Page 13 of Top Shelf

I inhale sharply.

Ronan’s gaze cuts between us. “You think she knows who attacked her?” He rubs at his perfectly trimmed beard, thinking. “She’d have to have found out recently,” he muses aloud. “And does that mean it’s a BSU student, or is she here for revenge?”

I give him a wide-eyed look. “You think one of ours did it?”

Fuck. I hadn’t ever really let myself consider that. Consider the fact that I could be playing alongside someone who thinks it’s okay to drug and assault an innocent woman. I’d always just assumed it was a BSU student. Most of their student body was at that party—one of their legendary street parties, where everyone is invited, and all the student-athlete houses are open for just anyone to walk in.

“I don’t know,” I admit, uncertain. “After all this time?”

What are the chances that she’d put the pieces together now? Or that she’d choose senior year to get her revenge?

But then I think about how long I plotted and planned and salivated overmyrevenge, and a fire starts anew in my chest. Perhaps we’re more alike than I initially thought.

Flipping to a new page, Silas writes in bold, steady strokes.

We need to know why she’s here.

“And what she remembers,” Ronan adds.

My hands curl into fists. I stare at the ink on the page. Feel the rage flickering just beneath my skin.

“And who the fuck touched her.”

The silence that follows is heavy. Binding.

Like a pact.

Likeblood.

Silas tears the page from his notebook and places it on the table between us. All three of us stare down at it—at the promise it represents.

The moment crystallizes. A pact forming. I feel it sink into my bones.

Wren Winslow ishere.

And regardless of the reason, we’re finally going to get our answers.

Hopefully, I’ll get to spill some blood along the way.

3

WREN

Arms laden with hockey gear,and with the heat of thirty hockey players’ eyes on my back, I fled the rink. However, it was the searing gaze of three players in particular that sent a fire racing down my spine as I frantically dumped the hockey sticks in my arms in the equipment room, my hands trembling.

Ronan Sterling.

Silas Monroe.

Lucian Caulfield.

I made a point of tracking down the Kings’ display wall—years of team photos lined up in neat rows—the second I left Dean Carver’s office. Know your enemy and all that jazz. I instantly recognized their faces. Now their names are also emblazoned in my brain, never to be forgotten.

Along with the look in each of their eyes just now.

Since I stepped foot in the Kings’ arena this morning, I’d been preparing myself to come face-to-face with them, but even with all that preparation, I wasn’t ready. Far from it. I’d been rendered paralyzed as soon as I met their gazes, barely managing to wrench my eyes away before bolting.

Now…now I’m hiding out in a supply closet like a total wimp.