The Captain's Forbidden Mate

Episode 5: THE PARTY

LENA

Getting close to Damien Holt turned out to be easy in an embarrassing way.

All it took was one email to the Ridgeview sports desk asking for a “cross-campus rivalry feature,” and by Thursday I had a text from an unknown number.

Heard you want to talk hockey. There’s a party Friday. Come as my guest. — D

Sarah practically fell out of her chair when I told her. “Damien Holt invited you personally? Lena, that’s not a story, that’s a miracle. Go. Wear something that isn’t a hoodie.”

I didn’t tell her the real reason I was going, though. I didn’t tell anyone. Cole’s voice was still stuck in my head — dig into that, get proof, and some stubborn part of me wanted to prove I could actually do this. That I wasn’t just some scholarship kid who got lucky with a byline. I had spent three years at Northcrest being polite, grateful and small, taking the classes I could afford and the shifts nobody else wanted, and for once I wanted to walk into a room like I belonged there.

The Ridgeview house was the kind of place that made Northcrest’s frat row look like a retirement community. Music shook the windows. Strings of lights ran across a backyard the size of a small park, and half the crowd looked nice but were acting funny like they saw an unexpected guest.” I stood at the edge of it for a full minute before I walked in, smoothing down a dress I’d borrowed from Sarah and telling myself I looked like I had a reason to be there.

I found Damien by the firepit, holding court with three guys who all laughed a half-second after he did, like they were waiting for permission.

“Newspaper girl.” He said it the way Cole did, except it didn’t sound like an insult coming from him. It sounded like a compliment he was proud of inventing. “You came.”

“You invited me.”

“I did.” He smiled, slow and easy, and gestured for me to sit. Up close, he had the kind of face that belonged on a billboard — sharp jaw, golden-brown eyes, a warmth that Cole never bothered faking. “Drink?”

“I’m working.”

“Everyone’s working at a party like this. Doesn’t mean you can’t have a drink while you do it.” He handed me a can, unopened, still sealed. Smart. He’d clocked exactly what kind of girl I was without me saying a word, and that unsettled me more than anything else about him. I cracked it open anyway, mostly so my hands would have something to do.

We talked for almost an hour. He was good, really good, steering every question about scouting and recommendations into something charming and vague, like a politician who’d trained for this exact interview his whole life. He asked about my major, my scholarship, and whether I liked it here and somehow made all of it sound like he actually cared about the answers instead of just filing them away. But every so often, when he thought I wasn’t watching closely, something colder moved behind his eyes. A flicker. Gone before I could be sure I’d seen it.

“You’re not actually here for a puff piece on team rivalries,” he said eventually, tilting his head. “Cole sent you.”

My stomach dropped. “What? No, I…”

“Relax.” He laughed, low and private, like we were sharing a secret. “I don’t blame you. Cole Arden collects people and uses them up. It’s kind of his whole thing.” He leaned in, and the firelight caught something in his eyes that flashed gold for exactly one second, a color no human eye should ever make. “Ask me anything you want, Lena. I’ll even tell you the truth. Most of it, anyway.”

I opened my mouth to ask about Marcus Vale, the scout, the leaked information, the thing Cole actually wanted, but a group of girls swept in and pulled Damien away before I got the chance, laughing and tugging at his sleeve like he belonged to all of them at once. He let himself be pulled, throwing one last look back at me over his shoulder, something unreadable in it.

I sat there by the fire a while longer, replaying that flash of gold in my mind. Contacts, maybe. A trick of the light. Too much of Sarah’s borrowed wine on an empty stomach.

I almost believed it.

Then I turned to go find the bathroom and walked straight into a chest like a brick wall.

“Careful,” a low voice said.

I looked up. It wasn’t Damien. It wasn’t anyone I recognized, older, maybe mid-twenties, with a jagged scar along his jaw and eyes that studied me like I was a puzzle he already knew the answer to.

“You smell wrong,” he said quietly, almost to himself, leaning in enough that I could feel his breath against my hair.

I froze, every hair on my arms standing up at once. “Excuse me?”

He didn’t answer. He just kept staring, nostrils flaring slightly, like he was trying to place a scent he couldn’t quite name. Then, just as suddenly, he smiled, too wide, too sharp, and stepped aside to let me pass.

“See you around, newspaper girl.”

Two of them, now, calling me that. Like they’d been comparing notes.

I glanced back once before I made it to the gate. Damien was watching me over the heads of the girls still clinging to his arms, and for just a second his easy smile dropped away entirely, replaced by something calculating and cold that had no business on such a handsome face. It was gone as fast as it came, swallowed back up in charm the moment he caught me looking, but I’d seen it. I knew I’d seen it.

I didn’t wait to find out what he meant. I grabbed my bag and left the party without saying goodbye to Damien, my heart hammering the whole walk back to my dorm, the cold air doing nothing to slow it down. That stranger’s words kept looping in my head the entire way, louder than the music still bleeding out of the house behind me.

You smell wrong.

What in God’s name was that supposed to mean?