Sins on the Rink

“Chapter 1: First Scent” ────── ❅ VIANA ❅ ────── Rent was due in six days and my savings account had forty-three dollars in it. I did the math again anyway. Like it would change if I stared hard enough. It didn't. The rink was empty at five in the morning, which was the only reason I could afford to be here. Off hours were cheap. Off hours were mine. I laced up in the dark, breath fogging, and told myself this was fine. Everything was fine. My mom's physical therapy bill was fine. The eviction notice folded in my coat pocket was fine. I skated because it was the only thing I was good at, and because if I stopped, I didn't know who I'd be. I was mid spin, arms tight to my chest, when the lights flipped on. Not the soft ones. All of them. Blinding, arena bright, like someone wanted the whole building to know it belonged to them. I stumbled out of the spin and nearly ate ice. "This rink is closed." The voice came from the boards. Deep. Bored. Like he owned the place, which, I would later find out, he actually did. I turned around and there he was. Cross Morvath. I recognized him the way everyone recognized him, from magazine covers and hockey highlight reels and that one leaked photo of him shirtless that broke half the internet. In person he was worse. Taller. Colder. Looking at me like I was something that had wandered onto his property and needed removing. "It's five a.m.," I said. "Nobody's using it." "I'm using it." He stepped down onto the ice level, arms crossed, jaw doing that tight thing rich men's jaws do when they're deciding whether you're worth their patience. "In ten minutes. Which means you need to leave." "I paid for this slot." "You paid the old owner." His mouth curled, not quite a smile. "I bought the rink Tuesday." Of course he did. Cross Morvath bought things the way other people bought coffee. Buildings. Teams. Apparently now the one place I had left to fall apart in peace. "So refund me," I said. "Talk to my assistant." "Does your assistant know you're an asshole, or is that just a bonus you keep for yourself?" Something flickered behind his eyes. Gold, almost, catching the overhead lights wrong. I blinked and it was gone. Just brown again. Dark and unreadable and irritatingly pretty for someone I already hated. "Careful," he said, quiet now. "You don't know what I am." The way he said it made my skin prickle. Not scared exactly. Just aware. Too aware. Like my body clocked something my brain hadn't caught up to yet. "I know you're standing on my ice time," I said, and pushed past him toward the boards, because staying near him felt like standing too close to a fire that hadn't decided yet if it wanted to warm me or burn me down. He didn't move. Didn't stop me either. Just watched me go, and I felt it on the back of my neck the whole way, hot and strange, all the way to the locker room door. Freaking hell. Six days to find rent and now I'd pissed off the man who owned my only shot at keeping this life together. Great start. ────── ❅ CROSS ❅ ────── She smelled like winter and something underneath it, something warm, and my wolf sat up inside my chest so fast it nearly knocked the breath out of me. I hadn't reacted like that to a human in ten years. Maybe longer. Maybe never. I watched her stomp off the ice, spine straight, chin up, radiating the kind of fury that came from a person who'd had to fight for every single thing she owned. I recognized that fury. I used to wear it myself, back before the money, back before the name Morvath meant anything except a family that had burned to nothing while I watched. I should have let her keep the ice time. It would have been easy. One phone call to Elias, a signed slip, done. Instead I'd stood there and picked a fight with a girl who looked at me like I was a bill she couldn't pay. My wolf pressed against my ribs, restless, wanting to follow her scent down that hallway, and I had to plant my feet on the ice and grip the boards until my knuckles went white just to stay where I was. This was bad. I hadn't shifted in months. I kept it locked down tight, the way I'd trained myself since the night the hunters came for my pack and I was the only one who made it out breathing. Nobody hunts what they don't know exists. That rule had kept me alive. Kept everyone around me alive too, technically, since being near me unshifted meant being near something that could still lose control. And this girl, this skater with the furious mouth and the scent that made my teeth ache, had walked onto my ice and made every instinct I'd buried for a decade sit up and pay attention. Fated mates were a bedtime story. Something the old pack elders used to talk about like it was a gift instead of a death sentence. You didn't choose it. Your wolf chose for you, and then you spent the rest of your life either claiming it or running from it while it slowly tore you apart from the inside. I'd never believed in it. Didn't have the luxury. Last of a bloodline everyone thought was extinct doesn't get bedtime stories. But I was standing in an empty rink at five in the morning with my heart going too fast and my wolf clawing at the inside of my skin, and every part of me wanted to go find out her name. Elias would tell me this was reckless. He'd be right. I turned toward the tunnel where she'd disappeared and caught, just barely, the tail end of her scent still hanging in the cold air. Viana. I'd heard one of the rink staff say it once, months back, before I bought the place. Viana Silvervale. I said it out loud, once, just to see how it felt in my mouth. My wolf went still and quiet for the first time in ten years. That should have scared me more than it did. Because somewhere under the ice, under the fury and the fear and the ten years of careful control, something old and starving had just woken all the way up. And it wanted her. ────── ❅ ──────