[POV: REMI]
"Did you really think the scent of your desperation wouldn't reach me across the table?"
Jaxson didn't even look up from his plate. The silver fork in his hand scraped against the fine china with a screech that set my teeth on edge. The sound vibrated through my jaw, a jagged serration that made the fine hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention.
"I'm not doing anything, Jaxson," I whispered. My voice was a thin, brittle thread.
My palms were slick against the mahogany surface of the dining table. A cold moisture pooled in the center of my hands, making the wood feel greasy. Beneath the table, my knees knocked together, a rhythmic tremor I couldn't suppress no matter how hard I pressed my heels into the plush carpet.
"You're breathing," he snapped. He finally lifted his head. His eyes were twin abysses of ice, devoid of the warmth that usually characterized a mate's gaze. "That's doing enough. You're clogging the air with that pathetic, sickly sweet pheromone."
The air in the dining room was heavy, thick with the scent of his morning coffee and the underlying metallic bite of his cologne—something that smelled like ozone and crushed pine needles. But beneath it all, my own body was betraying me. A slow, honeyed heat was beginning to coil in the pit of my stomach, a pulsing warmth that radiated outward to my fingertips.
It was the heat. The mark on my neck felt like a live coal pressed into my skin. It throbbed in time with my heartbeat, a heavy thud-thud that echoed in my inner ear until the room seemed to tilt.
"I can't help it," I said, my voice gaining a desperate edge. "You know I can't. The bond—"
"There is no bond," he cut me off, his voice a low, dangerous growl. "There is a mistake. There is a biological glitch that I am currently choosing to ignore. You would do well to do the same."
He stood up, the chair legs screaming against the floorboards. The sound was a physical blow to my chest. He moved around the table, his presence like a storm front moving in. As he passed me, the air shifted, dragging his scent across my senses. Dark chocolate and rain. It was a cruel irony. My soul wanted to lean into him, to bury my face in the crook of his neck and let the fire consume me.
My body leaned forward instinctively, a magnetic pull I couldn't fight.
He didn't even pause. He walked through the space I occupied as if I were made of glass and mist. His shoulder didn't even graze mine, but the displacement of air felt like a slap.
"You're a ghost in this house, Remi," he said over his shoulder, his footsteps heavy and deliberate as he headed toward the basement door. "Stop acting like you have a heartbeat."
I watched him go, my chest heaving. The silence that followed was worse than his shouting. It was a vast, suffocating weight that pressed down on my shoulders until I felt my spine curve.
I looked down at my plate. The food was untouched, growing cold. My stomach turned, a sharp cramp of nausea twisting my gut. I wasn't a ghost. I was a woman on fire, and he was the only rain in the world—and he was refusing to fall.
I reached up, my fingers trembling as I touched the mark on my neck. The skin was raised, a jagged pattern of heat that felt like it was burning through my very soul.
"I won't die here," I whispered to the empty room. "I won't let you watch me burn to ash."
I pushed away from the table, my movements frantic. I needed a way out. I needed a life where his silence wasn't the only thing I had to listen to.
I ran to my room, the soles of my feet slapping against the cold hardwood. My breath was coming in short, jagged gasps. I pulled my laptop from the desk, my fingers fumbling with the keys. The screen's glow was a harsh, artificial blue against my tear-stung eyes.
I clicked the bookmark I had hidden in a folder labeled "Archives."
Northwestern University - Admissions Portal.
My heart hammered against my ribs, a frantic, desperate rhythm. I had applied weeks ago, in the dead of night, while Jaxson was out at the rink. It was thousands of miles away. It was a place where the air didn't smell like him.
The cursor hovered over the login button. My finger shook so hard I had to use my other hand to steady it.
I clicked.
The page loaded with agonizing slowness. I held my breath, the oxygen in the room feeling thin and used up.
Status: Accepted.
A sob broke from my throat, a ragged, ugly sound. I collapsed back against my chair, the plastic biting into my shoulder blades. I could leave. I could pack a bag and disappear before the sun went down.
Then, from the vents in the floor, came the sound.
Skritch. Skritch. Skritch.
It was the sound of his skates being sharpened in the basement. A rhythmic, metallic rasp of steel against stone. It was a predatory sound, steady and unrelenting. It sounded like a countdown.
[POV: JAXSON]
The stone was too soft. Or maybe the steel was too hard.
I pressed the blade of my skate against the spinning wheel, sparks showering my gloved hands in a cascade of orange fire. The vibration traveled up my arms, a numbing, bone-deep hum that helped drown out the noise in my head.
But it didn't drown out the scent.
She was upstairs. I could feel her. Every time her heart sped up, I felt a phantom twitch in my own chest. Every time she breathed out that sweet, cloying heat, my nostrils flared with a hunger that made my stomach knot into a hard, painful mass.
"Focus," I growled at myself.
The basement was cold, smelling of damp concrete and gear, but I was sweating. My jersey was stuck to my back, the fabric heavy and irritating. The mark on my own neck was a screaming red line of agony. It felt like someone was dragging a serrated knife across my skin, over and over, in time with the sharpening wheel.
She thought she was subtle. She thought I didn't see the way her eyes followed me, or the way her hands shook when I got too close.
I hated her for it. I hated her for being the one the universe had chosen to tether me to. She was a weakness. A soft, fragile thing in a world that only respected the blade.
Skritch. Skritch.
I pulled the skate back, checking the edge. It was lethal. It was perfect.
