"Smile, Castellan," Kade said, his voice barely a whisper. "The cameras like a good rivalry."

"There is no rivalry," Reyna said through her teeth, keeping her face still while the flashbulbs kept firing.

"Could've fooled me," Kade said.

"Handshake," a man in a league blazer called out, waving them forward. "Come on, we need this for the broadcast."

Reyna forced her hand out first, steady, businesslike, the way she had practiced a hundred times in her head on the drive to the rink. Kade took it. The moment his palm touched hers, heat shot up her arm like she had grabbed a live wire, and she saw his jaw tighten, just barely, like he felt it too.

"You felt that," Kade said quietly, not letting go.

"I felt nothing," Reyna said, pulling her hand back.

"Liar," Kade said, smiling like he had won something.

The league man cleared his throat. "Great, great. Can we get one more, both of you looking at the camera this time, not at each other?"

"Sure," Kade said, still watching Reyna instead of the lens.

Reyna turned, jaw locked, and let the second flash go off. The second it was done, she stepped back, putting distance between them like the space itself could undo what had just happened.

"Nice seeing you too, Castellan," Kade said, already backing toward his team.

"Wish I could say the same," Reyna said.

"You're a terrible liar," Kade said. "Always have been."

He turned and walked off before she could answer, disappearing into the knot of his teammates, and Reyna stood there a second too long, her heart still going too fast, her palm still burning where his hand had been.

"Okay," Milo said, appearing at her elbow like he had been waiting just out of sight the whole time. "That looked normal. Very normal. Nothing weird about that at all."

"Don't," Reyna said.

"I'm just saying, for two people who hate each other, you sure spent a long time not letting go of his hand," Milo said.

"It was three seconds," Reyna said.

"It was six," Milo said. "I counted."

"Why were you counting?" Reyna asked.

"Because I know you, and I know what your face does when you're lying to yourself," Milo said. "And your face was doing a lot right now."

Reyna grabbed her bag off the bench and started walking, fast, toward the parking lot, needing air, needing distance, needing anything that wasn't the memory of Kade Ashwood's hand around hers.

"Reyna," Milo said, jogging to catch up. "Your dad called me twice during the third period."

Reyna stopped walking. "What did he want?"

"He wanted to know if you were talking to Kade," Milo said, and his voice had lost its teasing edge now. "I told him no. Was that a lie?"

"It wasn't a lie ten minutes ago," Reyna said.

"Reyna," Milo said. "You know what happens if he finds out."

"I know exactly what happens," Reyna said, and for the first time that night, the fear in her voice was real, no performance in it at all. "He pulls me off the roster. He sends me back to the estate. He makes sure I never see the inside of a rink again, and he makes sure the Ashwoods know exactly why."

"Then why did you just stand there holding his hand for six seconds?" Milo asked.

"I don't know," Reyna said, and it was the most honest thing she had said all night.

They walked in silence for a moment, the parking lot lights buzzing overhead, the cold air doing nothing to slow the racing in her chest.

"Can I tell you something?" Milo asked, quieter now.

"Depends what it is," Reyna said.

"I've known you since we were pups," Milo said. "I've watched you follow every rule your dad's ever handed you. Curfews. Territory lines. Who you're allowed to look at twice." He paused. "And I've never once seen you look at anyone the way you just looked at Kade Ashwood."

"That's not true," Reyna said, but her voice cracked on the last word, just slightly, just enough.

"Ren," Milo said gently. "It's me. You don't have to do the flat voice thing with me."

Reyna stopped at her car, resting her hand on the cold metal of the door, and let herself breathe for the first time since the tunnel.

"It's the mate pull," she said finally, so quiet Milo almost missed it. "Isn't it."

Milo didn't answer right away. When he did, his voice was careful, like he was handling something fragile.

"I think you already know the answer to that," he said.

Reyna closed her eyes. She had felt it the second Kade's hand touched hers, that same pull she had heard whispered about her whole life, the kind her grandmother used to warn her about, the kind that didn't care about pack lines or her father's rules or two years of pretending a person didn't exist.

"It can't be him," Reyna said. "Out of everyone in the world, it cannot be him."

"I don't think the pull cares what it can and can't be," Milo said.

Her phone buzzed in her pocket. She pulled it out with a shaking hand, and the name on the screen made her stomach drop straight through the pavement.

It's her Dad on the line.

She stared at it for three rings before she answered.

"Hi, Dad," Reyna said, forcing her voice steady.

There was a pause on the other end, long enough to make her chest go tight.

