They will all see me, but only he will know the truth. Only he will know the storm he holds on his arm.
“I’ll need a dress,” I say, my voice quiet but steady.
A slow, triumphant smile spreads across West’s face. He sees my acceptance. He sees that I am not fighting him on this, I am joining him.
“Don’t worry about that,” he says, his voice a low, possessive purr. “I’ll take care of everything.”
He pushes off the counter and walks towards me, stopping so close our bodies are almost touching. He tilts my chin up, his thumb brushing against my lower lip.
“You’re going to be the most beautiful woman in the room, Kinsley,” he whispers, his eyes burning with a possessive fire. “And everyone is going to know that you belong to me.”
Thirty Seven
West
The engine of the Aston Martin is a low, satisfied purr as I pull away from the university hospital. I watch her in the rearview mirror until she disappears through the automatic glass doors—a flash of dark hair and determined energy swallowed by the sterile brick facade. A small, involuntary smile touches my lips. The kiss I left on hers moments ago still tingles, a faint ghost of her surrender.
Kinsley didn’t fight me this morning.
That is the thought that echoes, a triumphant, resonant chord in the quiet of the car. There was no struggle, no panicked flight in her eyes when she woke in my bed. There was only a quiet, searching stillness, a dawning awareness that the war was over. She had surrendered, not with a scream, but with a whisper.
Her quiet acceptance of the ride, her hand resting over mine on her thigh, the way she met my kiss before stepping out of the car—these are not the actions of a prisoner. They are the actions of a subject who has accepted her new ruler. The game has shifted. I am no longer the hunter, and she the prey. I am the king, and she is the queen I have chosen to place on the throne beside me. A throne from which she will never step down.
My phone buzzes in the center console. A text from Liam.
Liam:
Practice at 1. Don’t be late, Captain. Wouldn’t want you to be too distracted by your new… project.
I smirk. Project. He has no idea. Kinsley Fischer is not a project. She is the endgame.
I drive towards campus, my mind already shifting gears. The morning with Kinsley was one kind of victory, a soft, intimate claiming. Now, I need the other kind. The cold, brutal, violent victory of the ice. Hockey is my other obsession, the one that existed long before Kinsley. It’s a different kind of control, a physical dominance over a frozen world. It’s my escape from Asher’s suffocating expectations, my one-way ticket to a life where my name, West Monroe, is earned with sweat and blood, not inherited. The NHL draft is months away, and every practice, every game is an audition. Failure is not an option.
As I walk into the arena, the familiar scent of cold air and Zamboni fumes should be a cleansing balm, but my thoughtsremain with her. I’m picturing her walking the sterile halls of the hospital, her mind a beautiful, complex machine, processing a thousand details. It’s one of the first things I discovered when I did my initial deep-dive into her, weeks before she ever kissed me.
She wasn't just in the nursing program; she was one of twenty students accepted into the “Aegis Track,” an accelerated honors program for the top 5% of applicants. It operates on an early clinical immersion model, throwing its best and brightest into the fire from sophomore year. While her peers were still just dissecting frogs Kinsley was on the floor, observing, assisting, absorbing the brutal realities of life and death. It was a crucible designed to forge the best. The pressure, the intensity—it was so perfectly her.
Of course, a simple phone call from my uncle’s office to the dean—a man whose son’s gambling problem was discreetly handled by a Monroe family “consultant”—ensured her placement for this semester was particularly… educational. The Medical ICU. A place of constant, high-stakes trauma. I wanted to see how she’d handle the pressure, I wanted to test the limits of her control. It’s one thing to be brilliant in a textbook; it’s another to watch the systems you’ve memorized fail in a cascade of blood and failing organs.
The thought of her in that environment, surrounded by the cacophony of alarms and the scent of antiseptic and fear stirs a dark, possessive thrill in me. I am the secret architect of her stress, and I will be the only cure for it.
In the locker room, the usual boisterous energy is amplified. The news of my “relationship” has clearly made the rounds.
“Well, well, look who it is,” Jake, our star forward calls out as I walk in. “Thought you might have moved into the library permanently, Monroe. Heard you’ve taken a sudden interest in academic tutoring.”
I ignore him, stripping off my shirt and pulling on my practice gear.
“Leave him alone, Jake,” Liam says, though there’s a grin on his face. “The man’s in love.”
The word “love” makes my jaw tighten. Love is a weak, messy, transactional emotion. It’s what my parents performed for cameras and what Asher scoffs at as a liability. What I feel for Kinsley is something far purer, far more absolute. It is an obsession. It is ownership.
“I’m not in love,” I correct, my voice low and cold, silencing the chatter around me. I turn to face them, my gaze sweeping over the room. “Kinsley Fischer is not a joke. She’s not arm candy. She is mine. And if I hear anyone speak of her with anything less than respect, they’ll be scraping their teeth off the ice. Understood?”
The silence is immediate and absolute. They see the look in my eyes, the one that promises violence, and they know I’m not bluffing.
On the ice, I am a demon. I channel the raw, possessive energy Kinsley ignites in me into every drill, every scrimmage. I hit harder, skate faster, shoot with a brutal precision that leaves our goalie shaking his head. I score twice, the puck slamming into the net with a satisfying crack that echoes my own sense of victory. This is who I am—a predator, on the ice and off.
After practice, as I’m unlacing my skates, my phone rings. Asher.
