Pucking Around with Fate
They were supposed to be on the same team.
Santos Khyle arrived in Seattle as the Soul Reapers' most anticipated rookie in years, a natural-born scorer with something to prove and a chip on his shoulder the size of a regulation puck. Gunner Jäger had been tearing up the ice as the team's feared enforcer for two seasons, and he had zero interest in sharing his spotlight with some orange-haired twenty-one year old who looked at him like he was a problem to be managed.
From the moment they met, it was war.
On the ice, they were a disaster. Off it, they were worse. Screaming matches in corridors. Fists through locker room walls. A live on-air brawl that made every highlight reel in North America and earned them both a suspension, a lecture from their furious coach, and the undivided attention of the entire hockey world.
Nobody could stand to watch them together.
Nobody could look away either.
Because underneath the fury and the bruises and the months of spectacular mutual destruction, something else was building. Something neither of them had language for yet. Something that felt uncomfortably like the only fight either of them was actually afraid to lose.
The Soul Reapers are one playoff run away from everything. Gunner and Khyle are one honest conversation away from falling apart completely.
Or maybe, just maybe, from finally figuring out what they are to each other.
Pucking Up the Ice is a slow burn MM romance set in the brutal and beautiful world of professional hockey. It contains explicit language, on-ice violence, emotional gut punches, two men who are absolutely terrible at feelings, and a love story that had to break everything before it could build something worth keeping.
Baca
Chapter: The DoorPOV: Dual, Khyle and GunnerKhyle's building.Gunner pulled into the visitor spot he had started to think of as his and cut the engine. Khyle had one hand on the door handle. He stopped.The specific quality of the pause between them was different from other pauses. Gunner felt it and he suspected Khyle felt it and he suspected Khyle suspected he felt it, which was the particular kind of awareness that had been running between them for months and which Gunner now had a name for but had not yet applied out loud."Thanks," Khyle said. To the dashboard, mostly."For what?""The rink. The Cooper thing." A beat. "All of it."Gunner looked at him."You set it up," he said."Yeah but." Khyle stopped. He was looking at his own hand on the door handle. "You showed up."The way he said it landed at a specific address in Gunner's chest. Not the rink. Not the Cooper session. You showed up. Like that was the thing. Like that was what had mattered.Gunner thought about Petra's voice on the porch. H
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-16
Chapter: The DrivePOV: GunnerThey drove back mostly without talking.Not because anything was wrong. Or rather, not because anything was wrong in the usual way. The silence between them had stopped being a failure of conversation a long time ago. It had become something else, the comfortable kind, or close to it, the kind that did not require filling.But Gunner was not comfortable. He was sitting with a very large and recently acknowledged truth in the passenger seat of Khyle's car and trying to behave normally while Khyle drove and the city came back at them through the windshield and the heater ran and the mixed CD played something that should probably not have been on a mixed CD that was going to be shared with another person.He had named his stick Khyle.He was in love with Khyle Santos.He let both of those sentences exist in his head at the same time without doing anything with them. It was a new experience. Normally by now he would have moved. Decided. Done something about whatever the thing
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-16
Chapter: The NamePOV: GunnerHe had been watching Khyle skate for twenty minutes.Not obviously. Not the way you watched someone when you wanted them to know you were watching. The other way. The way you watched something when you were trying to understand it, when the act of looking was itself an act of figuring something out that you had been not-figuring-out for a very long time.Khyle moved differently when he thought no one was paying attention. The precision was still there, the efficiency that came from two decades of muscle memory, but the performance quality dropped away and what was left underneath it was something more animal. More honest. He cut across the ice with the specific fluency of someone for whom movement in this environment was not learned behavior but native, and Gunner stood at the boards and watched him do it and did not pretend he was watching for any other reason than the one that was true.He had been pretending for a long time.Not about everything. He had known about the
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-16
