LOGINSierra.I showed Asher the message without saying a word.His jaw clenched as he looked at it, a muscle twitching beneath the bruise already forming there. “Inside,” he said in a low tone. “Not out here.”We turned and walked back to the rink.“My bad – forward it to Evan,” he said. “And screenshot everything from tonight.”My hands trembled as I was doing that. Not from fear exactly. More like anger that had nowhere to go.“Who is she?” I inquired. “Really.”“Don’t know,” Asher says, a hint of irritation in his voice. “But there’s someone who wants us to believe she’s important.”“Maybe she does.”He met my gaze then, really looked at me. “You think Sebastian sent her.”I didn’t have to answer, but I did. “I think someone did. The timing’s too perfect. New transfer right before the hearing? Right after the forum went sideways?”Asher’s phone buzzed. He looked at it, and then showed me the screen.*Evan: Got your forward. Running it now. Also — Lila Chen, transferred from Ridgeway th
SierraThe rink was already noisy when I came in, the sound of skates ripping across the ice rising in sharp waves into the bleachers, but there was an undercurrent tonight, a tension that felt unfamiliar, as if the building itself was holding its breath. I saw Asher right away, helmet off, hair wet, shoulders rolling as he listened to the coach, and my chest tightened in that familiar way that had nothing to do with nerves and everything to do with how much of my attention was centred on him now.I slid into my regular seat by the aisle and pulled my jacket tighter around me and looked around the crowd, unconsciously. Most of them looked familiar, students who came to every game, a handful of locals, parents, people who’d heard of Asher if they weren’t related to him. That’s when I saw her.She was at the glass by the player entrance when I came out, not sitting, not cheering, just watching. She was tall and thin, dark haired with her hair pulled back in a low ponytail, way too clean
SierraSleep never showed up. It lurked on the border of my vision, close enough to taste, then evaporated every time I closed my lids. Each time I made an attempt, the same visuals pushed back in. The hearing room. Sebastian’s calm smile. Asher all by himself.At some point, I stopped pretending and got out of bed. The dorm was still in that special, immutable way just beyond midnight’s reach, all the day’s bustle bled away. My phone buzzed just once, in my hand.rink.I put on a hoodie and some sneakers and went out into the cold.The rink was sat like a dormant beast on the periphery of the campus, all steel and glass and darkness. The security lights were weak, but the side door was open, just like I knew it would be. Asher hated locked doors.Within me, it was the air that struck first. Sharp, enough to make my lungs hurt. The ice was faintly aglow beneath the lights overhead: perfect, empty, a blank slab of white waiting to be inscribed.Asher was already at center ice, skates l
SierraCampus security led us out the back hallway while chaos raged behind us in the student union. I could still hear the ringing in my ears from all the yelling and my heart was pounding so hard against my ribs that it was painful. Asher’s hand was still on my lower back, steady and grounding, even as his jaw worked with barely contained fury.Mom peeled off in the direction of the security office where they had Ponytail and her friend, vowing she was going to get every last detail on Seb’s part in this. Dad remained with us, his phone already to his ear as he conferred with team and pack leadership on a damage-control plan that seemed unworkable.When he got off the phone, “My office,” he said. “Now.”The athletic building was dark and there were none of us, the echoes of our footsteps rattling around as we began our ascent to the second floor. Dad unlocked the office and turned on the lights, going directly to his desk to retrieve something on the computer. Asher led me to the cr
Sierra They gave us a crummy little conference room with crummier coffee – like fluorescent light and burnt coffee beans were going to make this feel right. I sat between Asher and Dad at the long table, my bruised elbow pulsating in tune with the wall clock, while a council liaison in a navy blazer paged through a folder dense enough to be wielded as a weapon.“Thank you for coming on short notice,” she said, voice smooth and measured, like everything she said had to pass through three legal filters before it hit the air “We’re here to speak on issues of safety, optics, and tension within the packs on campus” “You have the incident reports,” Asher said “Campus security has been notified. Someone shoved my mate down a flight of stairs and followed it up with anonymous threats That’s not optics That’s escalation”Ahead of us, the elder with the too-tight tie cleared his throat “No one is downplaying the importance of the event,” he said “Although there are fears that transferring pa
SierraThe nurse said the bruising was going to look worse before it looked better, as if that made the purple blossoming under my skin seem like something neutral. Something medical. It did not.After Asher had me out of the infirmary and across the parking lot, the cold of the late afternoon stung through my jacket, each step sending a sharp stab up my ribs as if to remind me that someone had decided that I was worth pushing down a concrete staircase.“I should have carried you” he muttered again, fingers clenched around my bag strap because none of us could agree on which of us would be medicating the other but I was definitely not going to let him touch me anywhere it hurt, that being most of me.“I don’t need to be carried,” I said, my jaw clenched. “I want whoever did this to be afraid they didn’t push hard enough.”His eyes flashed gold, then smoothed back into control. “You’re shaking.”“It’s cold,” I said.It wasn’t just the cold. It was the text from last night seared into m







