CADEN

He stopped holding back.

That was the decision. Simple. Final. Ash wanted a real fight, and Caden was done being careful about it.

He came in fast and low and felt Ash read it and adjust, and they hit each other in the middle of the ground with enough force that the watching wolves went audibly sharp all at once. Back and forth across the dirt, neither of them clean, neither of them giving anything free. Ash was quick in a way that kept surprising him, kept finding angles that shouldn't have been there, and moved like someone who'd learnt to fight in spaces where losing wasn't an option.

Caden liked that. He didn't want to like it.

He went for the finish on the next opening and came in too hard from the right. Ash moved to counter, but her boot caught a wet patch of dirt, and she lost her footing.

Caden caught her jacket before she hit the ground.

Momentum did the rest.

They went down together, hard and fast; he got his arm out in time to take the impact, and they rolled once and stopped with Caden's weight fully across Ash's chest, one hand braced in the dirt beside that jaw, knees either side, close enough that their breath hit the same air.

Dead silence on the training ground.

Caden looked down.

Ash looked up.

Neither of them moved.

"Get off," Ash said. Flat. But something underneath it that wasn't flat at all.

Caden didn't move.

He told himself it was because he was making a point about the footing. About how the fall didn't count. That was what he told himself, and it was not entirely a lie, but it was not the whole truth either because the whole truth was that something had happened when they rolled, and he was still working out what.

Ash was softer than expected.

That was the first thing his body registered, and it registered it wrong, registered it in a way that made no sense for a sparring partner, his hands reading something through the uniform that didn't line up with everything else. The chest under his forearm. The way the body beneath him was built. His wolf had gone completely still in a way it only went still when it was paying very close attention.

He looked at Ash's face.

The jaw. The mouth. That lower lip was slightly swollen from where it had caught something in the second exchange, the skin there dark pink and soft-looking in a way that made something in the back of his head go very quiet and very focused all at once.

What.

He moved his eyes up. Ash was watching him with those grey eyes and an expression that was working hard to stay neutral and not entirely succeeding, something moving underneath it that Ash clearly didn't want him to see.

The scent hit him again.

This close, it was everywhere. Under the dirt and the cold air and the sweat of the fight, something else entirely, something that had been sitting wrong in his memory since the courtyard and was now sitting very wrong in a way that pulled at him low and specific and insistent.

His wolf shoved forward so hard he felt it in his back teeth.

What is that?

He'd smelt thousands of wolves. He had a catalogue in his head going back to childhood, every pack he'd visited, every alpha he'd met, every wolf he'd trained beside. He knew what male wolves smelt like. He knew the specific register of it, the particular weight.

This wasn't that.

This was something else underneath the mask of it. Something that his wolf was trying to climb toward and his brain kept refusing to finish the sentence about.

"Get off," Ash said again. Different this time. Tighter.

Caden realised he'd been staring at the mouth again.

He stood up.

Got off the ground and put distance between them and stood there with his heart doing something it had no business doing after a training trial, and his wolf still pressed hard against the inside of his chest like it wanted to go back.

Ash got up. Slower than usual. Didn't look at him directly.

"What are you doing?" Ash said.

"Fight's over." Caden kept his voice level. He was proud of that. "You slipped. I caught you. Doesn't count."

"So what, it's a draw?"

"It's nothing." He picked up his jacket from the ground. "Come back when you can shift. We'll finish it properly then."

Something moved through Ash's expression. Fast. Gone before he could read it.

"Right," Ash said.

Caden turned to walk off the ground.

He took three steps and stopped.

Turned back.

He didn't plan what came out next. It arrived from somewhere his better judgement hadn't approved.

"Do yourself a favour." He kept his eyes forward, not on Ash. "Shower before I get back to the dorm; you still reek."

He walked off the ground.

Behind him he heard Ash say nothing.

He kept walking and got himself to the far side of the training ground and stood there with his back to the field and his hand pressed flat against the stone wall and tried to run a straight line of thought from beginning to end but couldn't.

What was that?

Not the fight. The fight he understood. The fight was the first genuinely interesting thing that had happened to him since arriving at Vordrak, and he'd think about it differently later.

The other thing.

The softness he'd felt. The mouth he'd looked at twice. The scent that was wrong in a way that was starting to feel less like wrong and more like something he didn't have the right word for yet.

He didn't like boys.

He'd never liked boys.

He'd been certain about that.

His wolf pressed forward again, slow and insistent, and somewhere in the back of his head a thought started forming that he refused to let finish.

He pushed off the wall.

Walked back toward the dormitory block and told himself, firmly, that he was tired. That the lunar pull was messing with his instincts. That whatever had just happened on that training ground was a product of proximity and adrenaline and nothing else.

His wolf didn't agree.

His wolf wanted to go back.

His wolf wanted to press its nose to that neck and stay there until it figured out what that smell was, until it placed it and until it knew.

Caden walked faster.