Chapter: Sorry About EarlierPOV: KhyleThe phone screen had gone dark and bright three times since Khyle had set it on the table. He hadn't touched it. But he'd been watching it the way you watched something you weren't sure was going to hurt you, like a bruise you weren't ready to press.The first two times had been his dad checking in from the house in the suburbs, because the weather had gotten worse and Khyle had mentioned going to Gunner's mother's place and his dad had opinions about driving in weather that strong. The third time was Shane.Khyle hadn't answered any of them.The coffee had been good and he'd drunk most of it sitting on the couch in the dim living room. He hadn't turned more lights on. He wasn't feeling the brightness of his own apartment right now. He was feeling the specific quiet of a day that had gone from unremarkable to enormous and back to unremarkable in the span of a few hours, the way some days did when you were inside them and couldn't see them clearly yet.His cheek was fine. It
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-07
Chapter: CorrectionPOV: GunnerGritting his teeth, Gunner wrenched the wheel into the slide and let the car do what it needed to do. The white shoulder markers swooped past his driver's side window with dizzying speed. No guard rail on this stretch of road.He kept his foot even and held the wheel, waiting for it, the sensation of the tires catching, the click of traction. He had to drive through the spin and not fight it. Ride it.The car slid another car length before it stopped on the shoulder, aimed back at where it had come from, a quarter turn into the opposite lane, front headlights flooding the wrong direction.He sat there for a moment in the stopped car with the engine running and the headlights pointing back at where he had come from. He had been going too fast in the wrong direction on black ice and the road had corrected him before he could do it himself. He sat with that for a long moment. Then he got the car turned around.He sat in the idling car on the shoulder of the road, white-knuckl
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-07
Chapter: Black IcePOV: Dual, Khyle and Gunner alternatingSkates against hard ice, or rubber on miles of open blacktop. Sometimes, they both helped clear the mind when nothing else would.He didn't know exactly how long he'd been driving. He just drove until the city lights turned to stars. Or until the stars replaced the city lights. Again, he didn't know.But when his chaotic thoughts slowed long enough to realize how far he'd gone, he found himself somewhere just outside the city limits, speeding down a quiet, dark stretch of dual highway, hugged by rotting snowbanks, deep ravines, and shadowed pine trees.Gunner let his foot sink like a lead weight, pushing the car from a buck thirty to one forty. Letting loose a moment longer before he'd have to rein it in for the next off-ramp. Settling right into the edge of a hefty street racing fine if he got caught. But there was no one to see it, and no cops in sight. Hardly anyone on the road as the forecast weather started to settle in. He pushed it down s
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-08-06
Chapter: Research MontagePOV: Vivian AshfordI am an actress.Which means I know how to research a role from the inside out, how to build a character from available evidence until the character becomes something you inhabit rather than perform. I have done it for every significant role I have taken and I am good at it and the specific skill set transfers, it turns out, to researching a curse.I spend three days at it.Not the sketchbooks and the archive copies that Sienna showed me, though I read those again more carefully. I go to the primary sources, the Sterling family history that is available through public records and society archives and the digitized collections of several Manhattan libraries, and I build a timeline going back four generations.The pattern emerges by the end of the first day.Not obviously. Not with a flashing sign. It surfaces the way the truth surfaces when you are reading carefully, incrementally, one document leading to another, and at some point you are standing back looking at w
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-13
Chapter: Sienna Reveals the CursePOV: Sienna RhodesI have been waiting for this call.Not with dread, the way I wait for the bad visions. With the specific quality of someone who has been holding a heavy thing for a long time and has been told they will be able to put it down soon and is watching the moment approach."Come over," I say. "I'll show you."She arrives forty minutes later in jeans and a jacket and the expression of someone who has made a decision to be open to something and is not entirely comfortable with the openness but is committed to it anyway.I have Helena's notes on the table. Not the grimoire, Helena has not authorized that, but the written summary she gave me after our second meeting, the specific documented mechanics of the curse in Helena's own handwriting, which is precise and academic and reads like a case study.I also have the copies from the Ashworth archive. Beatrice Ashworth's journal entries, the ones I photographed on my phone during the library visit, which document the Moreau work
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-13