"I saw the handshake line," her father said, his voice low and flat in a way she had learned to fear a long time ago. "We need to talk. Tonight."

"Dad, it was nothing, it was just a handshake for the cameras," Reyna said.

"Then you won't mind explaining," her father said, "why Kade Ashwood was smiling at you like he already knows what you smell like."

"Dad, can we talk about this tomorrow?" Reyna asked, gripping the phone so tight her knuckles ached.

"No," her father said. "We can't."

"It was a handshake," Reyna said. "The league made us do it. It's on camera. You can watch it yourself if you don't believe me."

"I already watched it," her father said. "Three times."

Reyna closed her eyes and leaned her forehead against the cold window of her car. "Then you know it was nothing."

"I know what I saw," her father said, "and I know my daughter well enough to see when she's not telling me the whole truth."

Milo stood a few feet away, pretending very hard to be interested in his phone, but Reyna could see his ears twitch, and could tell he was catching every word.

"Come home," her father said. "Tonight. We're having this conversation in person."

"Dad, it's an hour drive, I have practice at seven tomorrow," Reyna said.

"Then you should have thought about that before you let an Ashwood hold your hand for six seconds in front of every camera in the building," her father said.

Reyna's stomach dropped. He had counted too.

"Fine," she said quietly. "I'll come."

"Good," her father said, and the line went dead before she could say anything else.

Reyna lowered the phone slowly, staring at the black screen like it might still hold some kind of answer.

"That bad?" Milo asked, finally giving up the pretense of not listening.

"He wants me home tonight," Reyna said.

"Tonight?" Milo asked. "Like, right now tonight?"

"Right now, tonight," Reyna said.

Milo winced. "Do you want me to come with you?"

"No," Reyna said. "If he's already this worked up, showing up with backup is only going to make it worse."

"Are you sure?" Milo asked. "Because you're shaking."

Reyna looked down at her hands and realized he was right. Her fingers were trembling, faint but steady, the way they always did right before a shift she was trying to hold back.

"I'm fine," she said, even though she didn't believe it this time.

"Ren," Milo said, softer now. "You don't have to keep saying that word like it's going to make it true."

She managed a small, tired laugh, the first real one all night. "It's worked so far."

"Has it?" Milo asked.

She didn't answer that one.

The drive back to the estate took fifty minutes, and every mile of it felt shorter than it should have, like the road itself was in a hurry to deliver her to a conversation she wasn't ready to have. By the time she pulled through the gates, her hands had steadied, but her chest hadn't. Her father was waiting on the porch when she arrived, arms crossed, the porch light throwing long shadows across a face that had looked younger before her mother died.

"Inside," he said, before she had even shut the car door.

"Dad, can we at least sit down first," Reyna said, following him through the door. "You look like you're about to yell, and I'd rather do that sitting."

"I'm not going to yell," her father said, though the tightness in his jaw suggested otherwise. He stopped in the middle of the living room and turned to face her. "I want you to tell me the truth. Did something happen with Kade Ashwood?"

Reyna hesitated one second too long.

"That's not a no," her father said.

"Nothing happened," Reyna said. "We shook hands. That's all."

"Then why," her father said, stepping closer, "Do you smell like him?"

Reyna froze.

"You think I can't tell?" her father said, his voice rising now despite what he had said on the porch. "You think twenty years of being your father hasn't taught me what it looks like when my daughter finds her mate, and it's the one boy on this earth I have spent my entire life keeping her away from?"

"Dad, it's not like that," Reyna said, though her voice wavered at every word.

"Then what is it like?" her father demanded. "Because from where I'm standing, it looks exactly like the thing your mother begged me to protect you from before she died."

The mention of her mother landed like a slap. Reyna's throat tightened, and for a moment she couldn't speak at all.

"Don't," she said finally, quiet and sharp. "Don't use her to win this."

"I'm not trying to win anything," her father said, softer now, though the fear underneath his anger was impossible to miss. "I'm trying to keep you alive. You don't understand what the Ashwoods did to this family. You don't understand what happens if their heir marks a Castellan."

"Then tell me," Reyna said. "You've never told me anything. Just old warnings and locked doors and a name I'm not allowed to say out loud. If it's this serious, then for once in my life, tell me the truth."

Her father was quiet for a long moment, long enough that Reyna thought he might actually do it, might finally hand her the piece of the story she had been missing her whole life.

Instead, he walked to the window, looked out at the dark tree line beyond the estate, and said the last thing she expected to hear.

