Chapter 8
Kael's POV
The door clicks shut. Her footsteps fade down the corridor — sneakers on concrete, soft, unhurried, like she hasn't just taken a man apart with three fingers and a gauze pad.
I'm still gripping the supply cabinet. Knuckles white. Steel edge biting into my palms.
I count to ten.
Usually five is enough. Five seconds to shove any feeling back into the vault, any instinct back into its cage. I've done it a thousand times — after the warehouse, after the injections, after the nights when Mom's scent fills the pillowcase and I wake up swinging at nothing.
Ten. Breathing still wrecked.
My wolf isn't fighting me. That's the problem. It's not clawing, not snarling, not throwing itself against the walls of pharmaceutical suppression the way it does every other goddamn day. It's doing something worse.
It's following her.
Not physically — I haven't moved. But every part of me that can smell has locked onto the same signal, tracking the fading thread of whatever she leaked from her glands when my scent wall cracked.
And my wolf is mapping it with the calm precision of a predator that already knows where its prey sleeps.
I reach for the injection site on my inner forearm. The vein ridged under my thumb like a rope burn, four months of daily needles turning it into something that shouldn't be inside a living body. This morning's dose should have six hours left.
My hand is shaking.
Not fear. Not anger. My body is doing something I didn't tell it to do.
Training intensity. Carter's hit burned through the suppressant faster. High exertion accelerates metabolic breakdown. That's all this is.
My wolf doesn't listen. It's already filed her scent's complete molecular structure into the deepest layer of memory — locked it next to the only other thing stored there.
The tree line along the rear mountain. Few days ago. Mint leaf and white sandalwood — first snow on stone that hasn't cooled yet.
Same one. Identical.
The scar on my left ribs flares — not the dull ache of approaching full moons, but warmth. Like heat seeping outward from the place where Mom's claws carved a river into my skin.
Mom told me about this. When I was small enough to sit in her lap. Stories about the other half of your wolf. Moon-chosen. Fated.
She told them with light in her eyes.
Then the light went out.
That final night. Her shift wasn't an attack — she was shoving me under the closet floor, silver claws raking my ribs because she'd already lost the ability to control her own hands. Then she ran outside. Then her terror saturated the entire block — every pore, every gland, pumping out distress so thick it coated the walls.
Every wolf on that street smelled it.
Nobody came.
That's what a mate is. Something they can use to destroy you. Someone you can't protect.
I lift my forehead from the steel.
She's not. Even if she is — I won't let myself know.
I pull the jersey on and walk out. Corridor. Right leads to the locker room. Left leads to —
I go left.
Three steps before I stop.
Left is the direction she went. My feet chose the path with the stronger scent residue without consulting my brain. No struggle, no override attempt. The wolf just turned me. Gently. Like breathing.
This is worse than a blackout. Blackouts mean conflict — will against instinct, a war I can win with drugs or pain or ice water. This is my wolf obeying. Not me. A direction. With the absolute certainty of something that has already decided.
It takes more force than suppressing a full-moon shift to nail my feet to the floor.
I turn right. Every step feels like walking upstream.
Locker room. Empty.
I lean my head against the metal door of my locker and let my brain do what it's been trying to do since she left.
Her scent profile should be blank. She's registered Unawakened — reads like a human on paper. Baseline body chemistry, no Pack markers, no rank signature.
She's not blank.
Underneath whatever she is, there's a residue I recognize. Alpha Command. Punitive grade. The kind of scent a Pack Alpha brands into a subordinate's glands as the most severe form of discipline. Not protective marking. Punishment. The kind that doesn't fade in three days.
Who hit her.
The thought surfaces too fast. Too hot.
Not your problem.
My fist clenches. Releases.
Pack Alpha's Command on her skin, but no Pack on her file. Mother's name on the registration. Father's — erased.
The scent clan of that Command — I've smelled it before. Not on her. Somewhere else. Some —
The thought rises like a shadow underwater. Doesn't fully form before I shove it back down.
Not enough data. In the medical room her gland leak had overwhelmed everything — I hadn't had time to isolate the Command residue long enough to cross-reference.
Need to get closer again.
My wolf lifts its head the instant that thought forms. Calm. Alert.
I bury that too.
Phone buzzes. Declan.
"Schedule's moved up. Old man wants you at the warehouse tomorrow night for receiving. Don't be late."
"What's the cargo."
"You'll see when you get there." That purr in his voice — big money or high risk or both. "Oh, and — old man says since you won't come to dinner, he'll visit the school next week. Moon Festival dance, he's giving the opening remarks. Says he'd love to see you and Serena open the first dance together."
My hand tightens in my pocket.
"Kael." Declan's voice drops two degrees. "What are you doing right now?"
"Finished practice. Heading to the dorm."
"You know that's not what I'm asking. The old man's been paying attention to your social life lately. You're not picking up calls, not coming back to the estate. What's going on?"
"Nothing. Season intensity's ramping up. Not sleeping enough."
"Then come rest at the estate. Serena's been —"
"Busy."
Three seconds of silence. Declan exhales. "Fine. But Kael — don't make the old man start asking. Asking and telling aren't the same thing. You know that."
Line goes dead.
I file every word — tone, cadence, pause length — into the vault. No notes. No apps. No trail.
Serena at school. The old Alpha monitoring my social patterns. The leash tightening from suggestion to expectation.
Sleep doesn't come. It never does when the wolf has somewhere it wants to go.
Next morning. Ice rink. Alone.
Pucks into the boards until the metal dents. Forty minutes. Usually twenty does it.
Today it's not enough. The wound reopens under her bandage and the pain is clean, honest. But even pain can't drown out those two seconds of silence in the medical room.
Rook finds me on the ice. Walks straight to the boards, leans over, drops a pharmaceutical box onto the bench.
"Serena cornered me." His voice carries flat across the rink. "Asked who the new student manager is. Name, classification, family. Wanted to know if you requested her specifically."
My stick stops mid-swing.
"What did you tell her."
"That the athletics office assigned her. Which is true." A beat. "She didn't buy it. Asked three more times in three different ways — that girl interrogates like her father." He drops the pharmaceutical box onto the bench. "Also ran the manager's file myself. Vivienne Ashworth. Mother's maiden name. Father's info: blank. Classification Unawakened. No Pack affiliation on record."
I stop skating. Blades cut silent.
No Pack affiliation. But Pack Alpha's Command branded into her skin.
"Her nose," I say, before I can stop myself. "Yesterday — she counted my grip changes. Knew my left shoulder was compensating. That's not an Unawakened's nose."
Rook's scarred eyebrow lifts half an inch. Three seconds of nothing.
Then: "You brought her up. Not me."
I fire a puck into the boards hard enough to dent the metal.
"Forget it."
"Can't. You never bring anyone up." He leans off the boards, tucks the pharmaceutical box under his arm. "Whatever this is — figure it out before Serena's people figure it out for you."
"There's nothing to figure out."
"Then why's your heart rate up?"
I look at him. He looks back. The scar on his cheek doesn't move.
"Eat something," he says. "You look like shit." He walks away.
The puck rattles against the boards. I listen to it until it stops.
Eight fifty-five. Boards. Water bottles.
From the corridor — not footsteps. A zipper. Medical kit being opened and closed.
My nose swivels toward the sound.
Can't smell her. Too far. Too much chemical between us.
But I know it's her.
I set the water bottle back.
I walk toward the corridor. Same pace. Same face.
She's standing outside the medical room, kit in hand, hair pulled back tight, those ridiculous gas-station glasses perched on her nose. She looks up.
She's here.
