CHAPTER 2
1593 Words
Kieran
The Ravens' winger thought he could get away with elbowing Tomas into the boards behind our net.
He was wrong.
I saw the cheap shot the second the referee's eyes drifted elsewhere, and something in me went cold and precise. I crossed the blue line at full speed and put my shoulder straight through his chest before he'd even registered I was coming.
He hit the boards hard enough that the glass shuddered.
The whistle screamed. The crowd roared, half outrage, half delight.
"Frost!" The referee skated over, already reaching for his penalty arm. "That's a five-minute major."
"Worth it." I skated toward the box, ignoring the Ravens' bench howling abuse over the boards. Their winger was already back on his feet. Tomas was laughing.
I served my five minutes watching my team hold the line without me, and when I stepped back onto the ice, the crowd's roar hit sharper, hungrier, the sound eighteen thousand people made when they sensed a captain about to make a point.
I made it in the final minute, a give-and-go with Tomas that ended top shelf past a goalie who never had a chance. The horn blared. The arena came apart.
Four to two. A clean sweep in their own building.
"Captain!" Tomas slammed into me at the boards, helmet askew. "Did you see Kowalski's face when you put him on his ass?"
"I saw it." I skated toward centre ice where the team had gathered, sticks raised, and let myself feel it for a moment, the clean simplicity of a game with rules I actually understood. No Council. Just ice and speed.
"Drinks tonight," Marcus called, peeling off his gloves. "Kowalski's boys are going to be telling that hit story for years. Captain's buying."
"Don't start," I said, laughing despite myself.
We were still on the ice when I saw Halden coming down through the tunnel, moving with the briskness of a man sent somewhere he didn't want to go.
"Captain Frost." He kept his voice low, though Tomas and Marcus both went quiet beside me anyway. "Your father requests your presence in the chambers. Says it's urgent."
"Now?"
"Now." Halden didn't quite meet my eyes. "He was very clear about that part."
Marcus clapped a hand on my shoulder. "Go. We'll keep the drinks warm."
I skated off still in half my gear, and by the time I reached the house, I hadn't bothered changing, shoving open the door to his chambers, still in my jersey. He was at his worktable, waiting the way he always waited, like a king holding court in an empire that had never once asked what its heir actually wanted.
He looked worse than the last time I'd stood in this room. Thinner through the shoulders, greyer than grey, should travel in a matter of weeks, a paleness no study lighting could account for. There and then gone, it's easy to tell myself I'd imagined it.
"You wanted to see me."
"Sit down, Kieran." His eyes moved over my gear, my jersey. "We need to talk about the alliance."
I sat, waiting for him. Getting ahead of my father's point only ever cost me ground.
"The Blackwood pack controls the southern territories," he said, lowering himself into the chair across from me. "We control the north. Between us, we hold every major championship this country has seen in a decade. No other pack comes close."
"So?"
"So the Council is afraid of us." He almost smiled. "Separately, we're powerful. Together, we'd be unstoppable. No pack could challenge us. No council could control us."
"Then why would the Council arrange it?"
"Because they'd rather own the merger than fear it." He leaned forward. "An arranged alliance, sealed through marriage, gives them oversight. Influence. A hand on the leash before the dog even knows it's grown teeth. Refuse the pairing, and they lose their grip on both packs at once."
My jaw tightened. "So what does this mean?"
"It means that for the sake of preserving this clan's legacy, the council has chosen a mate for you." He said it flatly, unhurriedly, already treating it as a settled fact rather than news. "Today you'll go claim her. Engagement first. Marriage after. That's the alliance, Kieran."
With one swipe of my hand, I scattered his worktable across the study.
"Nothing I ever do for this pack was ever enough," I yelled, my voice cracking against the stone walls he'd built with his own hands forty years ago. "What the hell do you want from me? Haven't I lived for you enough?"
"Oh, for heaven's sake, quit being petulant, son." He didn't flinch. "This is your legacy we're talking about. I am doing all of this because of you and the pack."
