033— LUCA.

I held my skates the whole walk from the car to the entrance and said nothing.

 Kai walked beside me and said nothing and the silence had a different weight now because he had just told me I said his name and the mistake and I remembered saying it and I had nowhere to put that memory now.

Anya was at the entrance.

She looked at my face.

"Don't," I said.

She closed her mouth. Handed me a coffee instead. I took it.

We went inside and the cold hit and something in my chest loosened the way it always did. 

It only happened on ice. Only here.

I was lacing up when I saw him.

Beside Coach Petrov. Tall. Arms crossed, looking at the ice like it owed him something. 

I knew that face.

The drawing room. Last night. Standing beside Kai watching me scream about documentation while being carried up the stairs.

I looked away immediately.

"Who's that?" Anya asked.

"Nobody."

"He's looking at you."

"People look at people. It's a rink."

"Gaya—"

Coach blew his whistle.

Luka stepped forward when Coach said his name and he didn't smile or nod. 

He didn't do any of the things people did when a room full of people was looking at them. I felt it move through the team, that collective shift, like everyone had just silently recalculated something.

His eyes moved across the team.

Row by row.

They found me.

He held it.

Didn't blink.

I held it back because flinching first for Luka Markov on a Tuesday morning in front of my entire team was not something I was going to do.

He looked at me like he knew everything about and was simply verifying in person.

"Luka Markov," he said.

 "Team enforcer." A pause. "And you must be Gaya Morrison."

He said the name like it had inverted commas around it.

Every single hair on my body stood up.

"Just like Gaya," he said quietly.

The rink held its breath.

He didn't look away.

Neither did I.

But my heart was going hard and fast and beside me Anya had stopped breathing too.

Practice happened.

My body ran the drills while my brain stayed stuck on the way he'd said that name. The quotation marks around it. Just like Gaya. 

I watched him on the ice when I could do it without being obvious.

He was good. Really good. Not elegant, nothing like Kai's precision, just inevitable. Like he didn't need to be fast because anything that came at him simply stopped. He didn't look at me again during the whole session.

Which was worse.

Coach blew the final whistle. I went straight to the bench and started unlacing and had a very clean plan. Car, mansion, don't look at anyone.

"Morrison."

End of the bench.

Luka. Standing between me and the exit. 

The team was moving around us. Anya was already halfway across the rink. Kai at the far boards with Coach, too far, and I felt the distance like a measurement.

"Walk with me," Luka said.

It wasn't a question.

I finished unlacing and walked with him.

                    …

The corridor outside the equipment room was far enough from everyone. He stopped and turned and looked at me and I looked back and the silence stretched.

"How's the shoulder," he said.

I kept my face still. "Fine."

"The left one." His eyes dropped briefly. "Rejection mark. Not first stage anymore."

"I don't know what you're—"

"Sloane Thorne."

My name.

My actual name, said in that same flat voice he used for everything, like he'd been carrying it through the whole practice and simply decided now was convenient.

"First daughter of Beta Aldric Thorne," he said. "Silvercrest Pack. Left for Toronto. Came back for the coronation." His head tilted. "Disappeared three months ago."

I said nothing.

He stepped closer.

Not the way Kai stepped closer. He looked at me like I was a variable in an equation he was solving and my comfort was not a factor in the calculation.

"What do you want?" I snapped.

"Answers." He stepped closer. "About you. About why you're really here. About what Crew actually wants with you." His head tilted. "Because rejected mates don't get Collectors sent after them." His eyes didn't move from mine. "So what are you? What do you actually carry that makes Crew Harding that desperate."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I said.

"You do," he said simply. 

"And you know exactly what you did to Kai." He leaned in until there was almost no space left. "So I'm asking you directly. What are you Sloane Thorne?"

I stepped back.

"I'm leaving," I said.

I turned.

His hand closed around my wrist.

Tight. Genuinely tight. He had decided this conversation wasn't finished and wasn't interested in my opinion about that. Pain shot up my forearm and I felt the bones of my wrist compress and I spun around.

"LET GO!"

"Answer the damn question."

"You're HURTING me—"

"Answer the damn…"

"WHAT THE HELL IS THIS LUKA?"

Kai's voice.