"Because the last Castellan who loved Ashwood," he said, "is the reason your mother is dead.”

"What did you just say?" Reyna asked, her voice barely above a whisper.

"You heard me," her father said, still facing the window, not turning around.

"Say it again," Reyna said. "Say it to my face."

Her father turned slowly, and for the first time in years, Reyna saw something in his eyes that wasn't anger. It was grief, old and heavy, the kind that never fully leaves a person.

"Your mother," he said, "was in love with an Ashwood before she was ever with me."

Reyna felt the floor tilt under her. "That's not possible. You two were mates. I've seen the mark."

"We were mates," her father said. "That part was real. But before the bond settled, before either of us understood what was happening, she loved someone else first. Silas Ashwood. Kade's uncle."

"Why have you never told me this?" Reyna asked.

"Because it doesn't end the way you want it to," her father said.

Reyna sat down slowly on the arm of the couch, her legs suddenly unwilling to hold her up. "Tell me anyway."

Her father exhaled, long and tired, like he had been carrying the story so long that letting it out finally felt like setting down something heavy.

"Silas and your mother grew up on opposite sides of the same rivalry we're living now," he said. "Different packs, different rules, the same impossible pull between them. They tried to keep it secret. For almost a year, they did."

"What happened?" Reyna asked.

"The packs found out," her father said. "And when a Castellan and an Ashwood cross the line, the packs don't ask questions at first. There was a fight. Territory dispute, they called it later, but everyone who was there knew what it really was." He paused. "Silas was killed defending her."

Reyna's chest went tight. "And Mom?"

"She never recovered from it," her father said. "Not really. She let herself bond with me years later, and she loved me, I believe that, but there was always a piece of her that stayed with him. And every year on the day it happened, she used to go quiet, and she'd sit by the window, and she wouldn't talk to anyone until it passed."

"Is that how she died?" Reyna asked, though some part of her already feared the answer.

Her father's jaw tightened. "The Ashwoods never let it go. Neither did we. The feud kept going, quieter, but it never stopped. Fifteen years ago, there was another clash. Border dispute, same as before. Your mother went to try to stop it, because she thought if anyone could talk both sides down, it was her." He stopped, and his voice broke on the next words. "She didn't come back."

Reyna felt tears burn hot behind her eyes. "You're telling me the Ashwoods killed her."

"I'm telling you," her father said, "that every time a Castellan and an Ashwood get close, someone ends up dead. That's the pattern. That's fifteen years, Reyna. That's your whole life. And now you're standing in my living room smelling like Kade Ashwood's hands, and I am asking you, as your father, to walk away from this before it becomes another name on that list."

Reyna wiped her eyes fast, angry at herself for crying. "I didn't ask for this. I didn't choose to feel anything for him."

"I know," her father said, gentler now. "The pull doesn't ask permission. I know that better than anyone. But feeling it and following it are two different choices, and only one of them keeps you alive."

"So what am I supposed to do?" Reyna asked. "Play hockey against him every season, stand next to him on camera, and just pretend my whole body isn't screaming at me every time he's in the room?"

"Yes," her father said simply. "That is exactly what I'm asking you to do."

"That's not fair," Reyna said.

"No," her father agreed. "It isn't. Nothing about this family has ever been fair. But I had already buried the woman I loved because of this feud. I am not burying my daughter either."

Reyna stood, pacing now, her mind spinning too fast to stay still. "Does Kade know any of this?"

"I don't know what the Ashwoods have told him," her father said. "Knowing Elias, probably nothing. He's always preferred keeping his son in the dark and his hands clean."

"So he might not even understand why this is dangerous," Reyna said.

"Then you make sure he never has a reason to find out," her father said. "Stay away from him, Reyna. On the ice, off the ice, everywhere. I mean it."

Reyna wanted to argue. She wanted to tell him that the pull didn't work like a light switch, that she couldn't just decide to stop feeling something that lived under her skin like a second heartbeat. But looking at her father's face, worn down by fifteen years of grief he had never once let her see, she couldn't make herself say any of it.

"Okay," she said quietly. "I'll stay away from him."

Her father nodded, relief loosening some of the tension in his shoulders. "Thank you."

Reyna picked up her bag, ready to head to the guest room, when her phone buzzed in her pocket. She glanced down, and her heart stopped.

A text. From a number she hadn't saved, but somehow already knew.

The message read: Got your number from the league roster. Hope that's not too much of a crime. Meet me tomorrow before practice. I think we need to talk about what your dad's not telling you.