Sloanne’s POV
The stadium sounds like it's breathing.
Thousands of voices merge into a single roar, gold and silver splitting the crowd like a wound that won't stop bleeding.
I've been running logistics for three hours—hauling equipment, refilling water stations, checking and rechecking the medical supply inventory while my father barks orders into his headset and pretends I'm just another staff member.
"Sloane." His hand catches my arm as I pass. "Medical kit to the stadium level. Now. And stay out of the way once the game starts."
Stay out of the way.
The Imler family motto, at least when it applies to me.
Twenty minutes until kickoff and the main stairs are packed with fans who would probably trample a halfblood for fun, so I head for the service elevator instead.
The doors slide open and my stomach drops.
Rhys stands inside, still in his warm-up gear. Silver and crimson stretched across shoulders that seem broader in the confined space. His gray eyes meet mine.
Something flickers there—annoyance, or that particular brand of contempt he reserves just for me.
"Going down?" His voice is flat, bored—like I'm an inconvenience he's already tired of.
I should wait for the next one. I should do literally anything except step into a metal box with the vampire who told me I make him sick. But the match starts in twenty minutes.
"Obviously." I step inside, pressing myself against the far wall.
The doors close as the elevator descends, metal groaning around us like it's protesting our presence. Neither of us speaks and I keep my eyes fixed on the floor numbers ticking down, but I can feel him without looking.
The cold radiating off his skin, the weight of his presence filling every corner of the space. My heart beats too fast and I tell myself it's a confined space.
Just the walls pressing in. The ceiling’s too low. The air’s too thick.
Then suddenly the elevator shudders and stops.
A mechanical groan echoes through the shaft before the lights flicker once, twice, and die completely. Emergency lighting kicks in, casting everything in dim red.
"No." The word escapes before I can stop it. "No, no, no…"
"Calm down." His voice comes from somewhere to my left. "Power glitch, they'll fix it soon."
"When soon?" My back presses harder against the wall. The walls are closer now. Definitely closer. "The game starts in—"
"They'll fix it."
But I can't calm down because the ceiling is dropping and the air is disappearing and I can't breathe, I can't… The pain hits in the next second like a blade through my spine.
I hear my bones crack, the sound is obscene in the small space, wet and wrong. My back arches, muscles tearing and reforming, and I realize with horror what's happening.
The stress, the claustrophobia, his proximity… it's triggered my shift.
"No…" I fall to my knees, a scream ripping from my throat.
My wolf claws toward the surface, desperate to break free, but the shift won't finish. It never finishes. I'm stuck between forms, bones breaking wrong, agony tearing through every nerve ending I possess.
"Stop fighting it."
I expect him to watch me suffer. To enjoy this. Instead, he drops to his knees beside me. His hands grip my shoulders—cold, steady, anchoring.
"You're fighting the shift. Stop."
"I can't…" Another crack. Another wave of agony that whites out my vision. "It won't complete, it never…"
"Because you're scared of it." His face is inches from mine. Gray eyes locked on amber that I can feel bleeding into my own. "Your human blood isn't the problem. Your fear is."
"You don't know…"
"Breathe." His voice cuts through the pain like a knife through smoke. "In through your nose. Hold it. Let the shift happen. Don't fight it."
"How do you know this?" The words come out strangled, broken. "How do you…"
"Breathe, Sloane."
His hands tighten on my shoulders and I do what he says because I don't have another choice, because the pain is blinding and his voice is the only thing cutting through it.
I breathe in. Hold it. Stop fighting.
The shift completes and for the first time in my life, I'm fully a wolf.
Four legs, fur, heightened senses that make the elevator smell like metal and blood and him. Cold winter and something darker underneath, something that doesn't belong in a vampire's scent.
The pain is gone, replaced by something that feels like freedom. But reality creeps in along with the realization that I can't stay like this.
The reverse transformation is worse. Bones reshaping, fur receding, skin reforming over muscles that scream in protest. When it ends, I'm human again—naked, trembling, my clothes destroyed in shreds around me.
Rhys doesn't stare. His eyes stay locked on my face, jaw tight, hands still hovering near my shoulders like he's not sure if I'm going to collapse.
He strips off his team jacket in one fluid motion and drapes it over my shoulders. His hands linger a moment longer than necessary. The jacket is fully soaked in his scent.
"Thank you…" My voice comes out raw. Wrecked.
He pulls back, creating distance, and his expression shutters into something I can't read. The question burns in my chest and I know I shouldn't ask it.
I should take the help and stay quiet and pretend I didn't notice what I noticed.
"How did you know?" The words come out anyway. "How does a pureblooded vampire know exactly what a hybrid transformation feels like?"
His jaw tightens. "Lucky guess."
"Bullshit." I pull the jacket tighter around myself. "You knew the exact moment to breathe. You knew I was fighting it before I did. You knew—"
"Drop it."
"No." I push myself to my feet. My legs shake, but I stay upright. "You talked me through that like you'd done it before. Like you'd… felt it before."
Something flashes in his eyes. Gray bleeding to amber for one unguarded second before snapping back to steel.
The same amber I see in my own eyes when my wolf surfaces.
The color that hybrids carry as well.
The elevator shudders back to life and a few moments later the doors open to chaos—coaches shouting, players pacing, the match minutes away. Sound crashes over us like a wave, but I can't move.
Can't look away from the impossible thing I just saw in his eyes. "Rhys…"
He steps out of the elevator without answering, without even looking back and walks into the chaos like nothing happened.
Like he didn't just hold me through the worst pain of my life.
Like I didn't just watch his eyes turn wolf-amber in a vampire's face.
I stand wrapped in his jacket, his scent on my skin, his warmth still lingering on my shoulders.
Rhys Vance isn't what he pretends to be. The amber in his eyes, the way he knew exactly how to guide my shift, the dark something underneath his scent that doesn't belong—he's hiding something.
Something big enough to destroy him if it got out. And now I'm the only one who knows.