Chapter 3
MILA
I didn’t go home or even back to the oppressive silence of the family estate.
There was nothing left for me there anyway.
After what my brothers had spat at me in that locker room choosing a cowardly, bloody betrayal over their own sister.
The thought of walking through those doors made my stomach turn.
Instead, I was driving straight into the mouth of a beast.
My tires crunched over the unplowed snow, guiding me toward the man Kelvin had spent three long years warning me about.
Bryant was the ruthless captain of the Frostbite hockey team and the Alpha of the Frostbite Pack.
His pack was one of the largest and most powerful in the region, and their hockey team carried the same name, Frostbite.
Unlike our pack, they never separated the names of their pack and hockey team.
We were the Moonfrost Pack, but our hockey team was called Ravencrest.
Frostbite, however, had built its reputation around a single name, both on the ice and within their world.
I parked outside the towering Frostbite facility and sat in the dark, my hands trembling violently against the steering wheel.
The heat beneath my skin had faded, but my wolf was still restless inside me, pacing with her claws digging into the walls of my chest.
For three years, I had forced her into silence.
And tonight, I have finally made her presence known.
I didn’t know what scared me more, the strange power rushing through my veins.
Or the fact that, even after awakening, my wolf still refused to speak to me.
Taking a deep breath, I grabbed my coat and stepped out into the winter wind.
Before I even reached the top of the steps, the glass doors swung open.
Bryant stood on the threshold, his hair slightly messy as though he had been raking his hands through it.
Stripped of the blinding arena lights, he looked less like a hockey captain and much more like a dangerous, Alpha who owned the night.
His eyes immediately locked onto my shaking hands and he finally spoke.
“You stopped taking the suppressants,”
“How do you know?” I snapped, with a defensive heat rising in my chest.
I hadn’t expected that kind of welcome from him at all.
“Your scent,” he replied simply, holding the door open wider. “Come inside before you freeze, Mila.”
I stepped past him into the warm embrace of the facility, following him down a private, dimly lit corridor that overlooked the ice rink below.
When we reached his private lounge, he gestured for me to sit.
Then handed me a glass of water without a word, and took a seat right opposite me.
The silence stretched for a second before the irony finally caught up to me.
“Kelvin must have told you never to trust me.” he said, studying me closely.
I couldn't help but admire the way he is going straight for the jugular, never beating around the bush.
“Well, he said you are obsessed with destroying Ravencrest… and not the pack. Honestly, that's one of the reasons why I am standing here tonight.” I replied.
A short, dry laugh slipped past his lips, echoing in the room.
“Well, he is right.”
“Why?” I asked, my voice dropping as memories flickered behind my eyes.
I recalled the very first night we had locked eyes during a chaotic post-game media scrum years ago.
“Why did you even pay attention to me back then?”
Bryant leaned forward, resting his forearms on his knees.
His gaze turned piercing, stripping away all my defenses.
“A few years ago, you were the most brilliant mind in the league.”
He then leaned back slightly, his eyes fixed on me.
“You could read a game so well that you seemed to know what was going to happen before it even did.”
He paused, studying my reaction.
“Then, suddenly, you disappeared.”
“People change,” I muttered, looking away.
“No,” Bryant countered instantly, his tone uncompromising.
“The truth is that Kelvin didn’t want another Alpha standing beside him who could outthink him on the ice. I watched you shrink yourself into nothing for him while he soaked up all the credit.”
My fingers turned cold against the glass. The brutal truth in his words cut straight through me.
“How long have you known?”
“Three years…” he murmured.
“Ever since the moment I saw you take your first suppressant in the tunnel before a playoff game.”
I flinched, a spike of vulnerability hitting me hard.
For how long has he been watching me?
How could he possibly know me better than the man I had given my entire life to?
Bryant stood up, walking away from the chair to stand before the massive floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the empty sheet of ice.
“You called me tonight because something finally changed,”
He said, his back turned to me. “So tell me what you want.”
I opened my mouth, a frantic need writhing at my throat, but the words caught and choked me.
I had spent three grueling years building Kelvin’s dreams from the ground up.
Sacrificing every piece of myself until there was nothing left.
Yet sitting here now, I couldn't form a single sentence about what I actually wanted.
The concept felt entirely foreign.
Just then, I heard his footsteps returning, and he placed a folder softly on the glass table between us.
“What is this?” I asked.
“An offer.”
My heart skipped a beat at the thought of getting an offer from him.
I looked up at him, searching his face, before slowly reaching down to flip the cover open.
My breath fastened at the bold writing at the top of the page, which made me freeze entirely.
Head Coach of the Frostbite Hockey Club.
“You want me to work for you?” I whispered, completely stunned.
“Well, yes,” he replied, his gaze intense.
“I want the woman Kelvin buried.”