Chapter: Vivian'sPOV: Vivian AshfordI spend Saturday morning watching him.Not in person. On my laptop, in the Silver Lake apartment, with my coffee going cold beside me, pulling up every piece of footage I can find from the past ten months. Press interviews, red carpet moments, the Forbes interview, the clip from the board meeting hallway, the #SterlingBrothersWar footage from the office.I watch them in order.I watch them the way I watch footage of my own performances, which is analytically, the specific skill of someone who has been trained to read bodies and faces and the gap between what a person says and what a person means, and what I see when I apply that skill to Chase Sterling across ten months of public footage is something I have been too close to see before.He hurts after.Every single time.The Forbes interview, the pull quote moment, he is smooth and pleasant and the interviewer is charmed, and then there is a cut to him standing outside the building afterward and his face in the two
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-10
Chapter: Vivian's RealizationPOV: Vivian AshfordI watch the hospital footage three times.Not the public footage, there is no public footage from inside the room, but the footage that exists in my memory, which I have been replaying since I got home last night with the specific quality of something you know you are going to be replaying for a long time.He said: I have loved you since the second semester of sophomore year.He said: I have not stopped for a single day since.He said: I don't know how to be this without hurting you.He said all of it with the flinch following each true thing, the physical cost of the spell making every honest sentence visible in his body, and I sat beside his bed and I held his hand and I watched it happen and I cried when he was asleep and I left before he woke up.And now I am on my couch in Silver Lake with my coffee and the ring on my finger and the footage playing in my head, and I am trying to figure out what to do with what I know.The problem is the following: he won't rem
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-10
Chapter: ConfessionsPOV: Vivian AshfordHelena calls me back within twenty minutes of Chase going quiet on the phone, which means she was monitoring, which means she knew this was going to happen and had contingencies in place, which is very Helena."He's all right," she says, before I can ask. "The spell's physical toll compounded with the curse's resistance. He needs medical attention and rest.""Hospital," I say."I've called an ambulance," she says. "Cedars has his records from the last visit.""I'm coming," I say.A pause. "Vivian. He won't remember what he said. When the spell ends, everything he said under it will feel like something that happened in a dream. He won't know he told you."I sit with that."I'm still coming," I say.He is in a room on the fourth floor when I arrive, pale and hooked to an IV with the monitors doing their work, and it is the second time I have sat beside a hospital bed of his making and both times feel nothing alike.The first time he was beside mine.This time the nur
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-09
Chapter: The Truth SpellPOV: Chase SterlingHelena is furious.Not the quiet disappointed version of furious that she usually manages. The actual version, which I have seen exactly twice in my life, once when I was eight and broke something in her New Orleans kitchen that belonged to her grandmother, and once now, standing in my penthouse at nine in the morning with the Vegas photographs on every screen and her hands flat on my kitchen counter."The party," she says."I know," I say."You went to her bachelorette party," she says."I was at the hotel," I say."Chase.""I know," I say.She looks at me with the dark eyes and the silver-streaked hair and the twenty-three years of this specific exhaustion on her face, and then she does something I was not expecting, which is she reaches into the bag she carries and she takes out a small vial and she sets it on the kitchen counter between us.I look at it.Clear liquid. No label. The kind of container that could contain anything."What is that," I say."Something
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-07-09
The Rejected Omega's Bastard Heir
For fifteen years, Trishelle has been nothing more than “Trash” to the Bloodmoon Pack.
Born without a wolf, abandoned as a pup, and forced to live as a servant in the pack house, she learned long ago that omegas like her are meant to suffer quietly. The worst of her tormentors was Alpha James, the powerful Alpha who gave her the cruel nickname that everyone still uses.
But something changes.
Suddenly, the Alpha can’t stop watching her. He notices the smile he never cared to see, the curves hidden beneath her oversized clothes, and the scent that drives his wolf mad. The more he tries to ignore her, the more obsessed he becomes.
Then one reckless night changes everything.
When Trishelle discovers she’s carrying a child, the pack brands her unborn baby a bastard heir. Humiliated, betrayed, and rejected once again, she walks away from the only home she has ever known.
Years later, she returns no longer as the broken omega they mocked, but as a woman who has risen from the ashes with a son powerful enough to shake the werewolf world.
And Alpha James is about to learn a devastating truth:
the child he cast aside is his heir… and the omega he never claimed may be the mate he can never win back.
