Chapter Two

Kenton

My wolf has been pacing since six this morning, which would be easier to ignore if he were an actual animal in an actual cage instead of a second consciousness wearing a trench through the inside of my skull. 

Something’s wrong.

He started before my alarm. I woke with my jaw clenched and the inside of my chest buzzing like I'd slept through an emergency. Nothing was wrong at the house. Mom was downstairs making coffee. Dad was already in his office on a pack call. The eastern border report was clean. No rogue scent, no injured patrol, no challenge, no reason for my wolf to act like the sky was about to split open. I ran two miles before school because sometimes physical work gives him somewhere else to put himself. He paced the entire run.

Mom noticed at breakfast. She notices everything and makes it look accidental, which is probably why people tell her things they would rather die than tell Dad. She asked whether I was getting sick. I told her wolves don't get the flu the same way humans do. She told me that wasn't an answer. Dad came in halfway through it, heard the word restless, and immediately turned it into Alpha-heir training. More sleep. Better control. Less caffeine. I wanted to point out he has survived on coffee and irritation since I was born, but self-preservation remains one of my better qualities.

His voice is rougher than mine, more instinct than patience. 

Practice. Dad. School. Pick a problem. 

He growls at the answer, Not that. 

I shove another skate lace through the eyelet and tell myself stress is stress, even when the thing sharing my body clearly disagrees.

My control isn’t bad. It’s never bad. My Alpha dad made damn sure of that before I was old enough to understand why he cared so much. An Alpha heir doesn’t get to have a bad day and make it everybody else’s problem. You learn to keep your wolf under your skin, your temper out of your voice, and your attention on the room. Lately, the room has included hockey, graduation, pack responsibilities, my father’s expectations, and Axel White’s empty stall. There are enough reasons to be restless without inventing another one.

Being captain is one of the only places where Dad's training makes sense without me having to think about pack rank. The C on my jersey doesn't make me the strongest player on the ice every shift. It means I'm responsible for what happens to the room when nobody is looking directly at Coach. It means knowing when Jace needs to be challenged and when Eli needs somebody to get everybody else off his back. It means noticing if Reid's knee is bothering him before he turns one bad practice into a month-long injury. It means people watch what I ignore as closely as they watch what I stop. That last part has been sitting under my skin ever since Axel died.

I keep telling myself I wasn't his captain in the way I'm captain now. Axel wasn't even on my regular line. He was another student who played, another kid in the building, another human problem I thought somebody else was supposed to handle once I made the obvious shit stop. The distinction feels thinner every time I try to use it.

Practice starts hard and stays that way. Jace centers the first line while Nolan takes net, Reid and Theo work defense, Mason and Grant rotate forward, Carter backs Nolan, and Eli is trying like hell not to look like the rookie everybody knows he is. Micah is near the bench with tape, water, and the expression of somebody already cataloging injuries. Boone and Asher are on the ice too, and the whole place smells like cold air, sharpened steel, sweat, and a hundred familiar things my wolf suddenly refuses to find familiar enough.

Coach puts us through transition drills until everybody is breathing hard enough to stop talking. Nolan Hayes gets irritated when Theo screens him too late and sends the puck wide on purpose just to make a point. Carter Boone, backing him in net, laughs and tells Nolan his feelings are beautiful. Reid Callahan tells Carter to shut up. Jace Calder wins three faceoffs in a row and starts getting cocky about it, so I take the fourth from him just to remind him pride is expensive. Mason Reed and Grant Ellison turn every race to the boards into a private contest, while Eli Varner keeps trying to anticipate what the older guys want instead of trusting the system we practiced.

Micah Rowe catches me between drills and asks if my shoulder is tight. It isn't. Apparently I keep rolling it like that. I tell him my wolf is being an asshole. Micah is human, but he knows enough about Ravencrest because his family has worked with pack athletes for years. He only says stress can show up in stupid places and hands me water. Useful. Noninvasive. I should probably take notes on the concept.

I whistle them back into position and point toward the reset. “Again.”

Eli misses the rotation, and Mason groans loudly enough for half the rink to hear. Eli’s shoulders pull in. Grant mutters that his grandmother could’ve caught the pass, and Mason laughs. I skate over before it turns into the kind of public joke nobody remembers starting. “Eli, you think it’s funny?”

Eli keeps his eyes on the ice. “It’s fine.”

