LOGIN🤍RAV🤍The academy gates loomed dark against a sky already bleeding orange into purple by the time I dragged myself through them, my duffel bag slung heavy over one shoulder and every muscle in my body still humming with the ache of a full day spent sleeping instead of existing."Rav!"Theron's voice cut across the courtyard before I'd made it ten steps past the gate, and I turned to find him jogging toward me, his gold-tipped hair catching the last of the sunset light, his brow already pulled tight with something that looked a lot like actual worry."Where the hell have you been?" He stopped in front of me, breathing a little hard from the jog, his eyes sweeping over my face like he was cataloging every detail that had changed since he last saw me. "You missed every single class today. Coach was asking.""I needed to clear my head." I kept my voice steady, easy, the deep register slipping back into place like a coat I'd only briefly taken off."You okay?""Yeah." I held his gaze bec
🤍RAV🤍 Morning practice ended and I skated off that ice like my legs belonged to someone else. Hollowed out. Wrung completely dry from an entire night of crying into my own knees on cold aluminum bleachers with nobody around to hear a single sound I made. I never went back to the apartment. Not once. I could not make myself walk through that door and lie down on a rug four feet from the man who had pinned me to his bathroom wall and knotted me while completely out of his own mind, so I stayed on the ice instead. I stayed through the first team's warmup, hiding at the far end near the boards where nobody would notice a rookie who hadn't slept. I forced my own body through drills on legs that had absolutely nothing left to give, my thighs screaming with every stride, every check I took from an alpha twice my size landing like it was trying to finish what last night started. Hating Zoren Maveth had never once required effort. That part came easy, the way breathing came easy, autom
❄️ZOREN❄️The mattress dips under her weight first, before anything else, before I even see her clearly, her knee pressing into the sheet beside my hip and then the other one, and I feel the heat of her settle over me before her hands ever touch my chest. Her palms land flat against my sternum and slide down slow, mapping muscle like she's memorizing it, and when she finally lowers herself onto me I have to grab her hips just to keep from finishing right there.God.She takes me slow, inch by inch, her whole body shuddering around the stretch of it, and the sound that comes out of her throat is high and broken and completely unguarded. I want to hear it again. I chase it, rolling my hips up into her, and she gasps and grinds down harder like her body already knows exactly what mine wants before I've asked for it.Her short hair falls forward in loose curls that brush against my jaw when she leans down, and I fist a hand into it, dragging her mouth to mine. She tastes sweet, impossibly
🤍RAV🤍What the hell just happened?I stood there with my hand still pressed flat against my cheek, the food bag hanging forgotten from my fist, staring at the empty hallway where Theron had just disappeared like he hadn't done anything at all. Like a kiss on the cheek was nothing. Like it hadn't just short-circuited every thought in my head.It's nothing, Ravael. He's just like that. Warm. Handing out affection like loose change. He probably kisses half his own team on the cheek without a second thought.I almost believed it. Almost.I let myself into the apartment because standing in an empty hallway touching my own face was not a good look for anyone, alpha or otherwise. The sitting room was dark and silent and Zoren's absence hit me like a held breath finally let go — I'd just watched him and Rylan head out past me at the building door not twenty minutes ago, Rylan tossing a "hey rookie" over his shoulder while Zoren didn't even glance my way.Good. That meant hours, at least, be
💎SAPPHIRE💎 The door clicked shut behind Rylan and for one perfect second it was just us. Just me and Zoren and a candle burning low between two plates neither of us had touched. Three years I had waited for a room this quiet, this private, no cameras and no reporters and no chairman hovering at the edge of every conversation like a shadow that refused to leave. Three years, and I finally had it, and I intended to make every second of it count. "You didn't have to come." I kept my voice soft, careful, watching him settle into the chair across from me like it physically cost him something. "But I'm glad you did." "I didn't have a choice." He said it flat, cold, exactly the way he said everything to me. "Rylan tricked me." "I know." I let a small smile pull at my mouth, let him see that I wasn't ashamed of it. "I asked him to." His jaw tightened. He reached for the wine instead of answering me, and I watched him drink like it was the only thing standing between him and walking str
❄️ZOREN❄️"Are we going, or are you planning to stare out that window all night?"Rylan's voice cut through whatever had just taken hold of my body, that flare behind my ribs still burning hot and unreasonable, my jaw clenched so tight I could feel it in my temples. I turned away from the window before I could see anything else, before I could watch Theron's stupid gold-tipped head walk away from my apartment like he had every right to be standing that close to what belonged to me.He does not belong to me. He is a rookie I cannot stand.Shit I need to get it together."Let's go." My voice came out rougher than I meant it to.Rylan grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch and gave me one of those looks, the kind that meant he had clocked something and was choosing, for once, not to say it out loud. I appreciated that about him tonight more than I usually did.We left the apartment and the hallway was quiet except for the hum of the overhead lights, and then Bird was there, steppin
🤍RAV🤍The memories came back in pieces and none of them were gentle about it. The weight of him. The cold of the locker. The sound of his belt. The way my body had responded before I could tell it not to and kept responding after I had already decided it should stop and the bite at the end of all
🤍RAV🤍 "You are Rav Steele, is that correct?" The intimidating look on the coach's face when I gave him my letter from the admin the following day made my palms sweaty. He held the paper like he was inspecting it for lies and I supposed he was because every single word on that document was forge
❄️ZOREN❄️ "Get up from the floor you bastard." There is only one person who owns that annoying voice and I did not want to hear it right now or ever but Rylan never cared about what anyone wanted and that was the problem with him from the very beginning. I opened my eyes and the bright light mad
🤍RAV🤍 I snuck into the school just to watch the infamous Arctic Wolves and the Ice Vipers play, and the energy on the ice was charged in a way that made my fingers curl against my thighs because I could not wait to prove myself tomorrow. I already got my admission letter folded in my back pocket