Baca
Chapter: Unexpected NewsIt had been two weeks since Trishelle and Samuel joined the Goldmoon Pack. While the first few nights were rough on Trishelle, the days that followed went by without a hitch. Bradley was more than happy to allow her the freedom to visit anywhere, and everyone was most helpful. She especially loved visiting the pups and even helped out a few times. It was strange, but they flocked to her. The teachers were surprised as they were usually reserved with new people, but that wasn't the case with her. Many assumed that it was because Trishelle carried a slight hint of Bradley's scent.After the first day, Trishelle would have flashes of that nightmare, causing her restless nights. It was evident by the dark circles under her eyes every morning. When Bradley noticed this, he consulted with his wolf, who suggested that their scent might calm her. Calling Stacy, who was assigned to his Luna, Bradley asked that the blanket he used be switched with Trishelle's every day. Without her wolf, Trishe
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-24
Chapter: Dark Memories"So over here is the Alpha's study, his room is at the end of the hall and this will be your room." With that, their guide, Stacy deposited Trishelle's small suitcase inside the door to one of the guest rooms before closing it. A quick knock and she popped her head in to add, "And dinner is usually around seven, so you can relax until then. Your friend is in the room across from you. See you then." She disappeared once again. Sighing, Trishelle took a deep breath. Sitting on the luxurious bed, she covered her face with her hands. It was still hard to believe that she had actually rejected her pack and left, taking refuge in a place she had never heard of with an Alpha who claimed her as his mate, no less. Falling back, she crossed one arm over her face. "I wish you were here, Rosie. I really need you right now. Tell me what should I do?"Since the ceiling held no answers, she turned to her side and just let her mind go blank. It was a strange feeling to not be worried about who was go
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-24
Chapter: A New BeginningTrishelle couldn't believe she was finally leaving this place. Though the pack had taken her in, they had failed in every way to make her feel like a true member. As the black van drove away, she took one last look at what had been her home. Despite having few good memories there, it was still the only place she had received anything, especially from her beloved Rosie. Feeling her hand squeezed, she turned to her best friend with a watery smile.The day she rejected James, the Councilwoman immediately declared her under her care and protection. With that decided, she brought Trishelle to the Goldmoon Pack. Of course, she wasn't going without her best and only friend, so with the older woman's orders, Samuel was released, and they both packed their meager belongings. Sammy wanted to reject the pack as well, but Trishelle talked him out of it, at least for the time being. Rosie had taught them the value of being grateful, and if it wasn't for the Bloodmoon's Gamma, he wouldn't have had
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-23
Chapter: The ClaimTrishelle had been waiting in the Councilwoman's suite for ninety minutes. Behind the closed door of the next room, voices rose and fell without ever becoming words, and she wondered whether any of them were saying her name.Restless, she tried to distract herself with the elegance of the room — the carved chairs, the heavy drapes, the rug so thick it swallowed her footsteps — but none of it held her. It was funny. She had spent years complaining about the dark little space they had shoved her into, and now it was the only place she wanted to be.A gentle knock, and Alexa poked her head in, concern creasing her brow. "Hi. Are you feeling better?""Yeah, I am. I'm just wondering what's going on." Trishelle picked at the hem of her borrowed clothes — a top from Cynthia, leggings from Alexa, after the older woman had scoffed at what the omega had brought with her."Well, that's why I'm here. My grandmother is calling you to Alpha James' office."The girl stiffened at his name, and Alexa k
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-21
Chapter: The Alpha's ClaimFour of the visiting guests arrived at James's study. He was standing by the window, nursing a drink in his hand. Turning, he placed the glass on his desk and rounded it, heading straight for the older woman. "Councilwoman Seers. I must apologise for the disgraceful sight you've seen since you arrived." Bowing, he took hold of the woman's hand. "I'm sure one as wise as you must have figured out what was happening with me."Stepping back, he turned to Bradley, "Alpha Bradley, I apologise to you as well. I can assure you that this is not my normal behaviour, but when one's heart has been affected by beauty, the mind ceases to function." Bradley, wondering just what James was up to, simply nodded. "Please, everyone, have a seat so we can have a discussion like civilised people."James took his seat behind his desk. Bradley sat in one of the chairs opposite him while the Councilwoman sat in the other. Alexa sat on the sofa against the wall, and Beta Sam simply leaned against the wall on t
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-19
Chapter: A Friend's Bargain"Rosebud? What do you want with her?" The anger in his voice caused Sam to pull back. He knew that he needed to tread carefully or else this wolf-less prisoner would have his throat."Easy there, my friend. I just wanted to know about her, that's all, but I thought her name was Trishelle?""Why?"Scratching behind his head, Sam decided to be honest. If this were her best friend, then his Alpha would be pissed if he did something to upset his mate, whether directly or not. "Well, it seems that your friend is my Alpha's mate. That makes her my Luna. I mean her no harm or disrespect, but the fight you saw earlier was about her. It seems as though your Alpha wants to claim her as his own, but since she is unmarked, Alpha Bradley is desperate to claim what is rightfully his."Samuel sat back down. If what he says is true, it could mean that Trishelle would leave here once and for all. Yet, if this Alpha is worse than James, he could be sending her from the pan straight into the fire. "As y
Terakhir Diperbarui: 2026-09-15
Masuk
