Claimed by the Ice Heir

Marigold Goldie Solberg POV It always felt like autumn when you came into the city of Oslo and smelt crisp, ozone-fragrant Arctic air, but when you were in the main administration atrium of Nordic Elite University, it smelt like absurd, unchecked wealth. I was standing in the middle of the marble floor. Pupils were exiting luxury sports vehicles and stylish black saloons everywhere. They were in cashmere sweaters, which they dropped over their shoulders, and had shoes costing more than my mother earned in six months at the docks in Bergen, together with jackets that were custom-made. Their walk was light and easy, like those who had been born rich unto the Father. I have not received anything from my father. Other than that, I don't recall anything else. I don't remember having a bad night's sleep or feeling anxious about anything. I don't remember being sad, either. Other than the urge to survive, and a rough, throbbing scar down my right jaw line, which my family never managed to hide quite well, I don't remember anything else. I. I don't remember being sad, either. "Marigold Solberg?" The administrator's loud voice pierced the background noise in the hall. She was a woman who was rather strict and her hair was steel grey and pulled into a bun, which looked like it was hurting her. She was behind a large mahogany desk with a pristine white file in her hands. Yes ma'am," I'm moving forward. I ran my fingers across the front of my old, soft, woolen coat, straightening my back. Your record for the first two years of the pre-law program is outstanding, Miss Solberg,” Administrator Lind said while reading through the paper with her reading glasses. A straight 4.0 grade-point average, excellent marks in constitutional theory, but as you know, the Storting Honors Scholarship is very competitive: one hundred percent tuition and housing is awarded; no second chances. "I am fully aware. I have already turned in my course schedule for the semester, and my work-study preference form. Finally, Lind looked up, "And that leads us to the main question. Her cold blue eyes fixed a sort of deadly stare on me. The Sporting Foundation updated its mandate over the summer break, when academic excellence will no longer guarantee full funding and recipient students are required to make a two-hundred-hour contract with a peer mentoring and academic tutoring with a designated high-priority student athlete. I had a sudden violent tumble. "A peer tutor? Ma'am, with my course load in international law, I'm going to need twenty hours a week of basic tutoring. “Will place you in your housing and make your tuition bill zero,” Lind interrupted neatly, sliding a thick contract over the shiny wood. You do not have the choice to pick your student, Miss Solberg, this is a top-tier athlete who is currently on the verge of dropping his standing to probation as a result of failing mid-term exams, and if he fails the exams, he'll lose his athletic standing and NEU will lose its star player before the European draft. She gave me a nice, black Parker pen. She said softly, dropping the formality for a second, a glint of sympathy passing over her harsh face, "Sign the addendum, Goldie. "Either pack up and leave by midnight from the dormitory or stay on as a matter of your own choice. I looked at the paper, but there was no other way but to go home, to the quiet monotony of my family's crumbling house, to the endless, stressed phone calls of my brother Callan about the money, to a life my debts would determine. I reminded myself, I'm going to be a prosecutor.I will be a prosecutor, I repeated to myself. I am going to create a life that is strong, solid, that no one can ever take away from me again. I could only muster out the words and then, I leaned over the desk and put the pen to paper. I wrote my name in bold, Marigold L. Solberg. Excellent," Lind said, placing the signed document in a thick leather folder. She took out another file, one that was dark blue, with the gilded crest of the university's athletics department, and she shoved it toward me. You will be assigned a student who is waiting for his initial schedule in private study wing of the Mercer Winter Complex.There are students awaiting you in the private study wing of the Mercer Winter Complex who are waiting to receive their initial schedule, and you are expected to meet them right away and set up your required study time. I grabbed the blue folder, and flipped the photo over. I let out all the air from my lungs. The blood in my veins turned to liquid ice. I stared at a pair of eyes I had been trying to forget for three years that appeared on the shiny paper. Piercing, unread arctic blue. Raven-black, thick and naturally ratty hair. A sharp cut jaw and dark stubble, a prominent jagged split scar right through his left eyebrow. Kaelen Mercer. The next generation of the biggest sports media in Europe. The main player of the N.E.U. ice hockey team. And the boy who made my secondary school years a suffocating hell. My hand started to tremble so much. Memories that had long been buried rose to the surface and suffocated me: the mocking, cruel, scornful smirks in the hallways; the deliberate psychological games he played with me; how he used his terrifying family fortune to cut me off to isolate me, so that I knew I was just an intruder in his gilded world. Even worse… he was Callan's best friend ever, my older brother. The man who knew all the cracks in my family's foundation. "Miss Solberg?" As I took a sudden turn to become deathly pale, Lind asked, “Frown?“Frown?” I heard Lind ask. Do you have issues? No, I choked out, pushing the picture back in the folder, my hands still shaking. "No problem." I was walking, boots pounding the cold stone steps, as I turned my heel and walked out of the administration building. My honey-blonde hair was whipped across my face with the Oslo wind, and it scratched my cheeks, but I did not feel it. I was dizzy with the thought in my mind. Why him? Out of hundreds of students, why did it have to be Kaelen? 10 minutes later, I was outside the tall, dark, glass and steel building of the Mercer Winter Complex, a multiple million dollar private ice arena named in his family's honor. The building had fresh ice, expensive leather and cold metal scent. My heart pounded against my ribs, the heavy double doors of the private study wing were pushed open. The hallway was well lit with soft recessed lighting, and it was quiet. There was a shadow at the end of the long corridor, by itself at a huge oak table. My boots rang out on the shiny floor and he didn't look up. He was sitting in a leather chair, his wide, highly muscled shoulders expanding on the dark gray team sweater. His legs were long and extended under the table and he was casually handling an ice hockey puck between his thick, calloused fingers. The voice was deep and smooth, "You're seven minutes late, Goldie. When he spoke, it seemed like a punch in the face, and prompted a shiver down my spine. It was a voice that was commanding, powerful, full of dark promises in dark corners. I stopped a few yards away from the table and had the blue folder in my hands like a shield. I 'm not 'Goldie' any more, Mercer, I'm 'Marigold' and I'm here to do university duty. Kaelen gradually put the puck out of his hands and stopped spinning it about. His hands were resting on the table, broad, knuckles, from high-impact sport. And he lifted his head. His eyes were as blue as ice, and his gaze fixed on mine. The dark, arrogant smirk that had been etched into my adolescent face spread across his face, but there was something else in his eyes, something dark, something intense, something that was overwhelmingly dark and frightening. “Is this only the responsibility of the university?” Kaelen whispered, bending his head towards him. The wide expanse of his frame dominated the room. Did you actually come here by chance? I felt a cold stomach coldness. What do you mean? Kaelen slowly stood up. He was six feet three inches tall.I was his captive, and he stood taller than everything else around me. Then he walked around the table, his large and slow footsteps making the rounds to k****e the distance between us, until he stood so near that I could inhale the dark cologne clinging to his skin, a winter pine and leather and raw power. He extended his long fingers to touch my cheek, and felt the heat radiating off his skin. I froze, and did not turn back, looking my green eyes upon his ice-blue ones. Three years I've been stalking you, Goldie, Kaelen said. Now you are committed to me for an entire year. Now you signed that piece of paper, which means… “...you are now on my calendar. I haven't even begun to play my game.