THE WOLF WHO SKATED INTO MY HEART

Vera's POV Game day had a smell to it. Ice and adrenaline and the kind of restless energy that got under your skin before the first buzzer even sounded. I had been covering the Mapleton hockey team for a full semester and I still got that small kick of anticipation every single time I walked through those arena doors. I was almost there when I heard him. "Vera." I turned. Jace was cutting across from the side path near the equipment building, warm-up gear on, hair pushed back, that smile already doing its job. He looked good and he knew it, which had always been part of the problem. "You're early," I said. "Coach gave us a window before warm-up." He reached me and his eyes moved up to my hair the way they always did, checking. I had worn it down today, loose around my shoulders the way I liked it, and his hand came up without asking and pushed it back from my face, smoothing it into a shape I had not chosen. "You look better when it's back." Something small moved in my chest and I smiled at him anyway. "Good to know." He kissed my cheek, one hand at my waist for exactly a second, and then he was already walking toward the players entrance. "Come find me after," he called back without turning around. I stood on the path with the arena doors in front of me and sat quietly with the fact that I had left my apartment this morning with my hair exactly how I wanted it and now it was different and I had not said a single word about it. I was very good at that, not saying words. Inside the arena Lyra was already in the press row saving my seat with her bag, which she was not supposed to do because she was not press, but Lyra had never once in her life been deterred by a rule that inconvenienced her. "You're late," she said. "I'm four minutes early." "For you that's late." She moved her bag and I dropped into the seat beside her and flipped my notepad open. She looked at my hair, then at my face, then back at my hair with the kind of deliberate focus that made me want to pull a hood over my entire head. "Jace?" she asked. "Can we not." "That's a yes." She tucked one leg under herself and settled in. "You had it down this morning. I saw you at the coffee cart and it was down and cute and very you." "Lyra, I have notes to write." "Write your notes, I'm just saying what I observed." "You observed nothing." "I observed everything." She reached into her bag and pulled out a snack bar, already unwrapping it like the conversation was settled. I pressed my mouth together and looked back at my notepad because she was not wrong and that made it worse. Lyra Wood noticed everything and forgot nothing and stored it all for the exact moment it would be most inconvenient. Best friend and absolute menace, and I genuinely did not know what I would do without her. Dahlia had texted ten minutes ago saying she was grabbing food and would meet us at halftime, which meant the three of us were doing what we always did since freshman year. Lyra planting herself somewhere she had no business being, Dahlia arriving with snacks, and me pretending I was not grateful for both of them. Around us the arena was filling fast, wolves and regular students packed in together with the pack energy humming just beneath the noise, invisible to anyone who did not know what to feel for. Game days brought it closer to the surface and you could feel it in the way wolves moved through the crowd, the way space rearranged itself around rank without a word being spoken. I had grown up in this world, pack life and pack rules and the unspoken hierarchy that lived in every room without ever needing to announce itself. It was as natural to me as breathing. Two rows back a group of girls in Mapleton colours were already loudly and confidently wrong about their game predictions, and somewhere to my left the student journalist from the regular campus paper was wrestling with his camera lens the way he wrestled with it every single game. "You're going to drop it," I told him. He looked up, startled. "I'm not going to drop it." He nearly dropped it immediately and I looked back at my notepad. "Who is that?" Lyra asked, nodding toward the camera situation. "Campus paper. Does this every game." "And you just watch?" "It builds character." She snorted and I wrote the date at the top of my first page and underlined it twice, which was my ritual and I was not going to apologise for it. The buzzer sounded from deep in the tunnel and the whole arena came to its feet. Saxon Holt led the team out and the crowd lifted the way it always did when an Alpha hit his ice, that particular shift in energy that no regular student in the building could explain but every wolf felt instantly. Saxon moved like the rink belonged to him, straight-backed and unhurried, and every wolf in the stands felt that pull of rank, attention sharpening and collecting around him without anyone choosing to let it happen. He was the campus Alpha and the team captain and on the ice those two things became one indistinguishable thing. The rest of the team filed out behind him in formation, skates cutting clean across the fresh surface, and I had my pen moving before I consciously decided to start. Formation notes, energy reads, lineup checked against the roster sheet clipped to the back of my pad. The opposing team came out of the far tunnel to a different quality of noise, the polite kind that a crowd makes when it is being gracious to visitors while making it very clear that this ice belongs to someone else entirely. "Saxon looks focused tonight," Lyra said. "Don't make me write that down." "I would never." A short pause. "He does though." I shook my head and watched Saxon take his position at centre ice, still and ready, the whole arena tilting slightly toward him the way things tilt toward gravity. The second buzzer sounded and the game was about to begin.