Axel

I do not want to go to Evalyn’s office. But the cut on my face still hasn’t healed, so Coach is forcing me to see her. The cut on my face is still actively bleeding, although it’s not as intense as it was during the game. Contrary to the myths, wolves don’t heal instantly.

Especially when the thing they’ve been hit in the face with is infused with silver.

It was a pain in the ass to keep playing after that human fucker took a swing at me. I spent half of the game blinking blood out of my eye, and the other half wiping my chin with my jersey. But I had to finish. If I didn’t finish, I wouldn’t get paid. And I need to get paid.

As I make my way through the locker room, I briefly consider just going to the hospital. But then I glance down at myself and think better of it. I’m absolutely covered in blood. My jersey, my face…there’s even blood on my knees. I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself than I need to out there.

Although maybe I don’t have to see Evalyn at all. Maybe Kiki can handle my bleeding face. I’m standing outside the medic office, trying to figure out how to swing that, when I hear a voice behind me. “Boy, are you gonna stand out there all night?”

I turn to see Kiki standing in the doorway in her hot pink scrubs. I walk into the waiting area of the office and try to look as pathetic as possible. “I’m wondering if you can fix me up,” I say.

“Oh, really?” Kiki smirks at me. She sees right through my act, and we both know it. So I try a different tactic.

I turn on the charm and give her a crooked grin. “Come on,” I say. “I’ll owe you a drink if you do it.”

Kiki grins. Then she steps closer and looks at the cut on my temple. “As tempting as that offer is,” she says, “I don’t do stitches. You’ll need the doctor for that.”

The door to Evalyn’s office slams open, and I turn to face her cold gaze. We stare at each other.

“Well, are you coming in or not?” she says. I swear even her voice is glaring at me.

I frown at her. “I don’t need your help if you’re gonna be like this about it.”

“That’s fine by me,” Evalyn snaps.

Kiki rolls her eyes. “What is it with you two?”

I turn my frown to her. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Evie’s over here acting like she didn’t freak the hell out when you got hurt. She even tried to get Coach Walsh to—”

“Thank you, Kiki,” Evalyn says brusquely. “I’ll take it from here.”

Kiki just smirks. “Take good care of this one, Evie,” she says. “It’d be a pity if anything messed up that perfect face of his.” She pats me on my back and shoves me toward Evalyn.

When I step inside her office, I’m hit by a wave of sugar and violets. My eyes practically roll back in my head, and I stifle a moan. I don’t know why her scent is still so powerful to me. It shouldn’t be. I rejected her. I give my head a tiny shake.

Evalyn gestures for me to sit on the table, and I obey silently. She’s already prepared a tray with stitches, needles, scissors, and a tube of ointment. She sits on a rolling stool and scoots closer. She frowns for a moment when she realizes how much taller I still am, and then she gets up to adjust the height of the stool. I can’t help but stifle a grin.

She sits back down, and I try not to stare at her while she puts her gloves on. She looks so…professional. In her green scrubs and her protective glasses, she’s exactly the woman I knew she could be. Back when we first met and she talked about being a doctor, she had been so bashful about it, so unsure. She told me she wondered if she was tough enough to handle the job. Now, as she leans over to pull a stack of alcohol wipes out of a drawer, I have no doubt she’s tough enough. I may have only spent one night with her, but I can see how far she’s come.

Evalyn rips open a packet of large alcohol wipes and leans forward to run them over my cheek. They’re cold, and it stings when they get close to my cut, but I almost don’t notice, because I’m too busy trying not to stare at the glimpse of golden skin I see inside Evalyn’s shirt. To be honest, I’ve been trying not to stare at her body all week. Even in her (disappointingly) loose scrubs, I can still tell that her figure is fuller, curvier than it was seven years ago.

I noticed it the first second I saw her in the locker room, and I’ve noticed it every second since then. All week, I’ve caught glimpses of her sitting at her desk in the medic office, walking through the locker room to chat with Blake in his office, eating lunch with Kiki and Blake, sitting in the stands. Something in my chest is aware of where she is at all times.

Something in my chest and in my pants.

She leans forward to clean the cut on the side of my head, and I catch another whiff of her scent. My wolf is practically drooling.

Which seriously doesn’t make sense. My rejection should have cut off my sharpened senses toward her. But if anything, the time apart has only magnified her draw.

She has to lean in close to stitch up the wound, closer than we’ve been since she came back into my life. I glance at her face, but her brown eyes are shuttered. I try not to wince as the needle enters my skin. It’s not supposed to hurt. I’m a fucking wolf. But silver can do a real number on our skin.

I control my breathing as Evalyn slowly closes up the cut. I have to, because of both the pain and the proximity. She finally finishes and snips off the ends of the threads. Then she squeezes some ointment out of the tube and rubs it gently over the cut.

In this moment, I hate her gloves. I desperately want her bare fingers on my skin. I have a feeling that her touch sliding along my cut would heal me better than any ointment would.

It’s over too soon. She backs away and pulls her gloves off. I look at her, so professional, so efficient. I suddenly wonder why the hell she’s here.

“Why did you take this job?” I blurt out.

She gives me a blank look and then crosses to the sink. She scrubs her hands a little too vigorously. “Why do you play such a bloody sport?” she fires back. She shuts the water off and yanks a paper towel out of the dispenser.

I can’t hide the smirk on my face. “What? Can’t handle a little blood?” I tease.

When Evalyn whips around to face me, there’s so much hatred in her eyes that it knocks the wind out of me. It’s like I’ve been punched in the stomach. When she speaks, her voice is deadly, quiet and deliberate.

“I have gone through more pain than you can ever imagine,” she says. Her eyes are burning into me. “You have no idea what I can and cannot handle.”

I frown. Is she talking about med school? I imagine that would have been hard, but not painful. “What does that mean?” I ask.

Evalyn closes her eyes. “Nothing,” she says. “It means nothing.”

I stand up from the table. “I guess I’ll go, then?”

Her eyes snap up to glare at me, and she crosses her arms. “Yeah, go. Rush off. Like you always do.”

The words shoot pain through my chest, and my jaw clenches. “I did not run off,” I say.

She raises her eyebrows. “Oh, are we doing this? Are we actually having this conversation?”

She looks at me. She has no idea what happened that night, so she doesn’t get to act like she’s the only one who was hurt. Suddenly I feel a wall slam down inside of me, and I’m furious with her. “No, we’re not having this conversation,” I growl. “Because there’s nothing to talk about.”

I start to turn away, but Evalyn stops me with her words. “Of course there’s nothing to talk about!” she calls out. “You clearly don’t know how to treat a woman.”

I turn and face her, my blood boiling. She stands with her arms crossed and looks at me evenly, her brown eyes alight with rage. “You heard me,” she said. “You don’t know how to treat a woman. Especially a woman who’s unlucky enough to be your fucking mate.”