Fangs On Ice

Chapter 5

CHAPTER FIVE: Denial

Maren's POV

I did not sleep that night.

I sat on my couch with every light in my apartment blazing, staring at my phone like it would explode anytime soon. A kitchen knife was placed on the cushion beside me, as I tried very hard to convince myself that I had hallucinated the entire evening.

That what I had heard was not real at all.

Werewolves were not real. That was a fact. A scientific, biological, completely rational fact. People did not turn into wolves. Eyes did not glow gold. Professional hockey players were just... athletic. Very athletic. With excellent immune systems and fast metabolisms and absolutely nothing supernatural going on whatsoever.

I had been working too hard. Stress hallucinations were a thing. Maybe I needed to see a therapist.

By the time the sun came up, I had almost convinced myself.

Almost.

Then I looked out my window and saw Theo Maddox sitting in a car across the street, watching my building.

"Okay," I said out loud to my empty apartment. "Okay. This is fine. Everything is fine."

It was not fine. Nothing was fine. But I had spent twenty-seven years surviving things that should have broken me, and I was not about to fall apart now because some hockey players had a fur problem.

I went to work.

It was the most surreal day of my life, and I once spent a summer working at a circus. Every player I passed in the hallway made me flinch. Every time someone moved too fast or laughed too loud, I had to remind myself to breathe. Jonas the youngest of them all waved at me from across the training room and I nearly screamed.

"You okay?" he asked, jogging over with the easy grace that I now recognized as deeply inhuman. "You look kind of pale."

"Fine. Just tired."

"Dom said you might be weird today." He grinned, and I saw a flash of too-sharp canines. "For what it is worth, I think it is cool that you know. Keeping secrets is exhausting."

"I... thank you?"

"Also, Theo says you have a knife under your pillow now. That is adorable. It would not do anything, but it is adorable."

“How did he?…”

He jogged off before I could respond. I seriously considered quitting my job and moving to Antarctica.

Instead, I buried myself in work. Paperwork. Inventory. Anything that did not require me to think about the fact that I was surrounded by supernatural predators who could apparently smell my emotions.

That was how Sadie found me at six o'clock, hunched over a pile of requisition forms like they contained the secrets of the universe.

"There you are." She closed my office door and locked it. "I have been looking for you all day."

"Sorry, I have been busy."

"Too busy to answer your phone?" She sat down across from me, and her expression was serious in a way that made my stomach drop. ""I ran extra tests on the blood samples from last week. I was curious about those markers I mentioned." She turned her laptop toward me. "Look at this."

The screen showed a DNA analysis, bands and bars that meant nothing to me at first glance. But Sadie's expression made my stomach tighten.

"What am I looking at?"

"Something impossible." She pulled up another image beside the first. "This is normal human DNA. This is what I found in Dominic Varga's blood."

The two images were different. Subtly, but definitely. Extra markers, additional strands, something that should not exist.

"This isn't human," Sadie said. "Or it's not entirely human. I've never seen anything like it. I ran the test three times because I thought the equipment was broken, but it's not."

My heart was pounding. "Sadie..."

"There is more." She clicked to another file. "I cross-referenced with samples from other players. Jonas Varga. Theo Maddox. Five others. They all have the same anomaly."

Seven players. Seven wolves.

"I don't know what this means," Sadie continued, her voice tight. "I don't know if it's some kind of genetic modification or a mutation or... I don't know. But I do know something is very wrong with this team, and you've been spending a lot of time with Dominic lately."

I had two choices. I could lie to my best friend and hope she never figured out the truth. Or I could trust her with a secret that might get us both killed.

Before I could decide, the lights went out.

Not just in my office. The whole building. Through the window, I could see the parking lot lights dying, the glow from neighboring buildings winking out one by one.

"What the hell?" Sadie stood up, reaching for her phone.

"Don't." I said, already dialling a number without really looking at my phone. I moved to the window and looked out into the darkness. Movement in the parking lot. Shadows that moved wrong, too fast, too fluid. "Sadie, get away from the door."

"Maren, you are scaring me."

"Good. You should be scared."

The door handle rattled. Then something hit the door hard enough to crack the frame.

Sadie screamed.

I grabbed her arm and pulled her toward the window. "Fire escape. Now."

"What is happening?"

"I will explain later. Move."

The door burst open just as I shoved Sadie through the window onto the fire escape.

The door to my office exploded inward, knocking the doors off it hinges.

I screamed. A figure lunged through the darkness, fast and brutal, and something hit my hand hard enough to send the phone flying.

"Hello, little human." The voice was smooth and cold and utterly unfamiliar. "The Alpha's new pet. I have been wanting to meet you."

Then something hit my head, and everything went black.