Get it together.

He had a shower to take and a training record to update and absolutely no business thinking about his roommate's mouth.

None.

He was almost convinced.

NOVA

The shower was the first good thing in two days.

Hot water, real pressure, nobody needing anything from her. She stood under it with her eyes closed and let it run over the cut on her lip and the bruise building along her left shoulder and told herself she'd earned this ten minutes.

The problem was that the ten minutes kept filling up with things she hadn't invited.

His weight.

That was what kept coming back. Not the technique, not the footwork, not even the part where she'd dropped him in front of sixty witnesses. Just the moment after. Ground under her spine and his body across her chest, and that face close enough that she could see the exact grain of his jaw. The way he'd looked at her mouth. The half second where neither of them moved, and the whole training ground ceased to exist.

She pressed her palm flat against the tile.

Stop.

Her wolf had been loud since the training ground. Continuously, relentlessly loud.

He's our mate.

I know.

He smells like -

I know what he smells like. She turned on the water cooler. Stood in it until her skin went tight. Sit down and stay there.

Being Alpha was why she was here. Not for him. Not for whatever disaster her instincts had decided to throw themselves toward. She was here for a title her father said she couldn't earn and a promise she'd made to a dying woman who deserved better than what her life had been.

Caden Voss was a problem she couldn't afford.

She turned the water off.

Grabbed the towel, wrapped it across her chest, and tucked the corner. Stepped out into the steam. Her cropped hair dripped cold water down the back of her neck, and she breathed and was fine.

Completely fine.

Then the dorm room door flung open.

She went still.

His footstep. She'd learnt the weight of it without meaning to, that specific rhythm. He'd gone running after the trial. She'd counted on thirty more minutes, at least.

She grabbed the scent mask from the shelf quickly. One drop on her wrist, one on her throat. Rubbed it in fast, just fast enough before the bathroom door swung open.

*****************************************************************************************************************

CADEN

He'd run six miles, and it hadn't touched it.

That was the problem. He'd pushed hard, longer than usual, waiting for the point where everything simplified down to breath and pace and the ground under his feet – the point where the body got loud enough that everything else went quiet.

It didn't happen.

Because everything else was Ash Darvin's face two inches from his own on the training ground, the feel of a soft body, full lips and something that didn't make sense under his hands and a scent that had followed him the entire six miles, no matter how fast he went.

He pushed through the dorm room door and headed straight for the bathroom and was already pulling at his training shirt when he stopped.

Steam.

And in the middle of it, Ash. Towel-wrapped from chest to mid-thigh, cropped hair dripping, water still tracking down a collarbone that his eyes moved across before he'd permitted them to.

He looked at the wall. Looked back.

Ash was watching him with an expression that was working hard to stay neutral and not managing it fully.

He leaned against the doorframe.

"First time I've seen a guy wrap a towel like that."

"Yeah." "Now you have."

He should leave it there. That was what he should do.

"Mind getting out?"

"I'm not done."

"I'm not waiting." Something pushed the next part out before he'd cleared it. "Unless you want to share."

He watched the colour move up Ash's throat.

Slow. Then fast. Cheeks were going pink under the steam, which made no sense, which was deeply interesting, which made him take one step into the bathroom before he'd decided to.

His wolf was at the surface again. Pressing. That same insistent thing it had been doing since the courtyard on day one, only closer now, only stronger, only worse because the steam had made everything more concentrated, and that scent was everywhere, and his brain was still refusing to finish the sentence it kept starting.

He moved closer.

Ash held a position. He'd give that to them. Whatever was happening in those grey eyes, the feet didn't move.

"You're red," Caden said. He kept his voice even. "Why? What are you afraid of, Ash?" He looked at the face in front of him, the jaw, the mouth, and the skin that didn't look like any of the other sixty wolves in this building. "We're both men. Nothing you've got that I haven't seen." He tilted his head. His eyes moved across the jaw again, down briefly, back up. "Though you don't look like most guys."

Something shifted in Ash's eyes.

"Don't be ridiculous."

"Smoother skin." He said it like an observation because it was one. "Something different around the -"

Ash moved sideways. Sharp. Heading for the door.

He reached out without thinking, and his hand found the edge of the towel, and with one pull, the tuck gave way.

NOVA

Her hand went up before she decided to move it.

Flat against his face, palm over his eyes, and then her body followed the momentum, and she was against his chest. Wet skin on warm skin. The towel was still in her other hand, both fists locked around it, knuckles aching from how hard she was holding on.

Caden didn't move.

Not a flinch, not a step back, not a single thing. He just went still under her hand, the way something goes still when it's paying very close attention.

His chest was hot. She'd expected that after a run, but felt it was different. She was cold from the shower, still dripping, her hair flat against her neck, and everywhere she touched him, the heat came through, and her body moved toward it without asking her first.

Don't, she thought.