"The pack doesn't need me married off like cattle," I said.
"The pack needs to survive." His voice dropped, and that was worse than the shouting. "Sit down, Kieran."
"I'll stand."
"Sit."
I sat. Some habits get bred into your bones before you're old enough to know what obedience costs.
"So refuse it," I said.
"You think I haven't tried?" Something cracked in his composure. "I fought this arrangement for six months. Do you know what they told me when I said no?"
I didn't answer. He told me anyway.
"They said Frostfang's charter would be dissolved by winter. Every family under our banner was redistributed to rival packs by nightfall. Your grandmother's territory, gone. Your mother's grave, on land that would no longer belong to us." His jaw tightened. "And you, stripped of your birthright, your title handed to your cousin Dorian, who has wanted your seat since the day you were born."
"They can't do that," I said, but my voice didn't carry the certainty I wanted it to.
"They can. And they will the moment you say no. This isn't a request, son. This is survival. Yours. Mine. Every wolf who has ever called Frostfang home."
I thought of my mother's grave. I thought of Dorian's smile, patient and waiting.
"Who is she?" I finally asked.
"Seraphina Blackwood." My father's mouth curved, satisfaction bleeding back into his features. "Their champion. Their pride. You'll meet her tonight."
I stood, and this time he let me, because he already had what he wanted. He caught the edge of the worktable, rising to see me out, his knuckles whitening against the wood for just a second before he let go.
"Get dressed," he said, walking toward the door. "We have two hours."
By the time our entourage pulled through the Blackwood gates, the sun had gone down entirely, and the banquet hall glittered with the kind of cold, deliberate grandeur built to remind visitors how small they were.
The Council sat like statues at the head of the table, five sets of eyes that had watched centuries of wolves rise and fall. I took my seat beside an empty chair and said nothing.
Then she walked in.
Black dress. A cut above one eye still healing. A championship belt's worth of arrogance in the way she held her spine.
I hated her before she said a single word.
"Seraphina," her father said. "Meet Kieran Frost."
She didn't sit. Her eyes swept over me once, slow and assessing, the way I imagined she looked at opponents right before she put them on the canvas.
"You've got to be kidding me." She let out a short, humourless laugh. "Out of every man in Frostfang, the greatest pack in the north sends me this." A brief pause. "Arrogant."
"Don't get ahead of yourself." My voice came out flat, cold. "You aren't worth it either."
Something sparked behind her eyes. "Excuse me?"
"You heard me. Three-time champion. Big deal. You hit people for a living. I lead a franchise worth more than your entire pack's territory."
"At least I earned my titles with my own hands." Her voice climbed. "You inherited a captaincy the way spoiled boys inherit everything, because daddy needed a puppet with good bone structure."
"Careful, Blackwood."
"Or what, Frost?" She stepped closer, close enough that I caught that scent again, winter and blood and something underneath it that made my wolf go dangerously still. "You'll skate away? That's the only thing I've heard you're good at."
"I'd rather skate away than throw punches for applause like a trained dog."
"Says the man who just found out he's engaged and still hasn't managed to close his mouth about it."
"ENOUGH!" The eldest councilman shot up so fast his chair scraped back and toppled, both palms slamming against the table. "Do you understand what is at stake here? Two territories. Two bloodlines. A hundred years of peace hanging on whether you two children can sit at a table without drawing blood!"
Neither of us spoke. Neither of us looked away either.
The chairwoman rose more slowly. "This alliance was meant to make both packs stronger," she said, her eyes moving between us.
"But with this union, someone will have to bow. One of you will lead. The other will follow."
Seraphina's spine went rigid.
"And most definitely," I said, before I could think better of it, "Kieran Frost will never bow to any woman. Not even one with a boxing championship."
Her eyes locked onto mine, and for the first time all night, the fury on her face turned into something colder. Something that looked a great deal like a promise.
"We'll see about that," she said.
And somewhere beneath my ribs, my wolf, silent for a while, finally opened its eyes.
- Writer
