Chapter 1 Skylar

"Skylar."

I sit up. Immediately. She sounds panicked.

"Skylar, where are you?"

I'm already on my feet. "Up here, Mom."

Feet pound up the stairs. She slams into my room without knocking, still in her coat, bag on her shoulder, chest heaving.

"What happened?"

"The Kincaid boy." She's catching her breath. "He goes to Hartwell."

I go still.

"Same campus, Skylar. Same building. Same everything." She crosses the room and takes my face in both hands. "You are not getting on that bus."

"Mom—"

"No. No, listen to me." Her voice breaks on the last word and my mother does not break. "That family killed your father. They have been looking for us since the night we ran and I have spent twelve years making sure they never find you. Twelve years." Her hands tighten on my face. "And now you want to walk straight into that boy's hands?"

"I'm not walking into anyone's hands—"

"Your wolf is coming out. You're nineteen, it's happening whether you're ready or not, and the moment she does every wolf on that campus will smell exactly who you are." Her eyes are wet. I have seen my mother cry twice in my life. "You smell like your father, baby. You have always smelled like your father."

The room goes quiet.

"I'm still going," I say.

She looks at me. Lets her hands drop.

"I know," she says. Like it's the thing she was most afraid of.

She walks out. Crying.

My mother has cried twice in my life. This is the third time. I did that. I stand there with a hoodie in my hands and feel like the worst person alive.

I angrily shove another hoodie into my suitcase, which isn't really a suitcase so much as a duffle bag that lost the will to live somewhere around 2019. I've packed four hoodies, two bras—one functional, one decorative—six ramen packets, and two vibrators and a level of denial about my financial situation that borders on delusional.

Hartwell University. Ivy League. Division I hockey school. The kind of place where kids drive cars that cost more than our apartment and say things like "my father's a partner at—" and I tune out because I honest to God do not care.

I got in on a full scholarship. Academic. Because despite what the universe seems to think, I'm not just some tragic backstory with good grades. I'm a tragic backstory with great grades.

Hartwell looks exactly like the website. Old brick. Old money. Ivy crawling up every surface like the buildings are slowly being swallowed by their own pretentiousness. Students cross the quad in packs, holding iced lattes that probably cost nine dollars, wearing clothes that look effortless in that way only expensive things can. Everyone's laughing. Everyone belongs.

I'm dragging my duffle across the cobblestones. One strap is broken. It makes this noise—this scraping, dying-animal noise—that turns heads. A group of girls in matching Hartwell Crew hoodies stare at me the way people stare at a car accident. Horrified but unable to look away.

And then I smell it.

I don't know how else to describe it. It hits me like walking face-first into a wall made of cedar and rain and something underneath that doesn't have a name but makes every single cell in my body go absolutely feral. Not feral in the cute way. Feral in the my-wolf-just-woke-up-and-she's-screaming way.

No. Nope. Absolutely not.

I shove her down. Hard. Whatever that scent is, whoever that scent belongs to, I don't care. Campus has thousands of people. Thousands of smells. One of them was bound to be tolerable. This is statistics. This is science. This is me being a reasonable, logical person and not some hormonal werewolf cliché who falls apart over a—

A body slams into me.

My duffle goes sideways. My bag hits the ground. A vibrator slides across the cobblestones like a little yellow surrender flag.

"My bad." The body straightens up and becomes a person. Six-something. Dark hair doing that effortless just-rolled-out-of-bed thing that shouldn't work but does. Hartwell Wolves hockey jersey. Grin so wide it takes up most of his face.

And the smell. God. The smell is him. It's literally pouring off of him like cologne, except it's not cologne, it's just his stupid skin and his stupid existence and my wolf is doing backflips like a dog that just heard the word "walk."

I want to die.

"You good?" he asks.

"Fine." Flat. Good. Flat is a fortress.

He bends down, picks up the vibrator, and holds it out to me like it's a rose. His hockey buddies—three of them, all massive, all looking at me like I'm an amusing interruption to their incredibly important walk across campus—snicker behind him.

"A woman who takes care of herself." He's still grinning. "Let me grab your bag."

"Touch my bag and I'll break your hand."

The grin wobbles. Just slightly. Just enough to be satisfying.

"Alright, damn." He tilts his head. Studies me. That lazy, curious look that hot guys give you when they're trying to place your face in their mental Rolodex of conquests. "Do I know you?"

"No."

"You sure? Because you look—"

"I said no."

He raises both hands. "Relax, babe. I'm just—"

"Don't call me babe."

One of his friends—blond, built like a refrigerator—whistles. "Kincaid, she's not feeling it, man."

Kincaid.

The name hits my stomach like a brick through a window. Like ice water. Like every story my mother ever told me about the pack we used to have and the family that burned it to ash.

Rhys Kincaid. In the flesh. Grinning at me.

And he has no idea.

He looks me over. Slow. Top to bottom. And I swear to God, this absolute audacity of a human being leans in—close enough that the cedar scent makes my knees genuinely consider mutiny—and says, "Look, I hook up with a lot of people. If we had a thing at a party and I never called, that's on me. But I've got a game tonight. Come to the dinner after. Let me make it up to you."

The slap happens before my brain gets a vote.

It cracks across the quad so loud a girl twenty feet away drops her latte. His head snaps sideways. His friends go dead silent. When he turns back, the grin is gone and there's something underneath it—shock, maybe. A little anger. Good.

"My name is Skylar Voss."

I watch it land. Voss. The name his father made extinct. The pack his family gutted and buried so deep most wolves pretend it never existed. His jaw tightens. His friends shift behind him, confused, still five seconds behind.

"My mother worked three jobs to keep us alive after yours took everything. So no, Rhys. We didn't hook up at a party. You don't remember me because people like you never bother learning the names of the people you destroy."

I grab my duffle. The broken strap screams across the cobblestones.

He doesn't follow.

But that smell does. It clings to my skin all the way to the dorm, soaking into my hoodie, curling into my hair, whispering the one word my wolf won't shut up about. The one word I refuse to say.

Room 214. Bare mattress. I sit down and my phone buzzes.

Ms Voss — the terms of the Kincaid Academic Excellence Fund require one meeting per semester with the endowment's student liaison. Your first appointment is Friday. I pull up the hockey roster.

Rhys Kincaid. Student Liaison, Kincaid Academic Excellence Fund.

My wolf has the nerve to be relieved.

‘Mate.’

Of course he is. God hates me.