Chapter 4 Chapter four

Chapter Four

Alexander’s POV

I remembered every single fucking second of that night.

I remembered the way her messy blonde hair had spilled across the hotel pillows. I remembered how soft her skin felt under my calloused hands, how she gasped every time my mouth touched her collarbone, and the faint, sweet scent of vanilla that took over my head.

I remembered the look in her eyes before the sun came up.....exhausted, broken, and clinging to me like I was the only thing keeping her from drowning.

I never forgot Sophia. Not for a single day. I just told myself it was easier to act like she didn't exist.

That night had happened during the fucking worst week of my life. My father had summoned me to the main packhouse just to shove another medical file in my face. The specialist in Boston had confirmed it for the third time: my fertility levels were flatlined. Zero chance of producing an heir.

My own father had looked me dead in the eye and said, “The Blackwood Alpha bloodline ends with you, Alexander.”

He was already preparing to strip my birthright and hand the Alpha title to my useless half-brother. I was humiliated, furious, and out of my mind with rage. I went to that hotel looking for a distraction to burn off the anger before I ripped someone's throat out.

Then Sophia walked in.

That one night with her was the first time in years my inner wolf had stopped snarling. She brought this insane calm that shut down all the noise in my head.

And that scared the living hell out of me.

So when I saw her at the arena months later wearing a cheap gray cleaner's uniform, my instincts went into full panic mode. My life was already a ticking time bomb with the draft scouts and the pack elders breathing down my neck. If I let myself get tangled up with a broke scholarship girl who could completely wreck my focus, I'd lose everything.

So I looked right past her, told the guys I didn't know her, and I thought that would be the end of it.

I was dead wrong.

Every single time she walked anywhere near the rink, my wolf went totally berserk. My claws pushed against my knuckles, my blood ran hot, and my instincts screamed one word over and over until my skull pounded: Mine.

It made no sense. I had slept with other women before, and my wolf had never even twitched. Why was this one girl turning me into a rabid animal?

Then, two days ago, I walked past the lower hallway while she was sweeping the lobby floor.

The air shifted, and this faint, unmistakable pulse of a new soul brushed against my senses. It wasn't an ordinary smell. It was that distinct aura only an Alpha can feel.....the unmistakable signature of a pup about to enter the world.

She was pregnant.

The second the timeline clicked in my head, a nasty, bitter disgust twisted in my gut.

Four weeks. She was barely a month along.

She sure as hell wasn't pregnant when she was under me in that hotel bed. So what did that mean? Did she take the cash I left on the nightstand, walk out the door, and hop straight into bed with some other guy the next day?

Was she just another campus slut playing the field?

There was no way my wolf was losing its damn mind over a whore who slept around the second my back was turned. The thought made my jaw ache from clenching so hard.

I was about to corner her by the library path and force the truth out of her mouth when a pair of footsteps rounded the corner behind me.

"Looking a little tense, Blackwood," a lazy, mocking voice called out.

I turned around slowly, my eyes narrowing into slits as Damon Crest strolled down the walkway, his hands shoved casually into the pockets of his varsity jacket.

Damon had been my biggest rival on the ice since we were fourteen, and his family had spent generations waiting for the Blackwoods to slip up. Lately, he had been breathing down my neck more than usual, watching my every move during practice.

"Obsessed with me much, Crest?" I sneered, stepping into his path. "Or do you just have nothing better to do than follow me around campus?"

Damon stopped a few feet away, a slow, annoying smirk spreading across his face.

"Just admiring the scenery," Damon replied smoothly, nodding toward the direction Sophia had just walked. "Didn't know you had a thing for the stats department."

My fists clenched at my sides, my inner wolf snapping its teeth. "Stay out of my path, Damon."

Damon gave a casual, insolent shrug.

"She's not in your path, Blackwood," he drawled, his eyes glinting with competition. "She's standing in mine."

"She belongs to no one, and she definitely isn't yours to keep me away from," Damon continued, taking a half-step closer. "Last time I checked, you walked right past her in the tunnel like she was a piece of trash. So yeah... I'm going to have to say no to that particular request."

"So now you've upped your stalking shit? You don't know what you're messing with," I growled, my voice dropping an octave as my Alpha aura flared.

"I know she's smarter than your entire coaching staff," Damon fired back with a dry chuckle. "And I know watching her talk to me makes your veins pop out of your neck. That's more than enough reason for me to keep her around."

He gave me a mock salute, turned on his heel, and walked away toward the training facility.

"Fucking asshole," I muttered under my breath, my chest heaving.

He didn't give a damn about Sophia. He just saw that she rattled me, and he was using her as a weapon to throw me off my game before Friday's match.

I turned back toward the library archway, the wind carrying a fresh gust of air down the corridor.

Her scent hit me again.....that sweet, undeniable mix of vanilla, rain, and warm skin.

My inner wolf shoved forward violently, clawing at my chest so hard I had to brace one hand against the rough brick wall.

Then I focused my hearing.

I filtered out the distant chatter on the quad, and the rustle of leaves.

I locked onto her chest.

Thump... thump... thump.

Her heartbeat was erratic, weak, fluttering like a dying bird against her ribs. It made something protective and possessive twist viciously in my stomach.

Then, right beneath that fragile rhythm, I heard it.

Ba-dump. Ba-dump. Ba-dump.

A second heartbeat.

It was tiny,rapid and impossibly strong.

It wasn't just any pup. The frequency of that pulse resonated straight through my own bones, locking onto my Alpha core with a magnetic snap that almost brought me to my knees.

The lab tests, the doctors, my father's sneering voice telling me my bloodline was dead.....all of it shattered into dust in less than a second.

I went totally still.

My inner wolf sto

od tall, throwing its head back in a deafening, triumphant roar that echoed through my entire soul:

Our heir.