Chapter 2 - Zane

I shift my weight from foot to foot, fists clenched as I stare across the ring. The pack center gym smells like sweat and worn leather—familiar scents that should help me focus, but today, they don’t.

I should never have let Byron talk me into taking spars with the team. Ever since I started, it’s felt like a disaster waiting to happen.

Rafael drops into his fighting stance, feet planted firmly on the mat opposite me.

“You ready, Zane?” His voice cuts through the fog of my mind, steady and confident.

I grunt in response, flexing both of my hands, then balling them into fists again. Under my feet, the floor seems to tilt, and I realize I’m not taking in a lot of oxygen. I try to breathe and almost do it.

The light overhead keeps flickering. On-off. I see my kid brother’s narrow face in the darkness, lit by his computer screen; his tired eyes ringed with exhaustion. On-off. My hometown slides out of sight over the curve of the horizon like it never existed. On-off. The woman I love staggers against the wall like a puppet with its strings cut.

“Zane, you in this?”

Rafael’s voice almost snaps me back to the present, but I’m already halfway lost in the past.

I square my shoulders and force a nod. “Yeah. I’m here.”

Rafael narrows his eyes, clearly not convinced, but he doesn’t press. He lunges forward, throwing a quick jab. I dodge it without thinking, my body moving on autopilot. My mind? My mind’s not here. It’s back there. It’s somewhere, floating up and away, and I can’t find it to drag it back.

Maisie. Those soft eyes, the way she looked at me that night by the lake. The hope in her voice when she asked me to come home with her.

God, I hate myself for what I did. A small, embittered part of me hates Maisie, too, hates her for how beautiful she was in the moonlight, how when she spoke to me it was like music in the cold night air. How I almost called her the wrong name when I smelled the booze on her breath.

Tessa.

Her name is like a bruise I can’t stop pressing.

I can still hear her laugh when I close my eyes—high and sweet when she was sober but sharp and dangerous when she was drunk. I remember the way she’d stumble into our apartment after a night out, eyes glassy, reeking of cheap vodka. How eventually, the nights out stopped, and she drank in our home all hours of the day and night, perched on the kitchen island like a bird of prey with one hand wrapped around the neck of a bottle like it was a threat. I’d try to help her on the bad nights, try to get her to bed, but she’d push me away, slurring insults, starting fights.

The arguments always played out the same way. I’d beg her to stop drinking, to get help, to be the girl I fell in love with again. She’d laugh at first, and then she’d lash out without warning as if a switch had been flipped. Throw things at me. Yell. She wasn’t herself when she drank. She became someone else, someone I couldn’t save.

I’m back there now, trapped in the memory of one of our worst nights. Tessa had come home at four, stumbling through the door, eyes wild. I’d been waiting up, the tension gnawing at me, my stomach churning with worry.

When she finally staggered inside, her clothes reeking of alcohol and smoke, I knew it was going to be another fight.

“Where the hell have you been?” I demanded, stepping toward her. The fear had been eating at me all night, mixing with frustration. She’d ignored all my calls.

I reached for her, tried to steady her, but she slapped my hand away.

“Don’t touch me!” she slurred, her voice thick with venom. “I don’t need your help, Zane. I’m fine. I’m always fine.”

“You’re drunk again, Tess. You promised you’d stop.” My voice cracked under the force of all her broken promises.

She laughed, a cruel, hollow sound. “You’re such a damn boy scout. Always trying to save me. Newsflash, Zane, I don’t want to be saved.”

I clenched my fists, trying to keep calm. “I just want you to be okay.”

Her face twisted in anger. Before I could react, she lunged at me, shoving me hard in the chest. I stumbled back, barely catching myself.

“I don’t need you!” she screamed, grabbing a bottle from the counter and hurling it at me. It shattered against the wall, glass raining down on both of us, glinting in the light. Beer splattered against the ceiling and a moment later, something wet dripped from my temple down into my eye.

A fist connects with my jaw. Pain explodes in my face, and I stagger, tasting blood.

Rafael pulls back, his eyes wide with concern.

“Shit, Zane!” he says, lowering his fists. “Where’s your head at?”

I blink, trying to clear the mist. My heart’s pounding, my breath coming in ragged gasps. I can still see Tessa’s face, still hear the sound of glass breaking. And overlaid with it, Maisie’s voice. The way she looked up at me that day. I crushed her like a butterfly in a wheel.

“Sorry,” I mutter, wiping blood from my lip. “I wasn’t paying attention.”

“No kidding.” Rafael’s voice doesn’t soften. I like to think he respects me too much for that. “You’re not yourself today. Want to take a break?”

I shake my head, clenching my fists tighter. A break is the last thing I need. I need a lot of things, but I don’t need a fucking break.

“Let’s go again,” I say, wiping the blood from my split lip. “I’m fine.”

