Chapter 4
BOONE
Practice runs long on Tuesday because Coach makes us run the same red-zone package until Deacon throws his hands up and asks if we’re getting graded on this specific play.
“Kinkaid, you’re drifting,” Coach barks.
He’s right. I ran the route four times and thought about Maisie Pope at least three of those times, which is absolute shit focus for a starting receiver two weeks out from Homecoming. My wolf doesn’t give a damn about Homecoming. He has exactly one priority right now, and it isn’t football.
Tate catches up with me on the way to the locker room, already grinning. “You dropped an easy one.”
“I know.”
“You never drop easy ones.” Tate drops his pads by his locker and leans in. “And you checked your phone four times during water breaks. You’ve never checked your phone four times in the entire three years we’ve lived next door to each other.”
“I had things to check.”
“Right. Important things. Like whatever’s got you smiling like an idiot.” Tate snorts, pulling off his cleats. “I saw a blueberry muffin in your cupholder yesterday, Boone. You don’t eat muffins. You eat entire rotisserie chickens.”
I pull my jersey over my head to buy five seconds of privacy. “It was for a friend.”
“It was for the tutoring girl,” Tate says, way too pleased with himself. “The human freshman you’re supposedly not weird about.”
I don’t answer, because answering honestly would require explaining a whole mess I’m not ready to share.
Tate’s grin fades a little, turning into that steady look he gets when he actually gives a shit. “Whoever she is, don’t do the thing.”
“What thing?”
“The wolf thing. The too-much thing.” Tate jabs a finger at my chest. “You know how you get. You care about something, you go all in, no brakes. Humans spook easy, man. You come at a girl with full Kinkaid intensity right out of the gate, she’s gonna think you’re insane before she figures out you’re just you.
Go slow. Slow works better with humans. Trust me. ”
I grab my shower gear and pretend the advice doesn’t sting. The problem is, Tate thinks “the too-much thing” is a bad habit I can just switch off. He doesn’t know it’s an actual wild animal in my chest that found its mate and wants to claim her immediately, entirely, without taking a single breath.
It’s exhausting.
By Sunday night, I’m sitting on my living room floor at eleven p.m. like a total idiot, highlighting a university brochure titled Human-Creature Mate Bonds: A Guide for New Students.
Every creature at CU sits through the orientation seminar freshman year—slides about consent, pacing, scent-marking etiquette, the difference between instinct and choice. We all laughed about it back then because it felt theoretical. Most shifters never meet their mates on campus anyway.
Except now it’s not theoretical. Now it’s Maisie Pope sitting across from me in the library, chewing on the end of a pen while she frowns at biology diagrams. And my wolf doesn’t give a fuck about university guidelines.
My wolf doesn’t speak in polite suggestions. It speaks in blunt, physical demands.
Keep her close. Manageable.
Keep her fed. Done. I’ll buy whatever pastry she looks at.
Keep her safe. Working on it.
Put your scent all over her right now so every other guy in this building knows she’s taken.
Yeah. That’s the one trying to kill me.
The pamphlet says scent-marking instincts are notoriously hard for wolves to control early on and recommends redirecting behavior through appropriate proxies such as shared clothing.
I already gave her one of my team hoodies. My wolf considers that a down payment at best.
I flip the page. Allow the human partner to set the pace of physical intimacy. Remember that instinct is not permission.
Right. Thanks, pamphlet. Super helpful.
My entire game plan comes down to taking massive, possessive wolf urges and breaking them down into small, normal gestures so she doesn’t realize I’m losing my mind.
Instead of demanding she eat every meal with me, I show up to study sessions with extra pastries from the good bakery. “I was already there,” I tell her, sliding a box across the table. She just rolls her eyes and digs in.
Instead of trailing behind her like a guard dog, I ask. “Heading back to your dorm? I can walk with you if you want company.”
She always says yes. And every damn time, the wolf gets stupidly smug about it.
When her shoulder starts aching from that heavy canvas bag, I wait until she complains out loud before I grab the strap. “Treating a medical symptom,” I tell her, hauling it onto my shoulder.
She notices, of course. Maisie notices everything.
“You’ve gotten weirdly considerate,” she said during our third session, squinting over her laptop. “You didn’t use to ask before you grabbed my bag.”
“I’m learning manners.”
“You’re plotting something.”
“I’m helping you study, Pope.”
She let it drop, but she watched me a little too long, her hazel eyes curious and sharp.
The real test comes Friday during our fourth study session. We’re in our usual corner of the library when a guy from her lecture walks right up to our table.
“Maisie, hey.” Tall, human, smiling like he owns the place. “You left your umbrella in Halvorsen’s class on Tuesday. I’ve had it in my bag all week, sorry.”
“Oh my god, thank you!” Maisie takes it, laughing.
Something ugly and immediate snaps inside my chest. The wolf sits straight up, baring its teeth.
Who the fuck is this guy?
Why has he been carrying her shit around for three days?
“You’re in my study group for the midterm, right?” He keeps going, leaning over our table. “We should compare notes sometime.”
I don’t move. I don’t say a word. But my jaw locks tight, my hands go dead flat on the wood, and I hit him with a look that usually makes defensive linemen take a step back.