Her wolf didn't think anything. Her wolf had stopped being verbal about it and gone somewhere quiet and specific and was just pressing itself toward him one slow inch at a time, like it thought she wouldn't notice.

She noticed.

"Don't look," she said. Her voice was wrong. Too high, too thin, nothing like the voice she'd been using for the last two days. "Just. Keep them closed."

He said nothing.

His hands were at his sides. She could feel the exact effort it was taking him to keep them there, something held back in how his arms sat, tension she could read through his chest.

Water dripped from her hair onto his collarbone. She watched it run down and away and told herself to step back but didn't.

"Ash."

Low. Her false name in his mouth sounded different up close. Like he was testing the weight of it.

"I know you're not moving your hand."

"I know that."

"You're also not moving."

"I know that too."

His chest rose. Fell. That slow, careful breathing of someone managing themselves. She could feel his heartbeat under her palm where it rested against his face, or maybe that was her own pulse; she genuinely couldn't tell anymore.

The steam from the shower still hung in the air around them. The bathroom was small on a normal day. Right now, it was about the size of her own heartbeat.

"Tell me to go," he said.

She said nothing.

"Ash. Tell me to go, and I'll go."

Her forehead dropped. She didn't mean to let it happen; it just did, gravity making the decision her brain kept refusing to make, and it came to rest against his collarbone, and she felt him pull in one sharp breath and hold it.

Neither of them moved for a long moment.

Then his hands came up.

Slow. So slow she could have stopped it at any point. Both hands settled at her waist over the towel, barely in contact, the kind of touch that was asking a question instead of taking something.

She didn't stop it.

The shaking got worse. She felt it in her own hands, against his face, against his chest – her whole body doing something she couldn't control and didn't know how to name.

This is how it ends, some part of her said. Day two. You made it to day two at least.

Her wolf pressed forward so hard her ribs ached with it.

******************************************************************************************

CADEN

Her forehead was against his chest, and he couldn't see anything, and both of those facts were doing something to him he hadn't been prepared for.

He'd had his hands at his sides. He'd kept them there on purpose, deliberately, because she was afraid and shaking and the last thing he wanted was to be one more thing she couldn't manage. But staying still had its own cost, and he was paying it with every breath.

When his hands moved, he felt her go rigid.

He kept them where they were. Just that. Just the lightest contact at her waist, feeling the terry cloth under his palms and, underneath it, the shape of her, and his wolf went so still it was almost silence.

He knew that stillness.

He'd felt it once in his life before, standing in his father's council room at nineteen years old, when the old alpha looked at him and said, 'You're ready,' and something in him had just known it was true. That specific, total certainty. No argument, no question.

His wolf felt that now.

About her.

About whatever she was hiding under the mask and the past days of careful deflection, whatever she was that didn't match what she'd told him, whoever she actually was that his hands and his nose and some part of him that predated thinking had been trying to tell him since the first day in the courtyard.

He kept his eyes closed.

She hadn't asked him to anymore, but he kept them closed because she needed him to, and that fact alone was doing something to the inside of his chest that he was going to need to think about later when she wasn't pressed against him, shaking.

"Ash," he said. Quiet. Just her name.

Her fingers curled slightly against his face. That cold hand is going warm now where it touched him.

He turned his head, just slightly, just enough that his jaw brushed her knuckles.

Felt her breath catch against his chest.

Heard the small sound she swallowed before it could get out.

His hands tightened at her waist. Not pulling. Just there. Just present. Saying something he didn't have words for yet and wasn't sure he was supposed to say.

The steam thinned around them.

Her heartbeat was going fast against his chest, faster than the shaking, faster than her breathing, and it matched something in him that had no business matching anything.

He turned his face a little more.

His lips were close to her knuckles now. Not touching. Just close, just that, and he felt her whole body register it, felt the small shiver move through her that she tried to stop and couldn't.

"Who are you?" he said against her hand.

Just asking. Quietly. Like he already knew the answer and was giving her the chance to say it first.

She didn't say anything.

Her forehead pressed harder against his chest.

One of her hands was still flat over his eyes. The other had found the hem of his shorts without either of them appearing to decide that was happening, her fingers curled against the fabric there, holding on.

He stood in the dark behind her palm and felt her against him and thought about the training ground and the dorm room and the courtyard on day one and every moment in between where something had been slightly wrong in a way that was starting to feel entirely right.

"You can tell me," he said.

Nothing.

Just her breath and her heartbeat and her cold wet hair against his chin and both her hands on him now, one over his eyes and one at his shirt, and neither of them are going anywhere.

"Okay," he said.

He meant it. Okay. Whatever this was, whatever she was, wherever this was going.

His thumbs moved slightly at her waist. Just that. Just a small back and forth against the towel, barely any movement at all.

She made a sound.

Tiny. Swallowed almost instantly. But he heard it.

His wolf slammed forward.

He held it back by sheer force and stood there breathing carefully and waited for her to decide what happened next.