Rafael hesitates, but after a moment, he nods and steps back into position.

I roll my shoulders, trying to shake off the lingering effects of the flashback. I need to focus.

When my brother and I were kids, neither one of us was a fighter. It informed what we grew up into—he a hacker and I a swindler, a notorious conman, a sweet-talker with a chip on his shoulder. Really, it’s ironic and it’s sad, but my first relationship was my first real experience of learning how to fight.

If I can reclaim fighting from her, I think, I’ll have one more thing back from that time in my life. It won’t belong to her anymore.

At the side of the ring, Ado cues us to begin.

Rafael circles me, light on his feet. I adjust my stance, forcing my focus onto him, onto the present. I’ve got to win this. Not just the spar but the battle in my head.

Rafael’s quick, his footwork sharp, but I see an opening and lunge. He sidesteps, throwing a punch that grazes my ribs.

The pain barely registers—just a flicker of sensation at the edge of my mind. I can’t feel anything. I counter with a right hook that connects solidly with his jaw.

He grunts, stepping back, and I press forward, sweeping into his space with brutal insistence I learned the hard way. I’m fighting more than Rafael right now. I’m fighting ghosts, fighting everyone who’s ever kicked the shit out of me. Fighting Tessa. Fighting myself.

Rafael rights himself and comes at me with a low kick, trying to sweep my legs out from under me, but I leap over it and slam a fist into his side. He grunts again, this time more winded. I see him stagger.

The rational part of me knows I should ease up now. This is a spar, not a fight.

But I drive forward without thinking, knocking Rafael off balance. He stumbles back, his feet sliding across the mat, and before he can recover, I hit him with an uppercut. His head snaps back, and his body follows, crashing into the edge of the ring. He goes down hard, hitting the floor on one knee with a dull thud.

For a split second, I think it’s over. I’ve won. But then Rafael moves, trying to get back up. His lips are moving, but I can’t hear anything.

Instinct kicks in, and I’m on him again, my fists moving faster than my mind. I hear the thud of each punch, feel the impact vibrating through my knuckles, but I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop.

Rafael tries to block me, his arms coming up defensively, but I’m relentless. Somewhere, someone is yelling. I think it might be me.

Sensation rushes in all at once as I slam him against the stack of weight plates at the edge of the gym. The metal clatters as his head connects with them, a sickening crack that echoes through the room.

He groans, disoriented, his hands flailing as he tries to regain his balance.

“Zane!”

Ado’s voice cuts through the red haze, and suddenly, he’s there, grabbing me by the arms and pulling me off Rafael. I resist at first, my body still wired for the fight, but then Ado’s grip tightens, and he shakes me hard enough to snap me out of it.

“Zane, that’s enough!” Ado barks in my ear, his voice sharp with authority.

I blink, the world slowly coming back into view around me.

Rafael’s on the ground, clutching his head, dazed and disoriented. His face is drawn and confused. Blood trickles sluggishly from his temple, where he must’ve hit the weight plates—where I threw him against the weight plates.

His eyes are unfocused, and he’s mumbling something under his breath.

Shit.

“Get Maisie!” Ado shouts to someone across the gym. I flinch at the sound of her name. “Go cool off, Zane. Go, now. Go.”

He’s shoving me from the room already, but I don’t need to be told again. I turn and storm out of the gym, barely registering the world around me. I think Bigby is there, but I can’t be sure. I still can’t hear much over the ringing in my ears, the pounding in my head of the pulse I can’t slow.

I stalk toward the pack center’s exit, toward the glow of sunlight outside of the doors. It’s Summer now. With how things have felt for the last few weeks, I’d not noticed it happening around me, sweeping in like a tide to raise all things around me to new green heights.

None of it seems important. None of it matters.

Aris passes me on my way out, phone wedged between his shoulder and his ear. I expect him to ignore me, but he grabs my shoulder hard in his hand and halts me.

“Sort your head out,” he says slowly and clearly, with all the eerie prescience of a threat. He stares past me into the distance, eyes so hard with promise that I think in another life, he must have single-handedly waged wars. If Rafael were any more hurt than he is, I know he’d tear into me right here, figuratively and literally.

I open my mouth to retort, then can’t find the words. What can I say to him? You’re not my Alpha. You don’t control me. I didn’t choose you.

But he is. And I did.

I lived as a rogue for so long that I forgot what being part of a pack felt like. And I know that if tomorrow, I had to leave this place, I’d survive it. I’d survive anything—I’ve always done what I needed to do to keep going.

None of that changes the fact that the prospect of leaving Rosecreek makes me feel sick.

As if he can sense what’s going on in my head, Aris lets go of me and passes me by. Like a ghost, I drift into the sunlight, then disappear up the street, looking only to get as far as possible from this place.

I don’t see Maisie. For that, I’m glad.