Chapter 2 Avery Hale POV

My heart did a strange flutter just by looking at him. 

The king of hockey.

He was the Lycan Prince of the Northern Pack and the captain of the hockey team. Even now, he moved across the ice effortlessly, his tall, broad-shouldered frame slicing through the cold air like a weapon.

He was intimidating, powerful, and arrogant. 

Everything a wolf was supposed to be. 

I watched him blast a puck past the hapless goalie, and the black disk hitting the net with a loud smack.

His teammates cheered and slapped his shoulders, but Lucas didn't even smile. He rarely smiled. He just reset his position and focused his dark, hooded pair of eyes on the game.

I pulled my knees up to my chest and watched him. To tell the truth, I hated myself for watching him, but I couldn't stop.

Every girl in school was in love with Lucas, but my stupid crush went deeper than just his looks. It was because it had to do with some memory that held special meaning to me. 

It was when we were eleven years old, long before he became the cold prince everyone feared. 

I had been cornered behind the library by three older boys who were throwing rocks at me and calling me names because I was slow, while Lucas happened to have been walking by with his hockey gear. 

He didn't know me, and he had no reason to care, but he stepped right between me and those boys.

“We're just having some fun with the girl,” they protested.

“Get lost,” he said, unimpressed by their excuse.

They hesitated, unwilling to quit using me as their plaything, and I remember being afraid that he would let them. But he growled so loudly that all three ran away, screaming.

Only the two of us were left alone.

He turned around and looked at me—precisely at my scraped knees, and dropped a clean handkerchief into my lap before walking away without saying another word.

So long had passed since that day. 

He probably didn't even remember doing it, as it was just a random Tuesday for him. For me, though, it was the first time anyone had ever stood up for me, and for that reason, I carried that memory in my heart for eight years like a secret treasure.

My attention returned to the ice below, just as Lucas stopped near the boards where Chloe stood waiting for him with a bottle of water. She smiled brightly, and leaned over the glass barrier to hand it to him. 

He received it, took a quick drink, and handed it back without even looking at her face.

I watched the whole thing happen while noting that Chloe didn't care that he was cold to her. She just looked proud that she was the one standing near him.

Everyone knew by now that Chloe wanted to be his Luna. 

She was the best fit for him, in fact.

She came from an influential family, was beautiful, and had a powerful wolf.

It was agreed that they made sense together, and I looked away, feeling a familiar dull ache in my chest.

"Why do you keep doing this to yourself, Avery?" I muttered under my breath.

A wolf like Lucas lived in the sky while I lived in the dirt. There was no universe where his path and mine would ever cross, and thinking of him was me chasing the wind.

I looked up at the sky above the stadium. The afternoon sun was already beginning to sink below the treeline, giving way to a strange, dark red light.

Tonight was the Red Moon Ceremony.

It was the one night every few years when the celestial energy reached its peak. The elders said the Red Moon was a time of rare miracles.

It was the night the Moon Goddess answered the prayers of the desperate.

Sometimes, wolfless teenagers who attended the ceremony were finally granted their wolves by the divine. And for those who were ready, the Moon Goddess revealed their destined fated mates.

My chest pulsed as I remembered, and a small, quiet part of me dared to hope. I wanted to believe that tonight, the Goddess would look down on me and decide I had suffered enough.

Maybe she would give me a wolf.

Maybe she would give me a mate, someone ordinary, kind, and quiet, who would look at me and see a person worth loving.

I touched the small silver pendant hanging around my neck, the only thing my aunt had given me when I came to live with her.

"Don't let them steal your spirit, child," she had told me this morning before I left the house. "Your value isn't decided by those who don't know how to look at you."

I wanted so badly to believe her.

A whistle blew across the ice field, signaling the end of practice. The hockey players started filing off the ice toward the locker rooms. Lucas was the last one to leave the surface, his head held high, his expression blank.

I pulled my hood lower and hurried down the back of the bleachers before anyone could notice me sitting there alone. Then I walked back towards the main dormitory building to change out of my dirty clothes before the ceremony began.

Around me, the campus was buzzing with energy.

Students were running around in fine clothes, laughing, applying makeup, and talking about who might get matched tonight.

The air felt charged with a strange energy that made the tiny hairs on my arms stand up. I reached my small room, took off my stained clothes, and threw them into the laundry hamper before washing my face with cold water and slipping into a simple, dark green dress that had belonged to my aunt when she was younger.

It was old-fashioned and a little loose in some places, but it was clean and neat. I brushed my long brown hair until it fell smoothly over my shoulders and looked in the mirror one last time.

"Just survive the night," I said to my reflection. "That's all you have to do."

When I walked back outside, the sun had disappeared and in its place, a crimson moon hung high in the dark evening sky. The red light that shone from it washed over the stone buildings of Ravenhood Academy, casting long, eerie shadows across the ground.

Hundreds of students and pack members were gathering in the courtyard surrounding the stone altar. The High Priest stood at the top of the stairs, clad in long white robes trimmed with silver thread.

I stood near the back of the crowd, staying close to the edge of the forest trees where it was dark. I didn't want to stand near anyone I knew, so they would not find a reason to make another joke at my expense.

From across the courtyard, I saw Lucas standing near the front of the altar with his family and teammates. He looked commanding in his dark formal jacket, and his icy grey eyes scanned the crowd with bored indifference.

Beside him, Chloe was wearing a brilliant red gown, whispering something into his ear.

Lucas didn't look at her, but he didn't pull away either.

Suddenly, a strange sensation built up deep inside my chest. It felt like a drum beat hitting my ribs from the inside out, and my hands started to shake. My skin felt hot, and then it dipped until it was freezing cold, and then burning hot again.

I grabbed hold of a nearby tree trunk to steady myself as a wave hit me. 

What the hell was going on?