Seducing My Werewolf Hockey Captain

Chapter 12: The Disturbing Thoughts

Chapter 12: The Disturbing Thoughts

~ Yates ~

Practice had run long today.

Not because anyone called it — just because nobody wanted to be the first to leave, the way it sometimes went when the energy on the ice was right and momentum carried everyone past the point where they should have stopped. By the time I stepped off the rink, my muscles were burning in that satisfying, specific way that meant the session had been worth it.

I grabbed a bottle of water from the team cooler, let the cold run down my throat, and then walked up to the bleachers alone. Not because I wanted company. Because I didn't.

I needed to think.

The moment I sat down and the noise of the rink fell back behind me, my mind went straight to Fanny. To that night at the farmhouse, to the look on her face when she said you've changed — quiet and certain in the way she got when she had made up her mind about something and was daring you to argue with it.

Absurd.

I hadn't changed. I was the same person I had been before Gwen Casteel walked into this town and turned everything sideways without apparently doing anything on purpose to cause it.

I hadn't changed.

My jaw tightened.

Then my thoughts shifted — the way they kept doing without permission — to the intruder. The figure I had found standing over Gwen in the dark, close enough to touch her, unhurried in a way that made my skin crawl when I thought about it too long. No pack scent on him. Nothing I recognised.

"Who the hell was he?" I muttered, not really directing it at anyone.

Could be an enemy, Jack said, stepping right into the space I had left open.

I almost knocked the water bottle off the bench.

"You need to stop doing that," I said under my breath, low enough that no one nearby could hear.

Stop what?

"Answering thoughts I didn't direct at you."

You said it out loud. I heard it. I answered it. A pause. That seems like your problem.

"It's not helpful," I said flatly.

The intruder is real whether I comment on him or not.

"I know he's real." I exhaled through my nose. "That's what concerns me."

"Who are you talking to?"

I looked up.

Jerome was making his way up the bleacher steps with a water bottle in hand and the expression of someone who had caught something but wasn't sure what.

"Nobody," I said.

"Right." He sat down beside me, stretched his legs out. "Solid practice today."

"Yeah," I said. "Better than Tuesday."

He nodded, taking a long drink. Then — "I saw you talking to the new girl yesterday."

I turned to look at him.

He raised a hand immediately. "I'm just saying."

"Jerome."

"Dude, I genuinely didn't mean it as anything — I just noticed. That's it."

I faced forward again. Took a slow breath. "Fanny thinks something's changed with me since she showed up."

He said nothing for a moment.

Then — "Has it?"

I turned to look at him properly this time, and he met the look without flinching, because Jerome was one of maybe two people in the world who could do that.

"Fanny is going to be my Luna," I said. "When I take the alpha position, she's beside me. That's been the plan for years and nothing about that has shifted." I held his gaze. "So no. Nothing has changed."

Jerome studied me for a second that went on slightly longer than it needed to.

Then he grinned. "Good. You're still the same cocky bastard I know."

"Obviously."

I lifted my water bottle in his direction. He knocked his against it.

We sat in quiet for a bit, the sounds of the rink carrying up — blades on ice, someone calling a drill, the rattle of equipment being packed away. It was familiar in a way that usually settled me.

Today it only went so far.

"You think she'll say anything?" Jerome asked eventually.

I glanced at him.

"About the lab," he clarified. "What she heard that day. What she saw."

I turned that over for a moment.

"No," I said.

"You sound sure."

"She doesn't want anything to do with us," I said. "She wants to get through her time here and live her life. She's not interested in our business."

Jerome nodded slowly, turning the bottle in his hands.

"And if she is?" he said.

"Then I know where she lives," I said simply.

It came out flat. No edge to it. Just fact.

Jerome looked at me for a beat, then nodded once and stood up. "I need a shower. I'm losing weight in sweat up here."

"Yeah," I said. "Go."

"Later." He dropped a hand on my shoulder briefly and headed down the steps, taking the noise with him.

The bleachers settled into proper quiet.

And Jack came back.

Worried about her?

I stared out across the empty rink.

"Who?" I said, even though I already knew.

Mate.

Something in my chest pulled. Brief and unwanted and impossible to reason with.

"Don't," I said.

You keep saying no. It keeps being true anyway.

"She is human," I said, keeping my voice low and controlled, the way you talk when you're having an argument you can't let anyone else witness. "She is not my mate. She is a girl who moved to this town and keeps appearing in places she doesn't belong, and whatever you think you feel when she's nearby is confusion, not recognition. You understand? Confusion."

Silence.

Confusion, Jack repeated, in a tone that made absolutely clear he thought that was the most ridiculous thing I had ever said.

"Yes," I said. "Confusion."

You went into her house to get to her, he said quietly. You moved before you had a reason to. You didn't think. You just went.

I said nothing.

That wasn't confusion.

"Drop it, Jack."

You can call it whatever you want.

"I'm calling it done," I said. "So either say something useful or stay quiet."

He went still.

The kind of still that wasn't agreement. The kind that was simply waiting.

"That's what I thought," I muttered.

My phone buzzed in the pocket of my jersey shorts.

I pulled it out.

Fanny.

AT THE CAFETERIA. WAITING FOR YOU.

I looked at the message for a second. Then typed back.

ON MY WAY.

I pushed up from the bench, grabbed my duffel bag from where I had dropped it at the end of the row, and slung it over my shoulder. Picked up my hockey stick. Started down the steps.

The rest of the team was still scattered around the rink below, some heading for the showers, some talking in groups near the boards. I raised a hand at a couple of them as I passed, half-listening to the conversation running between two of the guys on my left.

Something about the coach.

Fired, apparently.

I stopped walking for a second, tuning in properly.

"— heard it from one of the admin staff, said it was effective immediately —"

"— think the school board had been watching for a while —"

I let out a short exhale through my nose.

About time.

I had watched that man run drills for two seasons with the energy of someone who had already mentally retired. The team had been carrying itself. Whatever came next couldn't be worse.

I smirked slightly and kept walking.

Out of the rink, into the corridor, the cool air of the building wrapping around me as I walked toward the cafeteria on the other side of campus. The noise of practice faded behind me and my mind, annoyingly, began to drift again.

The intruder. The vial I had seen him reaching for before I hit him. The way he had not smelled like any wolf I had encountered — not rogue, not unfamiliar pack, not anything I had a name for.

Something else entirely.

And the fact that he had been in her house, over her specifically, like he knew exactly who she was and exactly why she was worth the risk of being there.

That part was the one I couldn't let go.

She's in the middle of something, Jack said.

"I know," I said quietly.

And you're going to do nothing?

I pushed through the door at the end of the corridor, into the open space of the main path between buildings. The afternoon had thinned out, only a few students moving between classes at this hour.

"I didn't say that," I said.

Jack said nothing back.

He didn't need to.

Because the truth of it had already settled somewhere in my chest — quiet and stubborn and entirely inconvenient.

Whatever was coming for Gwen Casteel, it had already started.

And whether she wanted me involved or not, I was not the kind of person who watched something approach and stood with his hands in his pockets.

I kept walking.