01

Harper

The first thought that crossed my mind when Cade Blackwood pinned me down wasn't about fighting back.

It was—

His lips look better suited for kissing than I'd imagined.

The thought startled me. After all, two hours earlier I'd sworn to break his nose.

Now one of his hands locked around my wrists while the other cradled the back of my head, his solid body pressing me into the floor of the men's hockey team locker room.

At some point my right leg had wound around his waist. It was a suggestive position.

"Still want to fight?" he asked.

His voice was low, his breath grazing my cheek.

"Of course."

"Then why aren't you moving?"

I'd meant to say I was searching for his weak spot.

But my gaze had landed squarely on his mouth instead.

Cade clearly noticed.

His eyes were a pale gray-blue, and right now they were fixed on me without blinking. A faint ring of gold—the color of the wolf—shimmered at the edges of his irises.

"Harper."

It was the first time he'd said my name.

For some reason, coming from his mouth it sounded like a warning.

And like something else, too.

Deep inside me, my wolf, Nova, stirred restlessly, thrilled, as if she'd just discovered a new territory that belonged to her and her alone.

That was strange.

I couldn't catch Cade's scent.

A werewolf's scent is usually as distinct as a fingerprint. Cade smelled like pine needles and sun-warmed wood, mixed with the sharp tang of muscle rub.

Yet my body was responding to Cade anyway.

How things had come to this is a story that starts three hours earlier.

**

Three hours earlier, I was doing squats in Blackridge University's strength training center.

Two hundred and sixty pounds hung across the bar.

That wasn't the weight prescribed for the women's hockey team. In fact, my coach had explicitly warned me not to keep adding plates without an assistant spotting me.

But my coach had also explicitly warned me not to send opposing players flying during games. I'd done it anyway.

The video went viral on Instagram and earned me a nickname I absolutely hated.

The Blackridge Beast.

Everyone at Blackridge knew me. That didn't mean they liked me.

When Hunter flattened an opponent in a men's game, the students in the stands would rise to their feet chanting his name. When I did the exact same thing, they said women's hockey didn't need to be that violent.

Hunter got into bar fights, and people said he had the fire of an Alpha in his blood.

I threw a guy who tried to grab my ass into the swimming pool, and they said I'd lost control.

Never mind that we were twins. Same brown hair, same green eyes, and nearly the same raw strength.

Hunter was Blackridge's beloved hockey star.

I was the monster who—according to rumor—might accidentally crush your fingers on a date.

Luckily, I'd learned long ago not to care. At least, I looked like I didn't care.

I finished my last squat and racked the bar. My phone buzzed on the bench.

It was Mason, Hunter's roommate.

"If you're calling to make me pick up Hunter's dirty laundry," I said, wiping the sweat off my face as I answered, "tell him he's a grown man."

There was no laugh on the other end.

"Harper, can you come to the medical center right now?"

I went still.

"What happened to Hunter?"

"He's hurt."

"A game?"

"No."

Mason hesitated for a few seconds.

"After the party last night, somebody found him behind the hockey arena. Three broken ribs, a dislocated left shoulder, and a mild concussion."

"Who did it?"

"Hunter won't say. But I saw him leave with Cade Blackwood."

I'd heard the name, of course.

Cade was the former star center of the Blackridge men's hockey team—and the archenemy Hunter had loathed since their high school league days.

A year ago, Cade had badly injured his shoulder in a game and dropped out of the starting lineup. Now he interned at the school's sports medicine center and occasionally ran drills for the hockey team.

Hunter's assessment of him had always been concise.

Arrogant, underhanded, an asshole.

Since Hunter himself fit at least two of those descriptions, I'd never taken it seriously before.

Things were different now.

Twenty minutes later, I found Hunter in the medical center.

He lay in the hospital bed, his left arm strapped across his chest, a smear of dried blood still at the corner of his mouth.

Hunter opened his eyes, saw me, and frowned first thing.

"Who told you?"

"That's the first thing you say to your own sister?"

"That bastard Mason."

"Don't blame him." I pulled over a chair and sat down beside the bed. "Tell me what happened."

"I took a fall."

I looked at the bruises on his face.

"So you fell down the stairs, and then the stairs chased you down and beat you up?"

