The Hockey Alpha’s Boxing Bride

CHAPTER 1

Seraphina

"And still!" the announcer bellowed. And before he could say anything further, the crowd chanted my name.

"Seraphina! Seraphina! Seraphina!"

"And still undefeated!" the commentator roared over the thunderous cheers. "Three-time world champion... Seraphina Blackwood!"

The referee raised my hand, sealing another victory. The arena scattered into jubilation, but all I could focus on was the grin on my father's face, watching with his hands folded behind his back. This victory was for him. I had no other purpose on earth than to keep my family legacy going, obey my father, and never go against the family's rules. At least that was what I was told.

Blood dripped from my split lip onto the canvas. I didn't wipe it. Blood looked good on camera. Father always said that.

My coach, Damon, hoisted my arm higher, shouting something about legacy and dynasty that got swallowed by the noise. I barely heard him. I was watching my father instead, the way his jaw tightened even as he smiled, the way his eyes flicked to the cameras before they flicked to me.

Approval first. Pride second. Always in that order.

Backstage, the roar dimmed to a dull hum behind two inches of concrete. I sat on the medical table while the team doctor pressed gauze to my eyebrow, and my father stood in the doorway like he owned the air in the room. He did, in a way. He owned most things.

"Clean fight," he said.

"Thank you, Alpha."

"You hesitated in the eighth round."

I stilled. "I didn't hesitate."

"You did." He stepped inside, and the doctor melted back against the wall like he wished he could disappear into it. "For half a second, when he went low. You thought about your mother's rule. No hits below the belt, even if he takes them first."

I said nothing. There was nothing to say that wouldn't sound like an excuse, and excuses were for wolves who lost.

"Half a second can end a career, Seraphina."

"It didn't end anything. I won."

"You won because you're better than him. Not because you fight smart." He crouched slightly, forcing me to meet his eyes, and for a moment the great Alpha of the Blackwood pack looked almost gentle. Almost. "One day you'll fight someone as good as you. And half a second of hesitation will be the difference between champion and headline."

"What headline?"

"Boxing Legacy Dies With Daughter."

The doctor's hands paused on my eyebrow. I didn't flinch. I'd stopped flinching at my father's threats years ago, mostly because I'd stopped believing they were threats. They were just forecasts. He didn't warn me. He predicted me.

And yet, for just a breath, his hand trembled where it rested against his knee, a small, involuntary thing he smoothed away before I could be sure I'd seen it at all. I filed it away without understanding it, the way I filed away everything about him I wasn't allowed to ask about.

"I'll do better," I said, because that was the correct answer, and I had learned a long time ago which answers kept the peace.

He straightened up, satisfied, and smoothed the front of his suit jacket as if he hadn't just weighed my life against a headline. "Good. Because the Council is coming tonight."

That got my attention. "The Council never comes to fights."

"They're not coming for the fight."

Something cold slid down my spine, the kind of cold that had nothing to do with the ice packs against my ribs. "Then what are they coming for?"

My father's smile came back, thinner this time, the kind he wore when he was about to hand me something I hadn't asked for and couldn't refuse. "Territory. Alliances. The usual games old wolves play when they're bored with peace. " He turned toward the door, already done with the conversation, already three moves ahead in whatever match he was actually playing. "Get dressed. Wear the black one. The Council likes black."

"Father."

He stopped, one hand on the frame.

"What alliance?"

"You'll find out at dinner." He didn't look back. "Try not to hesitate this time either."

The door shut behind him with a click too soft for a man who'd just detonated something in my chest.

The doctor finished the gauze in silence, and I let him, staring at the flickering fluorescent light above the table instead of at my own reflection in the mirror across the room. I already knew what I'd look like. Split lip. Swelling under one eye. Championship belt draped over the chair like a trophy pelt.

Three-time champion. Undefeated. Feared in every ring I'd ever stepped into.

And still, at twenty-three years old, a single sentence from my father could make me feel like I was eight again, watching him drag my first and only mate out of our den by the collar of his shirt, watching my mother look away because looking away was safer than watching what came next.

I hadn't hesitated in the eighth round because of my mother's rule.

I'd hesitated because for half a second, the boy across the ring had looked up at me the same way Julian used to, right before everything went wrong.

I pulled my hoodie over my head and didn't tell my father that. I didn't tell anyone that. Some things you learn to keep buried so deep that even your own wolf stops asking about them.

By the time I reached the private dining hall three hours later, hair still damp from the shower, black dress clinging exactly the way my father liked his daughter to be displayed, the council was already seated. Five of them, all silver-haired, all wearing the kind of calm that powerful people wear when they've already decided the outcome of a conversation before it starts.

And beside the empty chair reserved for me, there was a man I had never seen before.

Broad-shouldered. Ice-blond hair. A jaw that looked like it had been carved out of the same arctic cold as his eyes. He didn't stand when I entered, didn't smile, didn't do anything except look at me the way a predator looks at something it hasn't decided whether to hunt yet.

My father gestured to the seat beside him. "Seraphina. Meet Kieran Frost."

The name landed in my stomach like a missed step on a staircase.

Frostfang. Hockey. The only pack in the country whose championship record rivalled ours.

"Captain Frost," my father continued, and there was something underneath his voice I hadn't heard in years, something that sounded almost like fear wearing the mask of diplomacy, "will be joining our family."

I didn't sit down. "Joining how?"

The chairwoman at the head of the table finally looked up from her folder, and her smile was the kind that made my wolf go still and quiet inside me.

"As your fiancé, Miss Blackwood."

The room didn't move. Kieran Frost didn't move. But somewhere in my chest, something that had been silent for six years opened one eye and finally, after all this time, began to howl.