He says it too quickly. The word hits me wrong. Axel said fine exactly like that once, eyes down and jaw tight, while an older player suddenly found the floor fascinating. 

Ask again, My wolf’s voice cuts through the memory. 

I am.

I look at Eli instead of the guys around him. “I didn’t ask whether they think it’s fine. I asked you.”

Eli glances at Mason, then back at me. “No.”

That’s enough. I point at Mason and Grant. “Then it’s done. If he misses a rotation, teach it or let Coach handle it. You don’t get to make the room miserable because you’re bored.” Mason mutters an apology. Grant gives Eli a quick nod, and we go back to work without turning it into a speech.

I skate the next rotation beside Eli instead of sending him away embarrassed. He misses the first read because he is still watching Mason, so I make him reset and call the play out loud. His second attempt is better. The third is clean. Jace bangs his stick against the ice in approval, and that's all it takes for Eli to start looking like himself again instead of somebody waiting to be laughed at. Nobody needs a speech. They need the room to learn the rule.

On the bench, Grant leans toward Mason and mutters something I can't hear. Mason glances at Eli, then at me, and answers with a grimace. I don't stare them down. If I have to police every second manually, I haven't actually changed anything. The next time Eli fumbles a pass, Mason tells him where he was supposed to be instead of making a joke. Better. My wolf finally settles for almost thirty seconds before the restlessness slams back into place.

The rest of practice should settle me. Usually it does. Today, every whistle scrapes my nerves raw. When the locker room gets loud afterward, Axel flashes through my head again. He asked me once if I thought some of the guys ever went too far. I asked what he meant. He shrugged and said it was handled. I wanted to ask again. Dad’s voice had already been in my head from another conversation. 

I know it sucks but it’s human business. 

You have to leave it be and let things work out for themselves.

The memory of Axel isn't one clean scene. It's a collection of things I dismissed separately. A slur I heard once and shut down. A towel snapped hard enough to leave a welt. His bag disappearing and turning up soaked in a shower. Axel looking furious when I asked whether he wanted me to take it to Coach because he said he could handle it. He didn't ask me to save him. That has become the excuse I hate most, because I knew enough about people even then to know somebody saying they can handle something doesn't mean they should have to handle it alone.

The worst memory is the night he came out of the locker room after everybody else. His face was wrong. Not bruised enough to explain the feeling, not bleeding, just pale and shut down. I asked what happened. He said nothing. I asked whether somebody had started again. He told me to drop it. I did. Later, I took the question to Dad because I wasn't sure what authority I had over human teammates outside obvious bullying. Dad told me to leave human business to human systems unless pack secrecy was involved. I followed the Alpha's order because that was what I had been trained to do. The visible shit stayed quieter. I decided quiet meant better.

I let the visible bullying stop being visible and decided that meant the problem was solved. 

It wasn’t, that thought plays on a loop in my mind, as I wish that I could have done something more.

Asher drops onto the bench beside me and bumps his shoulder into mine. “You’re doing the thing where your face says murder but nobody knows who you want dead.” I tell him I’m fine, and he snorts.

Asher has known me long enough to recognize when I'm losing an argument with myself. He doesn't push the Axel topic in front of the team. Instead he steals my tape, makes me reach across him for it, and asks whether I'm planning to graduate or haunt this locker room forever. Boone, two stalls down, says haunting would probably improve my personality. I tell both of them to fuck off, and the normal irritation helps me put my face back together before anyone else notices.

Coach sticks his head through the door long enough to remind us about Friday's game and the academic check due tomorrow. The team starts moving again. Homework. Laundry. Rides. Somebody arguing about food. Human life keeps happening around every supernatural responsibility I have, and for a few minutes I let it. Then Micah says I have company, and my wolf goes silent before I even see who it is.

“Your wolf disagrees.”

He’s annoying. My wolf has opinions about Asher now too. 

So are you. That gets me a mental huff that feels suspiciously offended. I’m pulling my shirt over my head when Micah appears at the locker-room door and tells me I’ve got company. I expect Coach, my father, maybe mom. Then I look past him.

Amaris White is coming down the hall with a folded letter in her hand. My wolf stops pacing so suddenly the silence inside me feels violent. There.

I freeze with one sleeve still half twisted. There what? He doesn’t answer. He just goes perfectly still while every instinct I have turns toward Axel’s twin. I don’t know what the reaction means. I only know I’m not ready for the question written all over her face.