The Hockey Alpha’s Boxing Bride

CHAPTER 4

Seraphina

"Father, I'm sorry!" I groaned as pain tore through me. The only side of him I'd ever known was the ruthless one, and I was never spared when I crossed his line.

"Didn't I warn you?" My father's power held me suspended in the air, invisible fingers of pressure closing around my throat even as they held me aloft. "Yet you chose to disgrace me in front of the Council, so they'll think my heir is uncultured."

The pain in my neck was sharp and hollow at once, my body caught between two sensations that shouldn't have been able to exist together, and yet here I was, existing in both.

"Leave her alone, Daddy."

Sofia's small voice cut through the chamber, and my father's grip faltered instantly. She stood in the doorway clutching her teddy bear, her nightgown too big for her tiny frame, her eyes wide and uncertain in a way that made my chest ache worse than my throat did.

Sofia was the last thing our mother had given the world before she died three years ago, and ever since, she had been my father's one unguarded weakness, the single soft place in a man built entirely of edges.

He set me down gently, not even sparing me a glance. His focus had already shifted entirely to her.

"Oh, my sweet pea." He crossed the room like the wind had carried him there, all the violence drained out of his voice as if it had never existed. "I'm sorry you had to see that. Daddy was just teaching your sister that family rules are never meant to be broken."

"But you were hurting her, Daddy." There was so much innocence in her voice, made softer by the gap where her two front teeth used to be.

"No, my peanut. Seraphina and I were just playing a game." He smiled and smoothed her hair back from her face. "Tell you what, why don't you go ask Marose for Daddy's special chocolate, and I'll come read you your favourite bedtime story?"

She lit up instantly, all worry forgotten. "Will you come too, Seraphina?"

I couldn't answer. My throat still burned from where his power had gripped it, and speaking felt like swallowing glass. So I nodded instead, and that was enough. She ran off clutching her teddy bear, already forgetting what she'd walked in on, the way children learn to forget the things that would break them if they let themselves remember.

My father turned to me once she'd gone, and every trace of gentleness disappeared from his face as if it had never been there at all.

"The public reveal is tomorrow night." His voice was flat, final. "You know better than to embarrass me again."

He walked out without another word, leaving me alone on the floor of his study, rubbing my throat, thinking the same thought I always thought after nights like this one.

Three-time world champion. Undefeated in every ring I'd ever stepped into. And still, at twenty-three years old, I'm no match for my own father.

By the following night, the bruises had faded enough to cover with makeup, and I stood backstage in a gown the colour of fresh snow, listening to a crowd of thousands scream outside a curtain that separated my old life from whatever came next.

"You ready?" Kieran's voice, low and clipped, came from beside me. He looked immaculate in a black suit, jaw tight, eyes fixed forward like a soldier bracing for a battle he hadn't chosen.

"Do I have a choice?"

"No." He almost smiled, though there was nothing warm in it. "Neither do I."

For a moment, something passed between us that wasn't hatred. Recognition, maybe. Two people standing at the edge of the same cage, realising the bars looked identical from both sides.

Then the curtain rose, and the world exploded into light.

Cameras flashed in a blinding wall as we stepped onto the stage, hand in hand, the announcer's voice booming over speakers loud enough to rattle my ribs. "Ladies and gentlemen, wolves of every territory, tonight we witness history. The union of two legendary bloodlines. Boxing champion Seraphina Blackwood, and Frostfang's captain, Kieran Frost!"

The crowd roared loud enough to shake the floor beneath my heels. Somewhere in that sea of faces, reporters screamed questions over each other, phones raised, every headline in the country being written in real time.

Kieran's hand tightened around mine, and for the cameras, I smiled the smile I'd been trained to wear since I was old enough to stand in a ring. Practiced. Perfect. Entirely hollow.

We answered questions we'd rehearsed with our fathers the night before. We posed for photos neither of us wanted taken. We performed the engagement so flawlessly that by the time we finally stepped off that stage, my face ached from smiling, and my hand ached from being held by a man who despised me exactly as much as I despised him.

It wasn't until I was back in my room, gown discarded, makeup wiped clean, that my phone buzzed on the nightstand.

Noah: So it's true. You're actually marrying Frostfang's captain.

Me: It's true.

Noah: Funny. You never mentioned that when you were in my bed two weeks ago.

I stared at the screen, unbothered by the bitterness in it. I hadn't owed him an update on my life. I hadn't owed him anything at all.

Noah: I have to be honest, Fina. I thought we had something real. I thought after everything, you'd at least give me the chance to be more than just someone you called when you were bored.

Me: We were never going to be more than that, Noah. I told you that from the start.

Noah: Did you? Or did you just let me believe whatever kept me convenient? Doesn't matter. I still think you're making a mistake. A man like that will own you the way your father does. At least with me, you'd have had a choice.

I almost laughed at that had it not stung so precisely. Noah had never offered me a choice. He'd offered me a body to use when the walls of my life closed in too tight to breathe, and somewhere along the way, he'd convinced himself that made him owe something. Men like Noah always did. They mistook convenience for a claim.

Me: You were never in a position to give me one.

He didn't respond after that, and I set the phone face down on the nightstand, done with him the way I'd been done with him for a while now, if I were honest with myself.

I thought of my father's hand around my throat. I thought of Sofia's small voice, still trusting a man I knew better than to trust. I thought of Kieran's hand in mine on that stage, steady and unfeeling, and the strange, unwelcome recognition that had passed between us before the curtain rose.

And for a moment, unbidden, I thought of the way his jaw had tightened right before the cameras found us.

I didn't know yet what that meant. I only knew it unsettled me more than anything Noah had just said.