Sins on the Rink

“Chapter 3: The Room Next Door,”

“Chapter 3: The Room Next Door,”

────── ❅ VIANA ❅ ──────

The building had its own elevator. Not a floor button. An actual key, gold and heavy, that only worked if you were somebody like Cross Morvath.

I stood in the lobby with two duffel bags and my skates slung over one shoulder, feeling like a stray cat that had wandered somewhere it didn't belong. The doorman didn't even blink when Cross said my name. Like he'd been told to expect me. Like I was already part of some machine that had been running long before I signed that contract.

"This is insane," I muttered, mostly to myself.

"You said that already." Cross didn't look at me, just swiped the key and held the elevator door.

"I'm allowed to say it twice."

The ride up was silent except for the hum of the elevator and the sound of my own heartbeat, which for some reason wouldn't slow down no matter how many times I told it there was nothing to be nervous about. It wasn't fear exactly. It was something closer to standing too near the edge of a building and feeling that stupid little pull toward the drop.

His apartment took up the entire top floor. Floor to ceiling windows, furniture that looked like it cost more than my mom's house, and a silence so complete I could hear my own skates creak against my shoulder strap.

"Your room's down that hall." He pointed without looking at me, already unbuttoning his cuffs like this was any other Tuesday. "Second door."

"You have a whole hallway for one guest room?"

"I have a whole floor for one person." He finally looked at me, something unreadable in his eyes. "Get used to space. You're going to need it."

I didn't know what that meant and I was too tired to ask.

My room turned out to be bigger than the entire apartment I grew up in. Bed the size of a small country, a bathroom with a tub deep enough to drown in, a window that looked out over the whole city like it belonged to me now too.

None of it felt like mine. All of it felt like a cage with really nice furniture.

I unpacked what little I had, hung my two decent dresses in a closet built for someone with an actual wardrobe, and sat on the edge of that enormous bed trying to remember how I'd ended up here. Three days ago I was spinning alone on empty ice at five in the morning. Now I was living with a billionaire who'd looked up my mother's medical records like it was nothing, pretending to be in love with a man who made my skin feel too tight every time he looked at me.

I heard something around midnight. A low sound, rough and animal, coming from somewhere down the hall.

I told myself it was the building settling. Old pipes, maybe, or a dog somewhere below us.

It didn't sound like a dog.

It sounded like a growl, deep enough that I felt it in my chest more than I heard it, and it was coming from behind a door at the very end of the hallway. A door with a keypad lock instead of a normal handle.

I got up before I could talk myself out of it. Bare feet on cold marble, heart going stupid and fast, moving toward that sound like it was pulling me instead of the other way around.

The growling stopped the second I got close.

Dead silent. Like whatever made that sound had heard me coming.

"Cross?" My voice came out smaller than I wanted.

Nothing.

I pressed my ear against the door, feeling ridiculous and terrified in equal measure, and heard something shift on the other side. Heavy. Wrong. Not like a person moving.

The keypad beeped. Red light. Locked, obviously, but the sound made me jump back like I'd been caught doing something I shouldn't.

"Go back to bed, Viana.”

I spun around so fast I nearly fell. Cross stood at the other end of the hallway, shirtless, breathing hard like he'd run somewhere, sweat on his skin even though the apartment was freezing.

"What was that sound?"

"Nothing." His voice had an edge to it I hadn't heard before. Sharp. Warning. "Go back to bed."

"That wasn't nothing. That sounded like an animal."

"I said go back to bed."

I should have. Every survival instinct I had was screaming at me to walk away from a man standing in near darkness with his eyes catching light in a way that human eyes shouldn't, gold instead of brown, just for a second, just long enough that I couldn't convince myself I'd imagined it.

"Your eyes," I whispered.

He went very still.

"Go back to bed," he said a third time, and this time there was something underneath the words that made my whole body go cold. Not human. Not entirely, anyway.

I went. Fast. Didn't look back until my door was shut and locked and my back was pressed against it, heart slamming so hard I could hear it in my own ears.

Something was wrong with this apartment. Something was wrong with him.

And I'd just signed an eight month contract to live inside it.

────── ❅ CROSS ❅ ──────

I stood in that hallway long after her door clicked shut, fists clenched so tight my claws had already broken skin.

Too close. She'd gotten too close, and I'd nearly lost it right there in the hallway, wolf clawing at the surface because her scent had flooded my system the second she stepped out of that room, fear and curiosity tangled together in a combination that made every base instinct I had scream to go to her instead of away.

The growling she'd heard wasn't an animal in a cage.

It was me. Locked in my own private room, the one place in this apartment built specifically to hold a body mid transformation when the moon pulled too hard and control slipped through my fingers like water. Reinforced walls. Silver lined door, which hurt like hell against my own kind but kept me contained when containment was the only thing standing between me and a mistake I couldn't undo.

I hadn't shifted in front of another living person in ten years. Hadn't come this close to full loss of control since the night my family burned.

And she'd seen my eyes. Actually seen them, gold instead of brown, for one unguarded second that could unravel everything I'd spent a decade building.

I should have handled it better. Should have laughed it off, blamed the lighting, given her some smooth explanation that would have let her sleep tonight without wondering what kind of monster she'd just moved in with.

Instead I'd stood there in silence and let her see exactly enough to be terrified.

My phone buzzed on the counter. Elias, the only person alive who knew what I really was, the only person who'd helped me build this entire empire specifically so no one would ever get close enough to ask questions like the ones currently keeping Viana awake three doors down.

We have a problem, the message read. The engagement announcement leaked early. It's already trending. And someone's been asking questions about your family history. Old family. The real one.

My stomach dropped straight through the floor.

Ten years of silence, ten years of a name nobody could trace back to a compound that burned to ash, and one photo of me standing next to Viana Silvervale had apparently been enough to wake something up that should have stayed buried.

I typed back with hands that weren't quite steady. Who's asking?

The reply came back three words long, and it turned my blood to ice.

They found your mother's name.

────── ❅ ──────