All Chapters of Icy Nights: Mated to the Three Alphas: Chapter 11 - Chapter 20

JessieSomething is wrong with my ribs. Not pain, exactly. More like a pressure building behind the bone, low and insistent, the way your ear feels right before a plane lands. I press two fingers against my sternum. The pressure pushes back.The Welker stairwell door slams on its closer. Wet wool and floor wax hit me. Outside, Minnesota wind still screams against the wired glass.I swallow. The pressure doesn't care.Then warmth. Rising from below. Pear skin. Pink pepper. Something soft underneath, like clean laundry pulled off a dryer rack.My shoulders drop before I tell them to. The pressure in my chest dulls to something manageable. Stupid. My body already knows who's coming.A boot scuffs concrete.Jonah rounds the corner. Golden Wolves warm-up jacket, zipper halfway, hair still damp from the showers. That lean he does, chin up, mouth already loading whatever nonsense he's about to hit me with.Then he actually looks at my face.His mouth shuts."You look like hell," he says. "Lik

JessieMartins Heller's knee presses against mine under the narrow lecture desk. He hasn't moved in eleven minutes.I know the number because I've been counting. And the fact that I've been counting makes me want to shove this textbook through the whiteboard. His thigh is warm through charcoal denim, the seam a hard ridge against the side of my knee. He never looks at me. His jaw works once, then stops.Chair legs scrape linoleum. The fluorescents overhead give me a dull ache behind my left eye, one tube flickering near the projector in that strobe way that makes everyone look half-dead. Dry-erase markers and stale coffee from someone's thermos three rows up.Move it, Heller. Move it or I'll break your kneecap with this textbook.I almost shift my leg away. Catch myself. Press the navy-blue textbook down harder on the desk instead, like that fixes anything. My nails bite into my palm. Inside my ribs something tightens, restless, pressing outward like it wants to stretch and I won't l

JessieI'm in my boots and hoodie before I register choosing them, laces tied, hood half-zipped, fingers already on the door handle. Admitting I decided to follow the pull would mean admitting the pull is real.Salt crunches under my soles the second I hit the quad. Streetlamps buzz their sick yellow against the snow. My breath fogs in thick ropes.The rink's compressor hums through the frozen ground. Behind the library, a vending machine rattles, spits something, goes quiet.I'm just checking on the rink. Checking nothing's wrong.Pine resin and wet stone drift from the tree line. The snow around the lampposts is undisturbed, smooth as poured milk. No one's walked here in hours.I'm twenty feet from the rink's east-facing glass when it blows.A detonation. The plexiglass panel explodes outward, shards catching the security light and spraying across the rubber-mat corridor in a wide, glittering arc. They land in a fan pattern, all pointing away from the rink. Away from the inside.The

JessieThe steel door crashes shut behind me and swallows the arena whole. My ears are still ringing when the alley goes quiet.I didn't grab my coat. My gloves are still sitting on a bench inside, and my fingers are already too numb to feel my own keys in my pocket.Minus ten air punches straight through my sweat-damp hoodie and finds every gap in the fleece. My lungs lock around the first breath.My Vans crunch over salted concrete.Just keep moving.I round the back corner of Welker Dorm. My sneaker skids on black ice and I catch myself against the brick, hard enough that my shoulder screams.I double over, hands on my knees. My mouth floods, something warm and metallic pooling under my tongue."Okay." I press my palms into my thighs. "Breathe, Jessie. It's a fever. A bad one."I'm not fine. Girls like me don't hear static behind their eyes for a week straight, not before they watch a two-hundred-pound hockey player rip a steel cage door clean off its hinges like it's cardboard.I'm

Jessie"Fourteen. Fifteen." I'm three shin guards into recounting the equipment bin when Jonah's voice knocks the number clean out of my head."You. Me. Center ice to the blue line. Loser buys dinner at The Rinkside."He's gliding backward across the ice, stick tapping the surface in a slow, taunting rhythm."I'm working, Kline," I say, shifting the clipboard against my hip."You're stalling," he counters, grinning wide. "Race me."I step closer to the boards. "I don't skate."Jonah leans forward on his stick, voice dropping. "Scared?""I'm busy.""Scared.""I will end you, Kline."He spreads his arms wide, coasting on one blade. "Then race me and end me on the ice. One lap. For the story."I set the clipboard down on the bench before I've fully decided to.I pull a pair of rental skates off the storage rack. They smell like old leather and stale Zamboni diesel, the same smell soaked into every rubber mat in this building.One lace is frayed. I yank it tight and the cord bites into my