Chapter 2. The Ultimatum

Wyatt’s POV

“Asshole!”

Some guy in a white Audi cuts me off on Harlow Street, and I slam my hand against the steering wheel hard enough that the whole column shudders.

Under my skin, my wolf paces. He’s been pacing all week. Every red light, every slow walker, every buzz of my phone, he throws himself at the inside of my ribs like a dog at a fence.

All because of one phone call.

“Pass every course, Wyatt, or forget about hockey.”

My father’s voice, smooth as a lawyer’s letter. Zane Beckett never raises his voice. He doesn’t need to. He chairs the fund that pays for my scholarship and half this team’s ice time. He can’t fire me. He doesn’t have to. One unsigned renewal, and I’m a former captain.

And it isn’t just hockey. Everything my mother left me, everything she built with her own hands, waits on one condition: I graduate this year. Fail, and it goes to him.

He wasn’t at the hospital the night she died. He was at a hotel in Providence with the woman he married thirteen months later. I was fifteen. I held her hand alone.

I will not fail.

Marketing Management and Business Ethics are the problem. Everything else, I can hold at a C. Those two will sink me.

I pull into my building’s lot and kill the engine. In the rearview mirror, my eyes have a thin ring of gold around the green. Not a good sign. That only happens when my wolf is too close to the surface.

I know exactly what happens when he gets all the way there. A Ridgeway defenseman found out on the ice freshman year. I don’t remember the hit. I remember the silence after it, and the blood on the boards, and the silver baton the arena guard pressed to my collarbone to bring me back. The scar never healed right. Silver scars don’t.

That’s the real reason I don’t do girlfriends. Not because I’m a player. Because wolves who get attached lose control, and I can’t afford to lose control ever again.

My phone buzzes in the cupholder.

DAD: Mr. Park will review your midterm grades in person on October 23rd. If either course is below a C, I’ll inform Coach Noa that evening. You’ll understand I take no pleasure in it.

He takes every pleasure in it. He always has. He’ll probably have the email to Coach drafted by dinner.

Daniel Park has been my mother’s lawyer since before I was born. Since she died, he’s been the trust’s independent counsel, the man who checks her will condition by condition and signs off on every one. My father can’t fudge a grade past him. Neither can I.

Four weeks. That’s what I’ve got. Four weeks to turn two Fs into something my father can’t use.

“You’ve got this,” I tell my reflection.

Lucky for me, Knox’s kid sister is a genius. A few sessions with her and Business Ethics will be the least of my problems. That’s the plan. The smart plan.

Right now, though, I needed something to shut my head up. Which is why I texted Brooke.

An hour later, I’m on the edge of my bed, pulling on sweatpants, and Brooke Norrow is staring at my back like it personally insulted her.

Her red hair is fanned across my pillow. Three months of no strings. Easy. Clear. She knew the rules from the first night: no sleepovers, no labels, no feelings.

“I missed you,” she says quietly.

There it is.

“Brooke. I told you from the start. I don’t do serious.”

“I don’t want to be your whenever-you-want girl anymore.” She sits up, clutching the sheet. “I want to be your girlfriend.”

“You know that’s not happening.”

“Why?” Her voice cracks. “What is it? Am I not enough of a she-wolf for the Pendant heir?”

I don’t answer. I walk out to the kitchen and crack open a beer.

She follows me out, yanking on her jacket. Her eyes are wet. “You don’t even care, do you?”

“I thought we were clear,” I say.

Something in her face breaks. Then it hardens.

“You know what the worst part is?” she says. “One day you’re going to want somebody. Really want her. And when you do, I’ll make sure she knows exactly what you are.”

“Brooke—”

“Screw you, Wyatt.”

She rips the front door open.

And nearly collides with a girl coming down the hall with a stack of books in her arms.

The girl sidesteps without spilling a single one.

Tessa Evans.

Knox’s kid sister. Rule number one of being Knox Evans’s best friend: you don’t look at Tessa. Not at parties, not at birthdays, not ever. I’ve kept that rule for three years without even trying.

She’s smaller than I remembered. Dark hair in a messy knot, a faded green four-leaf clover on her T-shirt, a label maker sticking out of her tote bag next to three highlighters sorted by color. Her eyes are red-rimmed, like she cried for hours and then scrubbed her face hard enough to make it stop.

Her gaze lands on Brooke, then drifts to me, standing shirtless in my own kitchen with a beer at 3:58 in the afternoon.

Her expression doesn’t change at all.

And my wolf goes completely still.

All week he’s been clawing at the walls. Now he’s frozen. Ears up. Nose up. Focused on her the way he focuses on a puck right before I shoot.

That makes no sense.

Tessa Evans is wolfless. Everyone at Cadston knows it. Without a wolf, she barely has a scent. Soap. Rain on hot pavement. Something faintly sweet I can’t name.

My wolf leans toward it so hard I have to plant my feet.

Then, under the soap, I catch something else. My brother. Faint and a few hours old, clinging to her wrist where a hand gripped it hard enough to leave the scent behind. There’s a folded, torn page sticking out of her jeans pocket, and her knuckles are white around the books.

Something in me goes very cold and very quiet. The kind of quiet that came right before the boards.

Brooke gives Tessa a slow, poisonous once-over, then whips her head back to me. “Really, Wyatt? Her? I thought you had standards. She’s not even a wolf.”

My mouth opens to shut her down.

Tessa beats me to it.

“Relax,” she says, in the calm, bored voice of someone reading a weather report. “I’m not here to hook up with him. Unlike you, I actually have a purpose.”

The hallway goes silent.

Brooke’s smirk falters. For a split second, she looks like she’s been slapped.

I stand there holding a beer I’ve forgotten about, the gold burning in my eyes, while my wolf, the one I’ve kept on a chain for three years, the one who put a man through the boards, lifts his head toward a girl with no wolf at all.

And for the first time in my life, he doesn’t want to hunt.

He whines.