Chapter 2 The Lion head on his skate
The Lion head on His Skate
Scarlett’s POV
“Are you lost?”
His voice made me look up, and that was when I realized I’d been staring at him for too long. I quickly looked away, feeling embarrassed as heat crept up my neck.
“Sorry. I took a wrong turn while looking for the residence hall and landed here.”
Draven looked at me for a few seconds, like he wasn’t completely convinced. Thankfully, he didn’t question me further. He only nodded toward the hallway behind me.
“The exit is the other way, or do you like what you’re seeing?” He smirked.
“Ah! No. Thanks.” My eyes widened.
I turned around, eager to leave before he could say anything silly again. But before I could take more than a few steps, his scent reached me.
It was different from anything I was used to. Dark, warm and strangely familiar. Something inside me stirred at the smell, and my wolf suddenly became alert.
I frowned, confused by the reaction.
I pushed the feeling aside and kept walking, but something on the other side of the locker room caught my attention.
A row of lockers lined the wall, each one marked with its own number, name, and a few stickers and scratches from years of use. My eyes moved across them until they landed on one name.
CALEB RYDER.
I stopped and for a moment, I could only stare.
His belongings had been sent home weeks ago. So why hadn’t anyone removed his name from the locker?
Without thinking, I walked toward it. My fingers slowly reached out and brushed over the faded letters. I remembered Caleb talking about this locker all the time, usually complaining about how it always got stuck halfway through the season. He used to joke that the locker was cursed.
I almost smiled at the memory, but it disappeared as soon as I noticed something near the lock.
Someone had scratched a symbol into the metal.
It was a lion head. The drawing was rough, but the shape was clear enough. Its mane had been carved with several quick, sharp lines.
My stomach tightened.
I knew that symbol.
I had seen it before, engraved into Caleb’s skate blade right beside the damage that had supposedly been an accident.
I leaned closer, trying to make sure I wasn’t imagining it.
“Hey.”
Draven snapped his fingers in front of my face, and I nearly jumped.
“Sorry,” I said quickly, pulling my hand back as if I’d been caught doing something I shouldn’t.
I hurried past him and stepped into the hallway, my heart still pounding. No matter how hard I tried to push it away, the image of that lion stayed in my mind. I couldn’t explain why it had caught my attention so much, but something about it felt strange.
By the time I got to my room, I had finally managed to calm myself down. The door was already open, and warm light spilled into the hallway. When I stepped inside, two girls looked up at me.
“You must be Scarlett!” The girl closest to the door jumped off her bed with a bright smile and walked over to me. “I’m Nora. We heard you were coming tonight.”
“Hi.” I smiled back, already feeling a little more relaxed. “Thanks for letting me join the room.”
“Don’t be silly. It’s your room too now.” Nora reached for one of my bags before I could stop her. “So, tell me about Mooncrest. How was the drive? Are you hungry? Did you eat anything before you came?”
Her questions came one after another, but I didn’t mind. After my strange encounter with Draven, her friendly attitude was exactly what I needed.
Then I noticed the other girl.
She was sitting on her bed with a magazine open in her lap. She looked like she was reading, but from the way her eyes stayed on the same page, I could tell she hadn’t read a single word.
I gave her a small smile, hoping to be polite.
She looked up at me.
The coldness in her eyes made my smile disappear almost immediately. She stared at me for a moment before looking back down at her magazine as if I wasn’t there.
I stood there awkwardly, wondering if I had somehow offended her without even knowing it.
Nora must have noticed my expression because she leaned closer and lowered her voice. “Don’t take it personally. That’s just how she is. She’s the captain of the figure-skating team here. Her name is Sienna, and she doesn’t really like new transfers.”
Of course, I had walked into her room on my first night, and I hadn’t even stepped onto the ice yet. She probably already knew I was the figure-skating captain from Mooncrest. Maybe she had heard the rumors too. Either way, I suddenly understood why she had looked at me like that.
Sienna finally closed her magazine and stood up. She gathered her things without saying a word, then walked past us toward the door.
Just before she left, she stopped and looked at me one more time and that made my wolf stir beneath my skin.
