DEAR EX-BEST FRIEND, KEEP YOUR HANDS OFF MY HOCKEY ALPHA

~Katherine~ Nobody told me my fated mate would be the first person to break my heart at Moonstone. Nobody told me he'd belong to my worst enemy either. The Moon Goddess works in cruel ways. He kissed me before he knew my name, and then he dumped me. And that was the beginning of my woes. I'd been trying to get into Moonstone College for three years. I got three rejection letters. Three years of my father sitting across the kitchen table from me saying, “Kitty, you were made for this. They just haven't caught up yet.” Three years of carrying a prophecy I never chose; the Thornhill pack's golden girl, the one the elders whispered about, the one born to become the first female Alpha ruler in our history. Nobody mentioned that history would kick off with my shirt getting ripped off in a cafeteria. The place smelled like garlic bread and noodles when I walked in. I joined the back of the queue with my tray, doing what every new student does on day one, pretending. I was pretending I wasn't counting the Alphas and that the ratio didn't make my stomach tight. One hundred Alphas were admitted every year with only five she-wolves. I was one of five and I needed to look like I'd always known I would be. Then I felt eyes targeted behind me. I looked up before I could stop myself. He sat at a corner table, four guys around him, all of them laughing at something on a phone. None of that laughter touched him. He wasn't part of whatever was funny. He was watching me with skeptical eyes. He had dark hair, a sharp jaw and eyes so deep blue they were nearly black from across the room. My wolf, Nyx, went dead still inside my chest. Don't, I told her. I mean it. Don't. She ignored me completely. She always ignores me. His friends were nudging each other now, elbowing him. He shook his head once slowly like he was declining something. Then he stood up anyway. I turned back to the bread rolls. Normal. Fine. Completely ordinary day. "Excuse me." Right behind my left ear, I heard a deep baritone voice, like the sound of finely tuned music to my ears. I turned around. Up close he was worse. He was breathtakingly handsome, and he knew it, which only added to the problem. "I'm Alpha Xavier Blackburn." Good for him. "Katherine Thorne," I said. "Please move." "Can someone move?" snapped a voice behind me. The queue had piled up around us. I stepped left, he stepped left. I stepped right, he stepped right. As if we'd rehearsed it. "First day?" he asked. "Brilliant deduction." "You have a sharp mouth." "You're between me and food. I get sharper when I'm hungry." His lip curled upward around the corners in a slow smirk. He leaned in. The air between us did something strange. It thickened and charged, like the pressure drop before a storm rolls in. Nyx threw herself against my ribs so hard I nearly stumbled. I said no, I told her sharply. His fingers closed around my wrist, thumb pressing into the inside of it, right over my pulse, counting. "I want to kiss you," he said. The cafeteria ceased to exist. "I beg your pardon?" "Right here. Right now." His gaze dropped to my mouth for exactly one second, then came back up to my eyes. "You can't say no." Every sensible thought I had queued up to explain what he could do with that. He didn't wait for any of them. His mouth came down on mine and the world lurched sideways. Alpha Xavier wasn't gentle. He kissed me like he owned me. And the humiliating truth, the part I will never fully forgive myself for, is that my body didn't reject him. Every nerve I had fired at once. My free hand started moving toward his chest before my brain issued a stop order. Nyx didn't whimper or stir. She screamed, not in alarm but in recognition. He pulled back, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand slowly, watching my face while he did it, like he was cleaning away something he'd accidentally touched. That look hit me somewhere behind the sternum and cut my heart in half. My hand was already moving to slap him. It never landed. The pain started from the inside out, an explosion through my bones so complete and so fast that my vision whited out entirely. Nyx tore free before I could close the door on her. My clothes gave way. Somewhere nearby a tray hit the floor, a chair scraped back violently, someone screamed, and then I was standing on four legs in the middle of a cafeteria with silver fur and a heart hammering loud enough to feel in my teeth. Xavier had shifted. His wolf was massive. Broad and silver-grey, amber eyes burning like something lit from inside. He circled me once, slowly breathing me in with long, measured pulls. Then he went completely still. The recognition in his expression was unmistakable, and it clearly horrified him. I forced myself back into my skin with every scrap of control I had left, grabbing what remained of my shirt against my chest. My hands were shaking and my sternum ached. "I think—" I shuddered at the thought of it. “I think you're my mate." Silence so complete you could hear people's breathing. Xavier looked at me. The recognition was still there in his eyes, and he looked directly at it, and then he looked away from it on purpose. He turned and walked out of the cafeteria without a single word. Gone. Just gone. My chest deflated slowly. "Hey." I found my voice somewhere beneath all the shame. "You kissed me without asking. Apologise or I'm filing an assault report." He stopped and turned back. His smile was the most beautiful and most devastating arrangement of features I'd ever seen. "Relax," he said pleasantly. "It was a dare. We welcome the new students with a dare game. I was dared to kiss you. It's tradition. Stop making it dramatic." One table laughed. Then two. Then the whole room caught the laughter like a match to dry paper. "And the mate thing?" He tilted his head like I was a mildly curious equation. "You and I cannot be mates. I'm a Lycan and you're—" The pause was precisely long enough to make me look stupid. "Whoever you are, we're different categories entirely." He walked out. The laughter followed him like a standing ovation. I stood in a torn shirt in a room full of strangers narrating my humiliation live to their followers, and I told myself very firmly that I was not going to cry. I cried. Three hallways later, I cried. Audrey found me before I found a wall to hold myself up against. My roommate grabbed both my shoulders, steered me into the alcove by the library, and held me there until my breathing came back. "Kitty. Breathe." "Everyone saw—" "I know. Breathe first." I breathed. It fixed nothing but it gave my lungs something to do. "He's my mate." Saying it out loud made it heavier and more real at the same time. "The bond hit me the second he kissed me. I felt it, Audrey. It's real." She looked at me carefully. "I believe you." "Then why did he—" "Because," she said, choosing each word with care, "he already has a girlfriend." She hesitated. "Eleanor Campbell." The name went through me like a knife driven through my heart. "Say that again slowly." "Eleanor Camp—" "I heard you,” I said flatly. "I just needed a second." My phone was vibrating. I opened i********: and immediately saw the trending video of my encounter with Alpha Xavier Blackburn. It already had fifty-four thousand views and was thirteen minutes old. "Who does she think she is?" "Xavier would never. She's embarrassing herself." "Poor Eleanor, imagine having to deal with this girl." There were three compilation videos already and a meme with four hundred shares. Xavier's comment section was a festival of fire emojis from people congratulating him for putting the new girl in her place. I closed the app. "Audrey." I swallowed hard. "Eleanor Campbell is my ex-best friend." She stared at me, stunned. And somewhere across this campus, in whatever room Eleanor Campbell occupied while she watched the trending video, I knew she already knew I was here. The question was what she was going to do about it. I found out sooner than I expected.