The guy glances at me, blanches, and swallows hard. “Anyway... see you in class,” he mutters, turning and walking away fast.
Good, the wolf snaps. Get lost.
Maisie watches him bolt, then slowly turns to face me. “Okay. Do all werewolves glare at strangers like you’re deciding where to bite them first?”
“That’s just my face.”
“That is not your face. That was your I am actively considering murder face.”
“He could’ve left the umbrella at the lost and found.”
“He was just being nice!” Maisie looks at me, fighting a grin. “Boone. Did you just get territorial over an umbrella?”
“No.”
“Your ears literally twitched flat.”
“They didn’t twitch.”
“They definitely did.” Maisie leans back, biting her lower lip, looking at me like she just discovered a very fun button she fully intends to push. “Fascinating.”
I’m completely fucked.
It turns into a game immediately.
Ten minutes later, she reaches across the table, grabs my favorite blue pen straight out of my fingers, and clicks it twice while staring right into my eyes.
“That’s mine,” I say.
“It’s a tax on existing near me.”
The wolf doesn’t even care that she stole it—the wolf is thrilled she wanted something I touched.
A few minutes after that, she slides out of her chair and leans right over my side of the table to check my notes.
Her shoulder presses hard against mine, her body heat radiating straight through my shirt, and her hair falls forward so close I catch the scent of vanilla, rain, and clean skin. It punches straight through my head.
My throat goes dry. I stop writing completely.
“You okay?” she asks, not looking up from the page.
“Fine.”
“You stopped talking. You made a weird little rumble.”
“I didn’t rumble.”
“Sounded like a growl. I’m pre-vet, Boone. I know animal noises.”
“Focus on the recessive traits, Pope.”
She grins at my paper, knowing damn well what she’s doing.
Then she brings up Wesley from our ethics lecture, casually asking if I think he’s cute. I grip my notebook until the spiral binding bends, demanding to know what the hell she means by “objectively cute,” while Maisie laughs so hard she has to cover her face.
The breaking point happens twenty minutes before the library closes.
Maisie twists in her seat to grab the heavy textbook stacked on my right. She doesn’t realize how close she is—she reaches across my chest, and the soft curve of her breast presses flush against my upper arm.
She doesn’t pull back immediately. She lingers there for a second, grabbing the spine of the book, her breath warm against the side of my neck.
Every muscle in my body locks like iron.
The heat slams into me so fast and violent I feel it in my teeth. My pulse hammers in my ears. Every instinct I have screams at me to grab her hips, pull her onto my lap, bury my face in her neck, and sink my teeth in until she smells like me and only me.
I grip the edge of the table hard enough that the wood groans.
“Okay,” Maisie whispers.
She hasn’t pulled away. She’s staring right at my face from six inches away, her hazel eyes wide, lips parted, looking between my eyes and my mouth.
“Your eyes just did a thing,” she murmurs.
“They didn’t.” My voice is a disaster—rough, low, vibrating with the wolf.
“They turned bright gold, Boone. I’m looking right at them.” She stays in my space, her chest rising and falling fast, studying my face with a mix of curiosity and heat that makes my vision blur. “What does that mean?”
“It’s just... an emotional reflex.” I force each word past my teeth, fighting for control. “It doesn’t mean anything.”
Maisie holds my gaze for another heavy second before she slowly slides back into her chair with the book. “So you’re basically a giant mood ring.”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“You’re terrible at keeping secrets when your face literally glows.”
“Study chapter five, Maisie.”
She laughs softly and opens the book, but her cheeks are flushed pink, and she doesn’t look at me for the next ten minutes.
I walk her back to her dorm in the cold autumn air.
CU was built generations ago to bring creatures and humans together, to stop species from dying out in isolated mountain packs. I believe in that mission with everything I have. But Maisie isn’t a statistic to me. She isn’t a biological fix for werewolf population numbers.
She’s Maisie. She steals my pens, talks shit about my color-coded schedules, and looks at me like she sees right through the football player to who I actually am. I refuse to tell her about the bond until she knows that whatever I feel for her is a choice, not just genetics.
We stop under the streetlamp outside her dorm entrance.
“Thanks for tonight,” she says quietly, looking up at me. The teasing from earlier is completely gone. Her expression is soft, open, vulnerable.
“I might actually pass this quiz.”
“You’re gonna crush it.”
She smiles, her gaze dropping to my mouth.
She lingers there, staring at my lips, and takes a tiny breath in.
She wants me to kiss her.
Every single cell in my body screams to take her. I want to back her up against the brick wall, tangle my hands in her hair, and kiss her until she can’t breathe. The wolf is ready to tear out of my skin to claim what’s ours.
Not yet.
She doesn’t know the whole truth. She can’t choose you if she doesn’t know what she’s choosing.
I lock my knees, hold my breath, and force myself to take half a step backward instead.
“Night, Maisie.”
The disappointment hits her face instantly. It’s quick and sharp before she masks it, but it nearly cuts me in half.
“Night, Boone,” she says quietly, turning and slipping inside the glass doors.
I stand under the streetlight until the door clicks shut. Then I drag both hands down my face, stare up at the freezing night sky, and let out a ragged breath.
My wolf is furious with me.
Honestly, fair.
I’m in so much fucking trouble.