Then she walked out.
I watched her walk down the hallway before turning back to Nora.
“Don’t mind her,” Nora said with a small wave of her hand. “She’ll probably warm up eventually.”
I nodded, but my attention had already moved elsewhere.
A framed photograph was on Sienna’s nightstand. It showed a group of Darkridge skaters standing together in their uniforms.
My eyes went straight to Caleb in the middle.
He was laughing at something else and not the photographer, one arm resting casually around the girl beside him. He looked happy.
My chest tightened as I stared at the picture. Seeing him like that, smiling, made the fact that he was gone feel even harder to accept.
“Who’s that?” I asked, forcing my voice to sound casual.
Nora followed my gaze and smiled. “Oh, that’s Caleb, the academy’s hockey star. He used to train with some of the skaters before…” She paused, and her smile faded slightly. “Well, you probably heard about what happened.”
“I heard a little,” I said.
I didn’t tell her he was my brother. I simply looked at the photograph one more time and stored it away in my mind.
On Monday morning, I stepped onto the rink for practice. I could feel people watching me. Whispers followed me from one end of the rink to the other, quiet enough to pretend they weren’t talking about me, but loud enough for me to hear.
“That’s Scarlett Ryder.”
“The Ice Queen from Mooncrest.”
“Wasn’t she their captain?”
“Why would she transfer here?”
I kept my chin up and acted like none of it bothered me. I had spent enough time being watched and judged to know better than to let a few whispers get under my skin.
Coach Logan called everyone to attention before I had to stand there any longer. He introduced me like he would have introduced any other new skater. He made it clear that he didn’t care about my reputation at Mooncrest. He wanted to see what I could actually do.
“Ryder. Show us what you’ve got.”
I stepped onto the ice.
The moment my blades touched the ice, my wolf seemed calm. My body relaxed, my balance sharpened, and everything around me became easier to control.
This was the one place where I had always known exactly who I was.
I pushed off and let my body fall into the routine I had trained for years to perfect. My edges were clean, and every spin came naturally. I landed each jump without hesitation, barely giving myself time to think before moving into the next one.
By the time I finished, the rink had gone quiet.
Even the girls who had been whispering about me earlier were watching without saying a word.
Coach Logan gave a short nod. “Well done. That’s the standard I expect from everyone on this team.”
I stepped off the ice, breathing hard, and grabbed my water bottle.
Then I noticed Sienna staring at me.
Coach Logan called her name next.
“Sienna Gonzale.”
She pushed off toward the center of the rink, but as she passed me, she slowed just enough to speak.
“You know this isn’t Mooncrest, right?” She asked. “Being famous somewhere else doesn’t make you captain here. Enjoy your little victory.”
Her voice was calm, but there was something cold underneath it.
I watched her skate away.
I hadn’t even been at Darkridge for a full week, and I already knew exactly where I stood with her.
She saw me as competition.
And judging by that look, she wasn’t planning to make things easy for me.
After practice in the evening, I headed back toward the residence hall, my muscles aching in that familiar way that usually meant I’d had a good day. I was almost past the hockey rink when I heard the sharp sound of skates cutting across the ice.
I slowed down.
Curiosity got the better of me, just like it had two nights before, and I moved closer to the glass. I peered inside.
Draven was there alone.
He moved across the ice with an ease that made every movement look effortless. There was something familiar about the way he skated, something that pulled at a memory I didn’t want to touch.
It reminded me of my brother.
I stayed near the doorway, careful not to make a sound, and watched him for a few seconds.
Then Draven slowed near the boards and lifted one skate to adjust the lace.
My eyes dropped to the side of the blade and I froze.
There it was… The lion head symbol.
It was the exact same symbol as the one on Caleb’s skate and his locker.
My heart began to pound.
That couldn’t be a coincidence. My suspicion of him had already been strong before tonight. Now I had another reason to keep watching him.
I leaned closer to the glass, my eyes fixed on the symbol.
Then Draven suddenly turned his head.
His eyes met mine through the glass and he looked at me like he was trying to figure out why I was watching him.
