Prologue: Knots And Ice
~MABELINE~
What's more humiliating than walking into a men's locker room full of half-naked hockey players while wearing a ruined sweater, no bra, and the sticky remains of a blue raspberry slushie dripping down your cleavage?
Realizing the hockey player staring at you like you just murdered his entire family is your childhood bully—and he's not wearing a towel…
I'm not saying the universe has it out for me.
But I'm “not” not saying that either.
The locker room door slams shut behind me with the subtlety of a gunshot, and the echo bounces off tile walls thick with steam and the heady, intoxicating musk of victorious Alphas. My Omega hindbrain—the traitor—perks up like a golden retriever spotting a tennis ball.
Down, girl. We hate Alphas. Remember?
Except my stupid hormones didn't get that memo, because the man standing six feet away—water droplets tracking down abs that belong on a Roman statue, a towel that exists only in theory somewhere on the floor—smells like cedar smoke, winter air, andtrouble.
Capital T.
Rafe Calder.
Team captain. NHL-bound golden boy. The architect of my sixth-grade nightmare.
And currently, very, very naked.
My eyes do that traitorous thing where they trace a path downward without my permission—across pecs that could double as a shelf, down the ridged ladder of his abs, following the dark trail of hair that disappears into?—
Nope. Eyes up. Eyes UP.
His storm-gray eyes lock onto me with the intensity of a predator spotting wounded prey. His nostrils flare, and a sound rumbles from his chest that shouldn't be legal outside of a nature documentary.
It's low, primal, and it vibrates through my body in a way that makes my thighs press together involuntarily.
"What the fuck are you wearing?"
Charming. Really.
No 'hello.'
No 'sorry I tormented you until you cried in the girls' bathroom every day for a year.'
Just—what are you wearing—like I chose to accessorize with another Alpha's jersey and a gallon of frozen sugar water.
But let me back up.
Because this disaster didn't start in a steam-filled locker room with a naked hockey god looking at me like he wants to either devour me or bench me into next week.
It started three hours ago, when I stepped off a Greyhound bus with one suitcase, a dream deferred, and exactly six weeks to find a pack before my parents did it for me.
Bond by twenty-five or we choose for you, Mabeline.
That was my mother's ultimatum, delivered over brunch like she was suggesting I try the quiche. Casual. Breezy. As if shewasn't discussing handing my future to strangers like a second-hand sweater.
Never mind that I'm a late-blooming Omega who only fully presented at twenty-one years behind my peers, which apparently makes me 'damaged goods' in the marriage market. Let’s also ignore the fact I've spent the last three years grinding through a soul-crushing desk job, watching spreadsheets blur while my figure skating career gathered dust like a forgotten trophy on a shelf I stopped looking at.
And should I dare mention that the thought of some stranger's knot?—
Nope. Not going there.
