The Hockey Alpha Bullied Me, Then His Wolf Claimed Me

My knuckles had turned the color of raw meat by morning.

I wrapped them in gauze before I left my dorm, grabbed a bottle of fever reducers from my kit, and walked to the medical wing with a paper cup of electrolyte drink balanced in my stiff fingers. Dr. Reyes had kept Jackson overnight for observation. Someone had to bring him something besides protein bars and team gossip.

He was awake when I came in, propped against the pillows under a white hospital sheet. Tyler and two other guys from the first line were slumped in chairs by the window.

Jackson looked at me and didn't look away.

One second. Two. Three. His gaze dropped to my bandaged hands, then came back up to my face, like he was trying to line me up with something he half remembered. His throat moved.

"Madison," he said quietly.

Then the door swung open behind me and Blair swept in on a cloud of vanilla perfume.

"Babe. Oh my God, I was so worried."

Jackson's hand left the sheet and closed around hers before she'd even reached the bed. He pulled her down beside him.

"Hey, Captain," Tyler said, glancing at me. "Should we be thanking Madison? Reyes said she's the one who—"

"She used a low-level healing technique without clearance," Jackson said. "That's all."

I set the cup on his tray table. "Dr. Reyes authorized it over the phone."

"It was a medical emergency, Madison. Don't turn it into a love story."

Blair laughed into his shoulder.

Last night that same hand had held my wrist like it was the only thing keeping him human. Now it lifted off the sheet and pointed past me, at the door.

"You can go."

---

I didn't go. Not yet.

I pulled a folded sheet from my bag and laid it on the tray beside the drink. The treatment log from the auxiliary room. Time of intervention, method, duration, outcome. Everything was filled in except one line.

"I need you to sign this," I said. "It confirms you actually received emergency care from me last night. If the scholarship committee sees that I performed resonance work and there's no patient confirmation, they'll call it unauthorized practice."

Jackson stared at the paper. Blair read it upside down and snorted.

"She wants your autograph."

"I want a signature on a medical record." I uncapped a blue ink pen and set it on top. "That's it."

Jackson didn't pick it up. "The team's public incident report says Reyes handled it."

"Reyes got there after."

"The public version stays the way it is." His voice was flat. "I'm not putting your name on it."

"Then sign the internal copy. Nobody outside the medical staff will ever read it."

"No."

The guys by the window had gone silent. Tyler was studying his own ankle brace like it was fascinating.

I looked at Jackson for a long moment. At the place below his collarbone, hidden now under a gray team T-shirt, where a silver pawprint had sunk into his skin.

He knew. I could see it in the way he wouldn't look at my hands.

"You don't have to claim me," I said. "You do have to tell the truth."

His jaw flexed. He said nothing.

So I picked up the unsigned log and the pen, unclipped my student ID from my lanyard, and walked down the hall to Professor Okafor's office, where Dr. Reyes was already waiting with coffee. I handed them my full monitoring journal, every note I'd taken since I first photographed the burn.

"I'd also like to request a transfer out of the hockey laundry position," I said. "Any department. I'll make up the hours."

Professor Okafor's eyebrows went up. Dr. Reyes just nodded slowly, like he'd been expecting it.

When I came back to collect my kit, Jackson was standing in the doorway of his room, IV taped to his arm, watching me.

"Where'd you go?"

"To file the truth somewhere it'll stick," I said. "Get some rest, Vale."

He flinched. Actually flinched, like I'd thrown something.

In three years I'd called him Jackson in my head and Captain out loud, and never once anything colder than that. He'd never heard his last name in my mouth.

---

The black medical duffel weighed almost as much as I did. I was hauling it off the supply cart when a hand reached past mine and lifted it like it was empty.

"Whoa. You're going to snap your spine with this thing."

Mason grinned down at me. Freshman forward, all shoulders and freckles, his team pass still swinging from a lanyard around his neck.

"I've got it," I said.

"You've got frostbite. I saw your hands." He hoisted the strap onto his shoulder. "Where's it going? Also, are you doing anything after Friday's game? There's a diner off Route 9 that does pancakes until three a.m. My treat."

I opened my mouth, not even sure what I was going to say.

A hand cracked down on Mason's wrist, hard enough to knock his fingers off the handle. The duffel dropped and hit the floor with a clatter of glass bottles.

Jackson stood between us. He'd pulled the IV out. A bead of blood was running down the inside of his elbow.

"The injured need quiet," he said. "Take your flirting somewhere else."

Mason held up both palms. "Dude, I was just carrying a bag."

"Then you're done carrying it."

His eyes flashed amber. Just for a second. But I saw it, and from the way Mason took a step back, so did he.

Blair appeared from the hallway and looped her arm through Jackson's. "Babe, you shouldn't be up—"

He turned his head away from her. Not much. Barely an inch. But it was the same small, involuntary movement someone makes around a smell they can't stand, and her perfume was the only thing in the hallway strong enough to cause it.

She noticed. Her smile stiffened.

Jackson didn't notice her noticing. He was staring at Mason's hand. The one that had touched the strap next to mine.

And suddenly I understood. He didn't want me gone. He wanted me hidden. Out of the record, out of the public report, out of anyone else's reach. Kept somewhere only he knew where to find me.

"You don't get to be jealous of a girl you call worthless," I said.

His gaze snapped to mine.

I picked up the duffel myself and walked away before he could answer.

---

Dale had left Blair's confiscated items in a plastic bin in his office, the way he always did when someone complained about "stolen property." Blair had complained about me twice this week. After I reported the missing risk form, Dale had questioned her and recovered it. My risk form was in there, creased into a tiny square and smelling like vanilla.

I unfolded it at the laundry-room table under the fluorescent light.

The front was exactly how I'd written it. The back wasn't.

Someone had added a line in neat black capitals.

VALE HAS TAKEN "UNDETECTABLE" SUPPRESSANT FOR 7 CONSECUTIVE DAYS. ASK WHO SUPPLIES IT.

My skin went cold, and not from the frostbite.

Seven days. That was before the burn. Before the game. Before anyone could have run a test and caught it.

Someone knew. Someone had watched it happen and chosen to whisper instead of report.

I folded the altered memo, slid it into the inner pocket of my bag, and zipped it shut.

"Why do you smell like him?"

Jackson filled the doorway. He was holding the spare laundry-room key Dale kept on the equipment hook, turning it slowly between his fingers. His T-shirt was untucked, and the dried blood was still on his arm.

"Like who?"

"You know who." His nostrils flared. "Mason. It's all over your sleeve."

"He carried a bag for me for twelve seconds."

"Twelve seconds too long."

I reached into my bag, past the hidden memo, and pulled out the other paper. The one Professor Okafor had printed and countersigned an hour ago. Termination request, hockey program work-study placement, effective end of week.

I held it out to him.

He took it without thinking. Read the first line. Then read it again.

The faint, cocky curve at the corner of his mouth, the one he'd worn since he walked in, slipped and was gone.

"What is this?"

"You wanted distance, Jackson. I'm giving you exactly that."