Mag-log in💎SAPPHIRE💎 The door clicked shut behind Rylan and for one perfect second it was just us. Just me and Zoren and a candle burning low between two plates neither of us had touched. Three years I had waited for a room this quiet, this private, no cameras and no reporters and no chairman hovering at the edge of every conversation like a shadow that refused to leave. Three years, and I finally had it, and I intended to make every second of it count. "You didn't have to come." I kept my voice soft, careful, watching him settle into the chair across from me like it physically cost him something. "But I'm glad you did." "I didn't have a choice." He said it flat, cold, exactly the way he said everything to me. "Rylan tricked me." "I know." I let a small smile pull at my mouth, let him see that I wasn't ashamed of it. "I asked him to." His jaw tightened. He reached for the wine instead of answering me, and I watched him drink like it was the only thing standing between him and walking str
❄️ZOREN❄️"Are we going, or are you planning to stare out that window all night?"Rylan's voice cut through whatever had just taken hold of my body, that flare behind my ribs still burning hot and unreasonable, my jaw clenched so tight I could feel it in my temples. I turned away from the window before I could see anything else, before I could watch Theron's stupid gold-tipped head walk away from my apartment like he had every right to be standing that close to what belonged to me.He does not belong to me. He is a rookie I cannot stand.Shit I need to get it together."Let's go." My voice came out rougher than I meant it to.Rylan grabbed his jacket off the back of the couch and gave me one of those looks, the kind that meant he had clocked something and was choosing, for once, not to say it out loud. I appreciated that about him tonight more than I usually did.We left the apartment and the hallway was quiet except for the hum of the overhead lights, and then Bird was there, steppin
❄️ZOREN❄️I skated off that ice before Bird even made it to the tunnel, my legs carrying me faster than made sense for a man supposed to be walking away in victory.I had told myself the whole session was about the competition. Silverpeak was circling and I had not lost a match in years and I was not about to let a rookie who could barely hold his edges cost me the one thing that actually belonged to me in this school. That was the story I kept feeding myself, drill after drill, every time I called his name across the ice and watched him push past the point his body wanted to quit.But every time I checked him into those boards, something happened in my chest that had nothing to do with training.My head went thick. Foggy, the way it got right before a rut hit, except a rut was not supposed to arrive out of nowhere on a Tuesday afternoon over a rookie defender with shaking hands and a jaw that refused to unclench.My pulse climbed every time he looked up at me from the ice, breathless
🤍RAV🤍 "No." A laugh tore out of me, humorless, brittle, the kind of sound that scrapes on its way out instead of easing anything. "No, it couldn't be." Wren just watched me with those steady eyes and did not argue, which somehow made it worse. If she'd laughed back, if she'd told me I was being ridiculous, I could have believed her. Instead she sat there quiet and let the silence do the arguing for her. The universe could not possibly be this cruel. It happened once. One night, one drunk alpha, one mistake buried under suppressants and lies and two years of careful survival, and it could not just casually reach into my life and plant something there without so much as a warning. "Rav." Wren's voice was careful now, the kind of careful people use when they already suspect the answer is going to hurt. "When was your last heat?" I frowned. The question did not even make sense at first, like she'd asked it in a language I used to speak but had forgotten. "What?" "Your last heat.
🤍RAV🤍The words hung in the air between us and I could not make myself move. My hoodie was still bunched around my shoulders and my chest was still bare and the nurse was staring at me with her hands pressed against her mouth like she was trying to physically hold the words back in."Please." It cracked out of me before I could stop it. "Please don't tell anyone."She lowered her hands slowly. Her eyes were still wide but something in her face had already started to shift, the shock draining out and something more careful moving in behind it."You're an omega." She said it again, quieter, like she needed a second pass just to believe it."Yes." My voice came out small and it did not even try to drop low anymore. There was no point. Not with my chest bare and my ribs painted seven different shades of wrong and every truth about me sitting out in the open air of that little white room like evidence at a trial. "I forged my documents. I bind my chest and I take suppressants and scent b
🤍RAV🤍Sweetheart.I sat on the edge of the examination table with the paper crinkling under my thighs and I let that word sit heavy on my chest. Nobody had called Rav Steele sweetheart in two years. Nobody was supposed to. I had built this whole person out of a deep voice and squared shoulders and a walk that swung wide instead of narrow, and here was this nurse looking at me like I was something soft, with Theron standing right there by the door watching the whole thing unfold."I fell during drills." My voice dropped low the second it left my mouth, automatic, a reflex I didn't even have to think about anymore. "It's nothing.""Mm-hm." She didn't even look up. She crossed to the supply cabinet and pulled gloves out of a box and snapped them onto her hands with two quick motions. "You boys always say that. Right up until it's a fractured rib and you're begging me for painkillers at midnight." She glanced back at me, her mouth curving into something teasing. "Hoodie off."I did not
🤍RAV🤍The memories came back in pieces and none of them were gentle about it. The weight of him. The cold of the locker. The sound of his belt. The way my body had responded before I could tell it not to and kept responding after I had already decided it should stop and the bite at the end of all
🤍RAV🤍 "You are Rav Steele, is that correct?" The intimidating look on the coach's face when I gave him my letter from the admin the following day made my palms sweaty. He held the paper like he was inspecting it for lies and I supposed he was because every single word on that document was forge
❄️ZOREN❄️ "Get up from the floor you bastard." There is only one person who owns that annoying voice and I did not want to hear it right now or ever but Rylan never cared about what anyone wanted and that was the problem with him from the very beginning. I opened my eyes and the bright light mad
To the readers who want the unthinkable. You crave the unforgivable.You don't want the sweet alpha who asks permission. You want the one who takes. The one who doesn't know he's falling until he's already drowning. You hunger for men who are cold to the world but burn for one person al







