Chapter 2 Jane’s Pov

Transferring schools was supposed to feel like a fresh start. 

Clean slate. New territory.

It didn’t.

Back at Vermont University, things had been easy in a way I didn’t appreciate until they stopped being that way. 

I was popular—people waved at me, cameras found me at games, and the crowd loved the way Trevor and I looked together. I was the cheer captain, the Alpha’s daughter who smiled on command and led the squad like it was part of my blood. 

Trevor had been right when he said that I loved attention.

But then, that kind of attention swells you up until a small crack becomes an earthquake.

After Trevor, the crack got loud fast. 

Rumors at Vermont spread like wildfire—there was the whispers at practice, side glances in the dining hall, texts that started out casual and ended with people asking if the “Trevor thing” was real. 

It didn’t matter that I’d stormed out and cut him loose; rumor wants a story and it will keep telling it until everyone believes the version that’s juiciest. 

I couldn’t even get through a single drill without someone pretending not to look at me but actually watching my face for a crack.

It was crazy and way too overwhelming for me. 

I needed distance. I needed something so clean and definite that the rumor would have to chase me for a while to catch up.

So I told myself I was moving because I wanted a tougher major because I wanted more challenge. 

That was true—switching majors had always been on my mind—but the bigger reason was simpler and uglier: I needed to get away before the gossip fossilized into my reputation. 

It was my freshman year; the last thing I wanted was everyone at Vermont to decide who I was before I finished growing into the woman I wanted to be.

It helped that I had a support system. 

My father sat me down the night after the rumor mill turned my name into a headline. 

He didn’t yell. Alphas rarely need to. He just looked at me like I was both his daughter and his responsibility—a heir, yes, but human too. 

“This will blow over eventually,” he said quietly. “But you won’t heal here. Change your program, move where you can breathe. Start where people don’t already think they own a piece of you.”

Riley—my roommate back at Vermont— had argued the same. 

She was practical, blunt, and a better friend than I’d given her credit for. 

“You’re hurting,” she told me one night while we did pottery for some humanities elective. “You can let them watch you get smaller, or you can stand somewhere new and be tall again. Cornell’s got a good program for what you want. You’ll still be you. Just… less wounded.”

So between my father and Riley, the idea stopped being wishful thinking and became a plan. 

I changed my major, filed the transfer, and clung to the idea of Cornell like a rope.

When I first stepped on Cornell’s campus, it felt both huge and impossibly empty like the way a theatre looks right before the crowd rushes in. 

I dragged my suitcase across polished floors in West Campus housing and told myself out loud that no one would see me fall apart here. 

That I could practice my stride until it looked natural. 

That I could rebuild.

At least, I hoped so. 

My new roommate surprised me. She bounced up from her desk the second I opened the door and said, “Hi! You must be Jane! I’m Geneva. We’re going to be besties, I can already tell.”

She was all brightness—golden curls, loud laugh, and a lavender blanket that looked like it belonged on a phone-screen poster. 

I wanted to be unimpressed; I wanted stoic. Instead, I found myself answering her with the barest smirk. “You can already tell?”

“Of course,” she said, like it was the most normal thing. “I’ve got instincts. And yours are giving off major ‘ice queen trying not to melt’ vibes. Which, by the way, I fully respect. But I’m persistent.”

We balanced each other in a way I didn’t expect. She pulled me out of the room when I brooded too long, dragged me to the messy dining hall when I skipped a meal, and forced me to talk—not about Trevor, not at first—but about classes and schedules and who needed stunts for next week. 

For the first time since Vermont, someone else’s voice in my room didn’t feel like a reminder of loss.

Geneva also had the kind of mouth that gave me gossip by the spoonful. By the second week I knew where everything important aired: who was in which club, which packs smoked out the quad at night, who the professors liked, and most especially, who ruled the campus social ladder.

At the top of that ladder was Damian Ross.

Goldenwolf Pack Alpha. Goalie and Team Captain. The kind of guy whose name did the kind of work my father’s title did—people sat up when it was said. 

Geneva told stories about him like they were facts: he’d convinced a professor to move a midterm, he’d dated half the cheer squad, he’d outrun security once and turned it into a rumor that made him look like a hero. 

The more she talked, the more my jaw tightened as I listened to her. 

 I’d sworn off athletes after Trevor; arrogant, entitled alphas were the last thing I needed. Nothing was going to tie me and that Damian. Nothing. 

At least that's what I thought until I saw him.

***

The day I saw Damian for the first time, It was a regular day at the gym. 

I was stretching my body on a mat when he walked in with an easy confidence. His broad shoulders were under a hoodie and his ark hair tousled like a calculated accident. 

He was laughing with his teammates and the sound made something in me prick up and my wolf became alert and curious. 

I told her to be quiet immediately. 

Attraction was dangerous. I had no intention of getting tangled up with someone like Damian, not when my chest still felt raw. 

Throwing myself into cheer quad was my plan of healing.

Back in Vermont I’d been captain so I knew the drills, the pressure and the way to pull a tired squad into a perfect pyramid. 

Leadership came natural to me—some of it was in the blood, some of it was practice. 

It helped that Geneva was in the squad too so she was with me the day I went to the squad at Cornell University for the first time. 

Tryouts were brutal. Triple tumbling passes, high throws, landings that left my muscles screaming. 

The captain was all precision and whistles; the squad had a reputation for being fierce and proud. 

I worked harder than anyone else though because Garice’s don’t do second place. Infact, they don’t settle for “close enough.”

Whispers followed me in the squad. 

“She’s new, she can’t just waltz in here…” “Vermont’s squad is nothing compared to Cornell’s…” 

“Watch, she’ll crack under pressure.”

I didn’t crack though. 

I pushed, harder, perfecting the count, jumping higher, trusting my hands on other girls’ ankles. 

I wanted to be captain and I was not going to settle for anything less than that. 

Sasha—a tall brunette who’d been eyeing the captain spot for years—decided I was a threat and she started attacking me. 

She missed a cue once so close to my footwork that I could have fallen. She corrected my counts loudly in front of the squad, like she wanted everyone to notice she was the one in charge.

Geneva had my back. She clapped like I was her favorite band, whispered sarcastic comments about Sasha’s “plastic smile,” and once pulled Sasha aside to confront her when she tried to be mean to me. 

When the vote for captain came, it was me vs Sasha. 

And of course, the board called my name.

Hearing it—Jane Garice, captain—was the kind of rush I’d missed. 

For the first time since Trevor, I felt my feet firm on ground that was mine.

***

Being captain of the cheer squad didn’t mean the ache was gone. 

Some nights, walking across the quad when the wind bit my cheeks, I thought about Vermont and Trevor against my will. 

I’d think about the way he’d reached for me with certainty, the easy way the pack had believed his version of us. 

Sometimes, when Geneva snored softly on the other side of the room and the world outside was quiet, I let myself curl up and feel the loss. 

Other times I walked taller and reminded myself why I’d left.

***

The second time I met Damian Ross, he’d strolled across the quad one afternoon with a smirk on his face and his eyes locking on mine for a heartbeat longer than it should have. 

Immediately, I felt something stir that I’d sworn not to feed. The recognition was old and primitive, a pull deep in my wolf’s bones that whispered mate and then hissed like a warning.

I shoved the feeling down so hard my chest ached.

No. Not him. Not now. Not ever. Never. 

I turned away from him even as my heart was beating fast and my spine was rigid with the determination to never fall for him or anyone else. 

Cornell was starting to feel like home and I wasn't going to let anything or anyone ruin it for me. 

Absolutely no one.