Claimed by the Ice Heir

Unwanted Guardians

Marigold Goldie Solberg POV

The temperature of the air in the private study wing of the Mercer Winter Complex was not only cold, but thick and suffocating.

“You're in my schedule now, and I haven't even gotten started playing my game.”

He tried to move close to me and give me a hug, but it had been 3 years of learning how to build walls around a man like Kaelen Mercer.I raised my voice Step back Mercer. It was steadily a miracle, given the violent tremor in my hands.

But Kaelen's dark, arrogant smirk wouldn't shift, and his icy blue eyes narrowed, taking me in with an unsettling, predatory gaze. Slowly and deliberately, he retreated, giving me room, but not taking his eyes off me. He saw the slight rise and fall of my chest, I saw the tight set of my jaw, I saw the way my fingers squeezed the blue folder that my academic record was in.

“Fierce like that,” he whispered gravely, “Goldie.” “When you are backed into a corner you're always one of the best performers.”

I'm not cornered," I said, shoving my sack up on my shoulder and walking over to the thick oak study table. There are no games. I am not here, you should sign a work-study sheet every Friday, to keep my academic eligibility alive for the NHL Draft. That's all our relationship is.

I went over to a wooden chair which clattered as it was drawn out and I sat on it. I opened up the blue binder and spread out his mid-term syllabus as well as a new notebook.

Sit down, Mercer, we're going to begin your International Sports Management module.

Kaelen's eyes bulged in astonishment for a second before he didn't move at all. He was in the middle of the ambient lighting and his wide shadow was cast on the desk. He turned his head to look at me, his expression unreadable, a muscle ticking with violent movements on his broad jaw.

Slowly, in a slow, painful way, he sat down across from me. He was not seated correctly; he sagged down in the leather seat with his long legs dangling under the table. As soon as I pulled my feet back, I was in trouble.

Sure you haven't changed a bit, have you?" Resting his forearms on the table, Kaelen said softly. He retrieved a sleek silver pen, swirling it between his long calloused fingers designed to rip some opponents to shreds on the rink ice, but which he now used with ease. Being "trying to rule everything with high-minded rules and little colorful highlighters.

“Well, somebody's got to keep it under control, "I replied, marking his syllabus in red pen. You're failing two core classes, Kaelen, after all, because you haven't been reading. What could possibly go wrong with the only child of Mercer Global Media in corporate communications?"

His blue eyes glinted with a dismal, sinister tinge of raw, raw anger before it was overlaid by the icy mask.

“There's no point in corporate communications,” he coldly said. It is a course that I don't really need, a university course to teach me how to be a monster. It's my father's every day.

I was surprised at how angry he was. My high school clothes used to be ridiculed by the arrogant, untouchable voice of a bully, but this one was deep, jagged and weighed with a strange and tragic burden.

A second of feeling a disturbing empathy with myself. I knew what his father, Torstein Mercer, was like. Everyone in Norway was aware of it. Torstein was a media baron who used his family as his assets, and the news as his toys.

No, I told myself, firmly shutting my heart off to the warmth. Don't think you're sorry for him. He never felt sorry for you.

I took a book off my desk and pushed it across the clean wood until it landed on his forearms, "Well, monster or not, you're going to learn how to write a corporate crisis management brief by Tuesday. “Go to chapter 3.”

Kaelen didn't look down at the book. He instead leaned over the table, close to our faces as they were illuminated by a soft pool of light above us. I could see it up close; the dark, fan-like eyelashes around his impossibly light eyes, the faint shadow of dark stubble on his sharp jaw, and that heat-inducing intensity that dripped from him like a furnace.

"Do you know why my father called Administrator Lind yesterday, Goldie?" Kaelen asked quietly.

I was unable to breathe. "What?"

“My father,” he said again, his tone becoming excited, grave. He personally asked the athletic department to let one of their scholarship students be my tutor, one who did not have the luxury of dropping out, no matter how bad I made this chair.

I freaked out my. "That’s impossible. The matching was done at random with regard to the schedule compatibility," Administrator Lind said, "so that the teachers would have to take the schedule that was offered to them.

Kaelen interrupted her smoothly, his lips curling into a dark, humorless smile, "Administrator Lind does what Mercer Global Media tells her to do. “He wanted to see if I'd c***k if he had ‘a distraction' around the draft scouts when they looked at me every move I made.”

He reached out with his wide hand, slowly . The long finger of his right hand tapped against the edge of my shivering hands, inches above my notepad.

Kaelen hissed, "And out of all the desperate students at Nordic Elite University, your name was at the top of his list.

The room was getting smaller and smaller, and the walls seemed to be closing in on us, leaving no space between us and the cold air and the hum of the ice rink outside, and the terrifying realization hit me.

This was not a work/study position. It wasn't simply a sour encounter with my childhood tormentor. I had been thrust right into a war between Kaelen and his sociopathic father, a game where my scholarship, my future and my sanity were just collateral damage.

Why did you take on the assignment? My voice cracked a little at the tremendous emotional stress I placed on it, I demanded. "If you knew what your father was doing, why didn't you tell them no? You’re Kaelen Mercer! You could have asked for anybody else!

Kaelen froze. He leaned in even closer, so close I could feel the hot beat of his breath against my lips. There was tension between us, a slow burning fuse that was heavy and thick and was fusing in the quiet room.

“Is this, Goldie,” his eyes lowered to my mouth before he looked up again, “When I saw your name on that contract, I knew something.”

He bent down, his fingers grasping my wrist. He didn't squeeze really hard, but he was definitely squeezing warm, big, and firm. My pulse point was scorched by the heat, and it was a shock to my heart.

For three years you ran from me, whispered to him, dark, raw, and with an obsession that frightened me to my very core. “You're not going to get away with it twice, I wasn't going to let you get away with it again.”

I tried to get away before I could scream or demand him to let me go, the double doors of the study wing slammed open with a deafening bang.

There was a large, imposing figure standing in the doorway, illuminated by the bright, fluorescent lighting in the hallway. His tweed tailored designer suit, his ash-blonde hair pulled back in the perfect place, a warm and polished smile across his handsome face.

Callan.

Two coffee cups in his hands, my older brother walked through the room, eyes touring the space.

When his eyes locked on Kaelen's hand tightly clutched my wrist, the smile vanished from Callan's face, and a cold, unreadable darkness descended on his eyes, sending a shiver straight down my spine.