I could hear her footsteps now. They weren't the quiet, hesitant shuffles of the morning. They were quick. Determined.
I felt a surge of something dark and hot in my gut. It wasn't just the bond. It was a territorial roar that made my vision blur at the edges. She was planning something. I could smell the adrenaline on her, sharp and metallic like a coming storm.
I stood up, dropping the skate onto the workbench with a heavy clatter.
I didn't use the stairs. I moved through the shadows of the basement, my senses dialed to a frequency that only she occupied. I could hear the rustle of paper upstairs. I could hear the frantic clicking of a mouse.
I moved toward the back staircase, the one that led directly to the hallway outside her bedroom. My movements were silent, a predator stalking through his own forest.
I reached the top of the stairs and paused. The door to her room was cracked open.
I could see her through the sliver of space. She was standing by the window, her back to me. Her shoulders were squared, her head held high in a way I hadn't seen since the ceremony on the ice.
She was holding a piece of paper. She was smiling.
The sight of that smile—a real, genuine flash of joy that didn't involve me—felt like a spear through my lungs. The air in the hallway turned frigid. My hands curled into fists, the leather of my gloves creaking.
How dare she? How dare she find a light that didn't come from my fire?
I waited until she went into the bathroom, the sound of the shower starting up a low hiss in the background.
I stepped into her room.
The air here was saturated with her. It was a physical weight, a cloud of lilies and that honeyed heat that made my head swim. I walked to the bed, my eyes locking onto the paper she had left on the duvet.
I picked it up.
Admissions Office. We are pleased to inform you...
The words blurred as a red haze descended over my vision. My heart didn't just beat; it exploded against my ribs. The fire on my neck flared into a white-hot agony that stole my breath.
She was leaving. She was going to take that scent, that heartbeat, and that infuriating defiance and hand it to a world full of men who weren't me.
My claws didn't just emerge; they tore through the tips of my gloves.
I didn't think. I didn't weigh the consequences. I only felt the primal, agonizing need to destroy the bridge she was trying to build.
[POV: REMI]
The water was too hot. It turned my skin a bright, angry red, but I didn't care. I scrubbed at my arms, at my neck, trying to wash away the phantom feeling of Jaxson’s presence.
I felt lighter than I had in years. The acceptance letter was a ticket. A key to a cage I had lived in for far too long.
"I'm going," I whispered into the steam. "I'm actually going."
I turned off the water and stepped out, wrapping myself in a thick, white towel. My skin was tingling, the heat of the shower finally dulling the ache of the mate-heat for a few precious seconds.
I wiped the fog from the mirror. I looked at myself. My eyes were bright, the gold in them sparkling with a newfound fire. I looked like someone who had a future.
I walked back into my bedroom, the carpet soft beneath my damp feet.
"Jaxson?" I called out, the name slipping out before I could stop it.
The room was silent. But the air felt different. It felt charged, like the moments before a lightning strike. The smell of dark chocolate was so thick it was almost suffocating.
I looked at my bed.
My heart stopped. The blood drained from my face so fast the world went gray for a second.
The letter was there.
But it wasn't a letter anymore.
It lay in the center of my white duvet, a pile of jagged, white confetti. It hadn't been cut by a blade or torn by hands. The edges were shredded, tattered by something sharp and irregular. There were long, deep gouges in the mattress beneath it, the fabric ripped open to reveal the foam inside.
It looked like the work of an animal.
I stumbled forward, my hand over my mouth to stifle a scream. I picked up a piece of the paper. It was the corner with the university seal. It was damp with a dark, sticky fluid.
I turned around, my back hitting the wardrobe.
Jaxson was standing in the corner of the room, half-hidden by the shadows. His chest was heaving, his jersey torn at the shoulders. His eyes weren't blue anymore. They were a glowing, predatory amber that pierced the darkness.
"You're not going anywhere, Remi," he said.
His voice didn't sound human. It was a guttural, terrifying vibration that seemed to come from the floorboards themselves.
He stepped forward, and I saw his hands. They were stained red, the tips of his fingers elongated into hooked, ivory points.
"You thought you could leave me?" he asked, his voice dropping to a whisper that was scarier than any shout.
He lunged.
I didn't have time to scream. He didn't grab my waist this time. He grabbed my throat, his claws grazing the sensitive skin of my mate-mark. He slammed me back against the wall, the impact rattling my brain in my skull.
The heat between us was no longer a pulse. It was an explosion.
He leaned in, his nose pressing against the pulse point of my neck. I felt his hot breath, the scent of blood and chocolate overwhelming my senses.
"Tell me you're staying," he growled into my skin. "Tell me you're mine."
I looked into those glowing amber eyes, and despite the terror, despite the pain, I felt the reversal. I felt the power shift. Because in his eyes, I didn't see a monster.
I saw a man who was terrified.
"I'm staying," I whispered, my voice cold and hard as the ice he played on. "But not because I'm yours, Jaxson. I'm staying so I can watch you break trying to keep me."
His grip faltered. For a heartbeat, the monster vanished, replaced by a look of pure, unadulterated shock.
And then, the front door downstairs slammed open, and a voice echoed up the stairs.
"Jaxson! We have a problem! The test results came back!"
Jaxson froze, his claws digging slightly deeper into my skin.
"What test results?" I gasped.
He didn't answer. He looked at the door, then back at me, a secret burning in his eyes that made the mate-mark on my neck scream in agony.
"The kind that mean you're not my sister, Remi," he whispered. "And the kind that mean I've been lying to you since the day we met."