Hunter turned his face away. "I'll handle it."

"Who was it?"

"Harper."

"Was it Cade Blackwood?"

His body visibly tensed. Just for an instant—but it was enough to give me my answer.

"Stay away from him," Hunter said.

"So it really was him."

"I didn't say that."

"You didn't deny it either."

Hunter shut his eyes, irritated.

"This has nothing to do with you."

I stared at him.

For as long as I could remember, every time someone called me Beast behind my back, Hunter was the first to charge in. The year I turned sixteen, the first time my shift spiraled out of control, he stayed by my side despite the risk of my claws tearing into him. After we came to Blackridge, he was the one who told me, again and again, that I didn't have to fake being fragile just to make other people comfortable.

Now someone had beaten him into this state, and he expected me to pretend I hadn't seen?

"Of course it has to do with me." I stood up. "You're my brother."

"Harper, don't—"

I was already out of the room.

Finding Cade wasn't hard.

The men's hockey team had practice that afternoon, and Mason had told me Cade usually showed up early, waiting in the treatment room next to the locker room to prep kinesiology tape and first-aid supplies for the players.

My original plan was very simple.

Find him, beat him up, and leave before campus security showed.

I already had a terrible reputation. I had nothing left to lose.

Plenty of people recognized me on the way. Two freshman guys spotted me walking into the men's hockey arena and immediately, excitedly, pulled out their phones.

I figured a new post would surface on Instagram tomorrow.

BLACKRIDGE BEAST STORMS THE MEN'S TRAINING ARENA—who's she going to devour this time?

Cade wasn't in the treatment room.

A few minutes later, though, I ran into him right outside the locker room.

He was taller than I'd pictured.

A black T-shirt clung to the muscles of his shoulders and back, and near his right shoulder I could just make out the faint line of a surgical scar. He had an unfairly handsome face and a pair of pale blue eyes.

Staring into those eyes, I found the accusation I'd prepared inexplicably lodged in my throat.

Nova sat up inside me. Then, with no dignity whatsoever, she gave a little wag of her tail to express her excitement.

No. Absolutely not. This man had hurt Hunter.

However unfairly good-looking he was, it didn't change the fact that he was an asshole.

"Harper Reed?" He recognized me first.

"You know me?"

"All of Blackridge knows you."

"Then we can skip the introductions."

I stepped right up to him.

"You were with Hunter last night?"

Nothing shifted in Cade's expression.

"I saw him."

"And then?"

"We had a few words."

"With your fists?"

His gaze swept over my clenched hand.

"Do all you Reeds like to swing first and ask questions later?"

That line successfully made me forget his face.

I threw a punch.

Cade tilted his head aside and dodged, moving faster than any man with a seriously injured shoulder should. I followed up with an elbow to his ribs, but he caught my wrist.

"Let go."

"Calm down."

"Where was your calm when you broke my brother's three ribs?"

"I didn't hit him."

"Liar."

I wrenched my hand free.

Cade seemed not to have expected me to be so strong; he took a step back. I seized the opening and lunged at him—he pivoted, and my body suddenly lost its balance.

Cade reached out on instinct to catch me, and we went down together.

And that was how things came full circle to the present.

Cade looked at me, his gaze drifting slowly downward to the leg still wrapped around his waist.

"If this is how you get revenge for Hunter—"

He shoved me off in disgust. "You'd better stay as far away from me as you can."

Arrogant bastard. Just beating him up suddenly seemed like letting him off far too easy.

Wounds heal. Bruises fade. At a werewolf's rate of recovery, he'd probably forget everything about today within a week.

A bold idea took quick shape in my mind.

I was going to chase Cade Blackwood down. I was going to make this arrogant, ice-cold bastard fall in love with me.

And once he was in deep, I'd dump him—hard, in front of everyone.

I unclenched the fist I'd been holding and grabbed him by the collar.

Cade's body went rigid.

He seemed to realize what I was about to do; unmistakable shock flickered in those blue eyes.

Good. So he wasn't quite as unmoved as he pretended to be.

"Harper." He warned me under his breath.

I didn't give him the chance to say anything more.

I lifted my head and kissed my brother's archenemy right on the mouth.