“Yep.” I skate off toward other castmates.
Professionalism and nothing more.
That’s all these three are getting from me until this summer is over.
Connor, Zev, and Fowler may have taken away a chance at being with a scent-matched pack of alphas, but they willnottake my dream from me.
Ever.
CHAPTER 2
CONNOR
The most humiliating thing about being an alpha is having your instincts played like a cheap ringtone by a girl who won’t even look at you. Case in point: Grace Davis. Reason: my own fucking decisions.
I know it.
She knows it.
The rest of the pack knows it.
So there’s nothing I can do but take my turn at being humiliated.Deserved.
The moment she stepped out for rehearsal this morning, her scent turned the air in the Reverie Arena sticky and electric. Every cell in my body became a fuse primed to detonate at the barest hint of roses, and there is absolutely nothing I can do about it.
Not after prep camp. Not after rejecting this perfect, scent-matched omega because… Because why?
That’s a brilliant question I’ve been asking myself for months now.
Chiefly, fear. It’s a cowardly but true answer. But taking the rejection to the level we did was supremely uncalled for. Grace wasn’t looking for instant pack bonds and marriage and pups.She just wanted to know if we’d be interested. And now we’ve all but burned that interest.
Deserved, I remind myself again.
Last spring, the three of us—me, Zev, Fowler—made her life at prep camp a living hell. Worse, we thought we were doing her a favor. Rejected the bond in a desperate bid for control, for normalcy. For the stupid hope that a scent match could be out-skated or ignored, that I could muscle through the bond like it was a torn ligament so we could all focus on our role in Reverie or the lives outside of it we were trying to put back together. Zev and Fowler especially.
Grace sweeps off the ice after practice with her chin up, gold-blonde hair shifting around her shoulders in the slight breeze. She doesn’t spare me a single glance. My inner alpha balks at my omega’s disrespect. Which is fucking laughable considering our own actions. And the fact she’s notmy omega. Zev, Fowler, and I made sure of that.
I shove my blades into my mesh bag and jam my beanie down over my hair. It’s so I’m not tempted to watch her retreat down the tunnel to the ladies’ locker room. It doesn’t work. My eyes aren’t watching, but every nerve ending still points magnetic-north to Grace, my body’s own broken compass.
She’s not my omega. Or Reverie Pack’s omega. But my inner alpha hasn’t gotten that memo yet.
It’s not just my body acting up, though. My mind’s running a speed-skate marathon of what-ifs and if-only’s. I replay the moment we rejected her—God, I can’t even think of it without my stomach eating itself. She looked at us with this perfect combination of fury and heartbreak.
The image seared itself into my brain.
“Earth to Jones.”
I jump and nearly launch the mesh bag into orbit. Zev is at my elbow, hands in pockets, looking bigger than anynormal human should. He’s in his standard off-ice uniform from his summer high school coaching job—sweats and a battered coaching windbreaker. His face is unreadable, but that’s Zev. He could be two seconds from laughter or homicide, and you’d never know the difference.
“Didn’t hear you,” I mutter. I look for Fowler, but he’s lagging behind, poking at the vend-o-matic like a raccoon caught in a Doritos factory.
“She’s back,” Zev whispers.
I nod, not trusting my mouth.
We walk to the end of the rink, where the cold air fights against the sickly warmth of Grace’s afterimage. When I glance back, she’s fully gone. The tunnel is empty. Her lingering roses scent the only evidence she was here at all.
Shewashere, right? The last eight hours weren’t some wild hallucination?
