Chapter 94: Growing feelings...

My heart was pounding so hard I could hear it in my ear. I was in trouble.

"I understand," I choked out, my throat incredibly dry. "Thanks, Vance."

I hung up before he could ask anything else, dropping my hand to my side. I stood there in the quiet of my apartment, my reflection staring back at me from the dark television screen.

Growing feelings.

I let out a shaky, bitter laugh, burying my face in both hands. It was supposed to be a temporary arrangement.

I was just supposed to keep humoring Reid so he doesn’t spill my secret, and then I decided to help so he doesn’t end up ruining his hockey career.

But just over three days, Reid McCoy had managed to worm his way entirely under my skin, leaving me with a terrifying side effect of his gentleness.

Honestly, it would have been so much better if I just hadn’t found out. Ignorance was a luxury I had just stripped away from myself with a few frantic keystrokes.

A sharp, breathy sound escaped my throat—a laugh that felt entirely hollow and slightly unhinged. It was comical, really. It was so absurdly ridiculous that I just wanted to sit on my couch and keep laughing until my lungs burned.

For years, I had successfully navigated a brutal, hyper-masculine league, skating circles around Alphas who thought they were God’s gift to the ice, all while keeping my real secondary gender locked behind an impenetrable wall of iron will and black-market chemicals.

And yet, it only took three days in a luxurious penthouse with Reid McCoy to completely shatter the illusion.

I couldn’t even deny it. I wanted to, desperately, but I knew that just denying it wouldn’t make the terrifying warmth pooling in my chest feel any less real.

It wouldn’t stop my pulse from hammering against my ribs at the mere memory of his hands. I had spent too much damn time with him over the last seventy-two hours to dismiss this as nothing. I had let him hold me. I had breathed him in. I had literally pressed my lips to his skin while he slept, acting on a primal impulse I didn’t even realize was taking over.

But then, the familiar, cold pragmatism that had kept me alive this long started to settle back over my senses.

I had pretended to be a Beta all my life. It was my default state. I was an expert at burying my true nature, at acting unbothered, at locking my secrets away in boxes and tossing the key. If I could fool the entire world, the media, my family and my own teammates every single day, I could handle this.

My plan was simple: I would just pretend I never found this out. I would bury the search history—thankfully it was a private tab—ignore the tightening in my chest, and treat it like a glitch in the system.

More importantly, I had to ensure Reid never found out.

If that arrogant rookie realized that his heavy, suffocating scent had actually managed to trigger a biological dependency in me—that my sudden attachment and frayed nerves were a direct result of his pheromones overriding my system—he would use it to completely tear down my boundaries.

He already pushed his luck every single chance he got. If he found out he had this kind of hold over me, I would lose the upper hand entirely.

I took a deep, steadying breath, consciously forcing my shoulders to drop and my posture to straighten into the rigid, unbreakable frame of the team Captain.

I was Kain Evans. I wasn’t going to let a little biological coding and a few days of shared heat ruin the life I had built.

If Reid wanted a fight for control, I would give him one—but he would never, ever know he was already winning.

I grabbed a duffel bag and stuffed it with my clothes, making sure to pack a generous supply of my own underwear.

I’d been going entirely without it under Reid’s oversized sweatpants since my arrival, a fact that had kept me on a constant, hyper-aware edge every time he looked at me and grabbed my ass.

I wasn’t going to wear his clothes or be subject to his suffocating scent for a second longer than necessary.

With my armor packed, I made my way back to the penthouse.

The moment I stepped through the front door, I was met with the rowdy, chaotic shouting of five grown men living the absolute best of their sorry lives.

Russo and Miller were glued to the massive television screen, aggressively smashing buttons on console controllers, while the others shouted unhelpful commentary from the couch, surrounded by empty takeout containers.

But my eyes instantly drifted past them toward the bedroom. It seemed like they had managed to get Reid there without breaking his second leg, thankfully.

Reid was completely out. The heavy-duty pain medication Jax had administered before leaving had finally knocked him out cold.

He was entirely dead to the world, a deep, rhythmic rise and fall to his chest proving that not even the thunderous noise of five hockey players screaming at a video game could wake him.

"Look who finally decided to grace us with his presence," Russo cheered, not taking his eyes off the screen as he executed a combo. "We thought you finally lost it and decided to skip town, Cap."

"I told you I was getting my things," I said, dropping my duffel bag by the entryway and keeping my voice level, hiding the fact that my heart had done a stupid, involuntary flutter the second I confirmed Reid was still here.

Miller scoffed, leaning back against the sofa cushions with a teasing, shit-eating grin. "Yeah, well, you should’ve hurried. Your golden boy over there has been putting on a show."

I froze, my guard instantly going up. "What are you talking about?"

"McCoy," Peter chimed in, pointing a beer bottle toward the bedroom. "Man was practically weeping into his pillows ten minutes after you left. Kept muttering, ’Where’d he go? Where’s Evans?’ in this pathetic, half-asleep growl. Seriously, Cap, he’s been calling out for you in his sleep like a long-lost housewife."

The guys all broke out into a chorus of rowdy barking and laughing. I felt a sudden, dangerous spike of heat rush up my neck. Calling for me? Was his Alpha instinct reaching out because I had abruptly pulled my presence away?

This is dangerous.

I squeezed my fists inside my pockets, forcing my expression into a look of sheer, unbothered captain-level discipline.

I couldn’t let them see a single crack, or they’d never let this go. This is exactly how rumors start and it’ll get to the heart of the locker room where it’ll fly through everyone’s mouth, and I wasn’t about to let a fake dating rumor about me and my rookie spread through the franchise.

"He’s pumped full of heavy-duty narcotics, you idiots," I brushed it off with a sharp, dismissive roll of my eyes, crossing my arms over my chest. "He probably thinks I’m his childhood nanny. Don’t flatter yourselves thinking he knows who any of us are right now."

I walked over to the kitchen island, deliberately stepping between them and the bedroom door.

"And turn that damn volume down. You shouldn’t be disturbing a recovering patient. He needs the rest if he’s going to be back on the ice by next Monday."