The Hockey Playing Alpha and His Human Ice Princess

Georgia

Everyone acted like nothing happened, which somehow felt worse than if they’d admitted it.

I barely sleep. I lie awake most of the night replaying the golden eyes at the tree line, the impossible stillness of that shadow, Mandi’s pale, unreadable face waiting in the doorway of our dorm like she’d known exactly where I’d been the whole time. By the time morning comes, gray light creeping in around the curtains, I’ve built up a whole list of questions I intend to ask, and not one of them feels like it’s going to get me anywhere.

I try anyway.

”Last night.” I watch Mandi’s face carefully over breakfast. ”The sounds. What was that?”

”What sounds?” she deflects, not even looking up from her toast, her voice light and easy, exactly the same tone she used for coyotes weeks ago.

”You know what sounds. You were waiting for me in the doorway like you knew something was wrong.”

For half a second, something in her face slips, a flicker of strain around her eyes before the smoothness slides back into place, quick and practiced, like a door pulled shut. ”I was worried about you being out that late. That’s all,” she says, finally looking at me, her expression so carefully composed, so evenly reassuring, that it almost works. Almost. ”You scared me, disappearing like that.”

”Mandi,” I press.

”Eat your breakfast,” she says, gentle but firm, already turning the conversation elsewhere, already asking me something about a reading assignment due next week. I let her, mostly because I already know from experience that pushing harder isn’t going to crack anything open that she’s decided to keep closed.

It isn’t just Mandi, either. The whole campus feels different this morning, subtly wrong in a way I can’t quite pin down, everyone moving through their normal routines like the entire previous night simply didn’t happen. Nobody mentions the cancelled events. Nobody mentions the eerie stillness, the empty paths, whatever kept every single student indoors after dark. It’s like some unspoken agreement has settled over the whole school, a collective decision to pretend nothing at all was strange about last night, and somehow that pretending unsettles me more than if everyone had just admitted something was wrong.

I find Alexa in the hallway before first period, and the second I see her face, I know something’s off with her too. She looks exhausted in a way that goes beyond just tired, dark circles pressed deep beneath her eyes, her usual careful warmth dimmed down to something thin and stretched, like she’s running on fumes and doing her best not to show it.

”Rough night?” I ask, watching her closely.

”Didn’t sleep well,” she offers, a small smile not quite reaching her eyes the way her smiles usually do.

”Me neither,” I admit.

Something flickers across her face at that, quick and gone, but she doesn’t ask why, doesn’t press for details the way I half expect her to given how perceptive she usually is about everything else. She just nods, like she already knows exactly why I didn’t sleep either, and doesn’t need me to explain it out loud.

I notice the scratches walking to class. A boy in my hallway has three thin, parallel marks along his forearm, mostly hidden beneath his rolled-up sleeve, the skin around them still pink and raised, hours-fresh at most. A girl by the water fountain has something similar on the back of her hand, faint but visible, positioned exactly where a hand might land bracing against something that fought back. Not accidents. Not scattered coincidence. The placement is too precise, the timing too uniform, like whatever caused them moved through the dormitories in a single night and touched only some of us.

Puck arrives to class late, sliding into his seat just as the bell finishes ringing, and the second I see him I forget almost everything else I’ve been cataloging all morning.

There’s a mark along his jaw, dark and raw looking, the kind of injury that should still be swollen and painful this early after whatever caused it. It sits at the same angle, the same fresh, angry color as the marks on the boy’s forearm, the girl’s hand, and something cold settles into place at the back of my mind before I can stop it. He catches me staring and offers the explanation before I can even ask for it.

”Hockey,” he says, flat, dismissive, already reaching for his notebook like the subject’s closed.

It’s obviously a lie. I know it the instant it leaves his mouth, some certainty settling into my chest that has nothing to do with actual evidence and everything to do with the two months I’ve spent learning exactly how he holds himself when he’s telling the truth versus when he isn’t. His jaw is too tight. His eyes won’t quite meet mine. And there’s no practice scheduled for early enough this morning to have produced a mark that fresh.

I don’t say anything during class. I sit there instead, watching him from the corner of my eye, cataloging the mark, the stiffness in his shoulders, the way he answers exactly one question the whole period and otherwise keeps his head down over his notes like he’s trying to disappear into them.

When the bell finally rings, I catch him before he can slip out with everyone else, falling into step beside him in the crowded hallway until we reach a quieter stretch near the stairwell.

”That’s not from hockey,” I say, my voice quiet and direct, leaving no room for him to deflect the way everyone else at this school seems to manage so effortlessly.

He goes very still.

Not just pausing, not just hesitating the way anyone might when caught in a lie. Completely still, his whole body locking up the same way it did that very first day on the cobblestones, some deep, coiled tension settling into every line of him.

”Georgia,” he warns, his voice low and rough, and it takes me a second to realize it’s the first time he’s ever actually used my first name out loud, no clipped formality, no careful distance. Just my name, said like it costs him something. ”Drop it.”

It lands like a warning. I don’t fully understand what it’s warning me away from, not yet, but I feel the weight of it anyway, settling cold and heavy somewhere beneath my ribs, a warning I don’t have the context to properly heed and can’t quite bring myself to ignore either.