4. THE CAPTAIN OF THE ARCTIC WOLVES

🤍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 of it that I had been covering with concealer since six this morning.

My teammates were calling my name and the sound was reaching me from somewhere very far away because most of me was not on this ice anymore, most of me was back in that locker last night with my wrists pinned and my chest cracking open with something I did not have a name for yet and did not want one.

He was watching me.

Standing next to the coach with his arms crossed and his face doing almost nothing and I could not tell from this distance if he recognized me or not and I did not know which possibility was worse, that he did or that he didn't.

Was that a smirk.

I could not tell if that was a smirk and not knowing was somehow more unbearable than anything else because my anger needed somewhere to land and it could not land properly without knowing whether he remembered me.

The hatred and the fear and the anger hit me all at the same time and they were not taking turns about it, they were all arriving together in one wave, and the mark on my neck was burning, actually burning, and I was standing completely still on the ice in the middle of a live game and my body had forgotten every single thing I had trained it to do.

My teammate hit me from behind and I went down hard, my knees and my palms hitting the ice and the cold shooting straight up through my arms, and by the time I scrambled back up the opponent had already put the puck in the net and the play was dead and I was standing there with ice-burned palms and a neck that was on fire.

Our team still won and I did not feel it the way I should have.

We stood in front of the coach after the game waiting to hear if we would get picked or get sent home. The other new students stood in a line next to me, some of them still breathing hard, some of them looking confident, some of them looking like they already knew they had failed. My hands were shaking badly and I could not even bring myself to look at him.

The coach started calling names and everyone was assigned to their teams. Some to the Arctic Wolves. Some to the Ice Vipers. Some to the lesser teams that nobody talked about. Four people were sent home. Four people gathered their bags and walked out of the arena with their heads down and their dreams crushed and I watched them go and felt sick because that could have been me.

"Steele!" the coach called.

I stepped forward. My heart pounded so hard I could feel it in my throat.

"You played well," he said, like he did not want to compliment me but could not find a way around it.

I know I played well. I did not need his compliment. I scored two goals and blocked three shots and I had played better than half the alphas on that ice and I knew it. Gosh, I was adding this man to the list of people I already hated.

"And I do not know why you blacked out," he said sternly. "If you want to be in this school, you stay focused. Alphas do not lose control."

I clenched my jaw so tight my teeth ached. Alphas do not lose control. That was rich coming from a man who had never been pinned against a locker by a drunk alpha who could not control his fucking rut. That fucking monster lost control on me last night. He lost control and I was the one standing here being lectured about focus.

But I could not say that. I could not say anything. I just nodded and kept my face blank and prayed he would stop talking.

"You have raw talent and potential," he said. "You are joining the Arctic Wolves. And you better toughen up. Your captain has every right to kick you out."

I literally did not hear anything he said after that because I was fucking in. My dream team. The Arctic Wolves. The same team I had snuck into the arena to watch last night. I was going to be playing on ice. I was going to wear their jersey and stand on their bench and prove that an omega could dream big and achieve bigger.

Who said an omega could not dream big?

I did it.

I had forged my name and buried my scent and walked into a world built to destroy me and I had done it. I had survived the screening test. I had made the team.

"Your dorms will be assigned to you before the end of the day," the coach said, "but first, meet your captain."

The respect he added to the title made me eager to see who the captain was. Someone strong. Someone respected. Someone who would push me to be better and expect excellence and maybe, if I was lucky, someone who would not look too close at the small alpha with the soft face and the voice that sometimes cracked.

Then I saw the familiar black long hair with red tips taking his place beside the coach.

"Zoren Maveth," the coach said.

The universe really hated omegas. There was no other explanation for this. There was no version of a fair or neutral world in which the bastard who had marked me last night was also the captain of the team I had just bled to get onto, and yet here we were, and he was standing right there, and the mark on my neck was burning again, and I had absolutely nowhere to put any of this.

What kind of cruel fate was this?