school—and the impact had shaken the entire arena.
The bear was still down, groaning on the ice, but Thorne didn’t even look back.
He just adjusted his gloves, the black leather creaking, and spit a wad of blood onto the ice.
My heart hammered a frantic rhythm against my ribs—thump-thump-thump—like a trapped bird. I hated that I couldn't look away. I hated that my breath hitched every time he touched the puck.
I was a Latent. That was the polite term.
The less polite term was Runt. Weakling.
Prey. My grandmother had been a wolf, but the gene had skipped my mother and landed dormant in me.
I had no wolf. I couldn’t shift. I couldn’t heal instantly.
If I fell down the stairs, I broke bones.
If a Shifter lost control and backhanded me, my neck would snap like a twig.
Ironclad Mountain University allowed a quota of humans and Latents for "diversity," but we all knew the truth. We were here to do the homework the Alphas couldn't be bothered with, and to keep the tuition flowing. We were bottom-feeders in a tank of sharks.
Thorne turned. Through the scratched plexiglass, for a single, horrifying second, he looked up.
The distance was too great. There was no way he could see me in the dark recesses of the media box.
But I felt the weight of his gaze like a physical touch, a heavy, hot hand pressing against my throat.
Even through the cage of his helmet, I saw the flash of those amber eyes.
They weren't human. They were burning, molten gold, glowing with the remnants of the adrenaline spike from the hit.
A shiver, violent and traitorous, ripped down my spine. It pooled low in my belly, a hot, liquid coil of arousal that made me sick with shame.
Stop it, I hissed internally, digging my fingernails into the cardboard of my clipboard until they bent. He is a monster. He is a walking traumatic brain injury. He is everything you are trying to survive.
"Bennett!"
I jumped, dropping my pen. It clattered to the floor, rolling under the desk. I scrambled to retrieve it, grateful for the excuse to break eye contact with the predator on the ice.
Mr. Henderson, the equipment manager, poked his head into the box.
He was an older badger shifter, grumpy but harmless.
"Riley, I need you down in the tunnel. The visiting team's washing machine busted a hose.
I need you to run the stats sheets to Coach Miller before the intermission ends so I can deal with the flood. "
My stomach dropped. "Now? Can’t I wait until the game is over?"
"Coach needs the face-off percentages for the second period strategy," Henderson barked, already turning away. "Don’t be shy, Bennett. They won’t bite. Unless you ask them to." He laughed at his own terrible joke and vanished.
I stood there, frozen. Going down to the tunnel during intermission was suicide. It was the Hive. A narrow concrete corridor filled with testosterone, aggression, and the overwhelming, suffocating scent of aroused, angry Alphas.
I looked down at my clothes. Baggy hoodie. Jeans that were too loose. Sneakers. I looked like a laundry pile. Good. Be invisible. Be boring. Be scentless.
I took a deep breath, inhaling the stale air of the press box one last time, and headed for the stairs.
The air got thicker the lower I went. By the time I reached the basement level, the atmosphere was oppressive.
The humidity was high, clinging to my skin, carrying the sharp, copper tang of blood and the musk of exertion.
The roar of the crowd was muffled here, replaced by the sound of shouting men and the clack-clack-clack of skates on rubber matting.
I kept my head down, hugging the clipboard to my chest, walking as close to the cinderblock wall as possible.
Just get to the Coach’s office. Drop the stats. Get out.
I turned the corner toward the home locker room and slammed directly into a wall of muscle.
It was like hitting a parked car. The impact knocked the wind out of me, jarring my teeth. I stumbled back, my sneakers squeaking on the wet floor, my clipboard flying out of my hands to scatter papers across the dirty rubber mats.
"Watch where you’re going," a voice growled.
It wasn't a request. It was a low rumble that vibrated through the floorboards and straight up my legs.
I froze. I knew that voice. I had heard it in post-game interviews, usually delivering monosyllabic threats to opposing teams.
Slowly, terrifyingly, I looked up.
And up.
And up.
Spike Thorne loomed over me like a jagged mountain peak. Up close, he was even more terrifying than he was from the safety of the media box. He had his helmet off, tucked under one massive arm. His black hair was wet with sweat, plastered to his forehead and neck in messy, ink-dark strands.
But it was his face that made my breath catch.
He was devastatingly handsome in a way that promised ruin.
High, sharp cheekbones, a jawline that could cut glass, and a mouth that looked like it was permanently set in a sneer.
A jagged, silvery scar ran from the corner of his jaw down the column of his thick neck—a souvenir from a skate blade years ago.
It didn't mar his beauty; it highlighted the violence of it.
He was breathing hard, his chest heaving beneath the black jersey. And he was staring at me.
Those amber eyes were blown wide, the pupils dilated so much the gold was just a thin ring of fire around the black. He wasn't blinking.
"I—I'm sorry," I stammered, my voice sounding pathetically thin in the cavernous hallway. I dropped to my knees to gather my papers, desperate to escape his orbit. "I wasn't looking. I'm just dropping these off."
I reached for a sheet of paper that had landed near his skate.
A massive, gloved hand shot out and grabbed my wrist.
The contact was electric. Even through the thick leather of his hockey glove, I felt the heat of him. It seared my skin, sending a jolt of shock straight to my heart.
"Stop," he commanded.
I froze, on my knees at the feet of the most dangerous Alpha on campus. The position was submissive, degrading, and entirely too telling.
Spike didn't let go of my wrist. He leaned down, his face inches from mine. I could smell him now—a chaotic, overwhelming storm of woodsmoke, cold iron, and something uniquely him, something dark and bitter like ozone before a lightning strike. It made my head spin. It made my mouth water.
He inhaled. A long, deep drag of air, his nostrils flaring.
His eyes flashed. The gold bled into a deep, warning red.
"What are you?" he rasped, his voice sounding like gravel grinding together.
"I'm—I'm Riley," I whispered, terrified. "I'm the stats girl."
"Not who," he snarled, tightening his grip on my wrist just enough to bruise, just enough to warn. " What? You smell..." He trailed off, a shudder racking his massive frame. He looked confused, angry. He looked like he wanted to devour me. "You smell like ruin."
Spike
The game was a blur of red haze.
That was the only way I could get through sixty minutes of ice time without killing someone. I let the Wolf take the wheel, just enough to sharpen my reflexes, just enough to make the pain of a slashed stick or a blocked shot feel like pleasure.
I was the Enforcer. The Butcher. My job wasn't to score goals; it was to clear the path for the pretty boys who did. My job was to hurt people so they didn't hurt us.
I was good at it. I enjoyed it. And I hated myself for enjoying it.