Chapter 4: Do you have a death wish?

Instinct took me by the throat. I slapped my palm over his mouth, my other hand flying up with a finger to my lips. “Shhh,” I breathed, not even daring to look straight at him. My eyes were fixed on the gap under the door, to the thin line of light where footsteps were passing.

The air tasted like disinfectant and damp cotton. I could hear the boys’ voices getting closer. Laughter, the thud of a gym bag against a bench, the squeak of rubber soles on tile.

A heartbeat of stunned quiet was all I needed to notice his breath warmed my skin, his lashes lowered. I felt, more than saw, the way his gaze traveled. First to my hand on his mouth, then to my face, then to the pathetic T‑shirt I’d twisted backward to hide the hole.

Outside, a voice rang out. “Yo, Cap? You in here?”

Another laugh, closer to the row of sinks. “You better be. Coach’ll murder you if you skip the media meet again.”

Xavian’s fingers wrapped my wrist cool, in an unhurried manner. He peeled my hand from his mouth like I was a child tugging at a wolf’s muzzle and guided it down, then pinned me with a single step, forearm braced beside my head, the heat of his body collapsing the rest of the world to tile and breath and the soft scuff of his boots.

“Wait outside,” he said.

Not loud. Not a shout. Just a command laid flat and cold.

The locker room stilled in the beat after. A shuffle of surprise. Then the scrape of a bench, the muted jangle of keys, a zipper pulled shut.

“You good, man?” a boy called, uncertainty edging the question now.

“Give me a minute,” he added, same chilled tone, like closing a door.

“Uh—yeah. We’ll be right out,” the first voice replied, trying to sound casual and failing. Footsteps withdrew, the echo bobbing off tile and cinderblock as the door hissed open and thumped closed. The silence that followed had weight to it, like the air was listening.

Only then did I realize I hadn’t breathed.

I let it out in a thin, shaky rope. My back pressed to the partition so hard the hook dug into my shoulder blade. I could feel his aura now that the voices were gone—the quiet pressure of an Alpha rolling over my skin like a weather front, pushing every hair on my arms to attention. My wolf went still, ears flat. But that was all. No pull. No spark. No stupid, heavenly mate‑magic to save me or drown me.

Great. Survive a forbidden rejection ritual, and now I’m starring in a locker‑room thriller. Excellent life choices, Avelyn.

His gaze moved, slow as a blade being unsheathed, down the length of me and back up. It wasn’t a leer. It was an inventory. It landed on the way I’d knotted the shirt at my hip to keep it from flashing anyone, on the reddened scrape of coffee along my thigh, on the bare skin the hem didn’t quite cover.

His lip lifted a fraction. “One of those obsessive types,” he murmured, the disdain clean and practiced. “Sneaking into my stall? Really.”

Did he just—? Heat flared up my neck, part humiliation, part fury. “You—” My voice came out higher than I meant. I grabbed it, dragged it lower. “You absolute pervert. You barged into the women’s stall and you’re calling me—”

“You’re not my type,” he cut in, tone like a door closing. “Save your excuses.”

There it was. The wordless slam in my chest, stupidly familiar—rejected—like the universe had a button it loved to press. I stared at him, mouth parted.

Then my mouth worked all on its own.

“Did I just get rejected again?” I demanded, and the tremor in my voice turned into teeth. “Not everyone wants you, Mr. Alpha‑Celebrity. Newsflash: your attitude is trash, your ego has its own zip code, and—” I jabbed a finger toward his sternum, contact skimming fabric that was annoyingly expensive. “You’re not even that attractive.”

That right there was a lie. A ridiculous lie. My pulse did a stupid little drum solo that made me want to kick it.

His eyes never blinked. The stall seemed to shrink, metal bending inwards, tile colder beneath my bare feet. Silence thickened until I could hear the hum of the fluorescent light.

He leaned in a fraction, and the world tunneled to the heat of his breath and the cedar‑and‑storm scent that came off his skin. “Far‑fetched assumptions,” he said softly, voice sliding between my ribs. “Then explain why you’re in the players’ locker room.”

I opened my mouth to scoff and felt the sound die halfway up my throat. My gaze dropped, almost against my will, to the wall over his shoulder.

A vinyl sticker, nicked at the corner, clung to the painted cinderblock: STRIKERS. Bold block letters. Beneath it, a laminated schedule. Home vs. Riverton – 6 PM. A black Sharpie arrow circling Media – 12:30. The bench through the crack in the stall door held a scatter of shin guards and a duffel with the team crest. The air, suddenly obvious, was a cocktail of men’s deodorant, turf, and detergent. Not lavender body spray. Not cherry lip gloss.

My stomach dropped through the tile.

Ponytail Princess hadn’t “helped” me to the cheer room. She’d marched me into the wolves’ den and handed me a ripped T‑shirt like a game prize.

Heat burned hard in my cheeks, humiliation licking high enough to sting my eyes. I looked anywhere but at him. “It’s… not what it looks like,” I said, words tripping over each other. “I just… uhm—”

No way was I admitting I’d gotten into this mess because I’d peeked out a window at his arrival like a complete idiot. I could survive public humiliation. I could not survive confirming his theory that I was an obsessive fangirl with no pants.

He didn’t bother to hide his boredom at my stammered non‑explanation. He reached past me and pressed the stall door open with two fingers.

Panic snapped tight in my spine. I latched onto the first thing in reach…his jacket.

Fist curling in the expensive fabric as he stepped through the gap. “Wait,” I whispered, then louder, because whispering wasn’t going to clothe me. “Please. Just your jacket. That’s all I need.”

He kept moving. Like I was air.

Something cold and reckless slid into the place where my pride had been. “If you don’t help me,” I blurted, voice ringing off tile, “I’ll tell everyone you did this to me.”

He stopped.

The silence after was not empty. It had edges.

I swallowed hard, horror chasing the words out of my mouth too late. “I…I don’t mean to blackmail you,” I added quickly, the apology tumbling over itself. “I just really need your help. Just the jacket. Nothing else. I’ll give it back. I’ll—”

His head turned slowly over his shoulder, that predatory cant an apex animal gives just before it decides whether to run or bite. The light caught in his eyes and for a breath they weren’t icy blue at all, they flared, a rim of deep, banked red like heat under iron.

“Do you have a death wish?” he asked.

The question wasn’t loud. It didn’t need to be. It slid under my skin and settled at the base of my spine, heavy as a brand.

My fingers were still knotted in his jacket. I couldn’t feel them.

And for the first time since the Blood Moon, my wolf wasn’t numb. She was very, very still.