The Rogue Alpha's Northern Mate
Tessa Rourke used to be the alpha of the Saltmarsh pack, the fastest center on the Southern Coast and the loudest mouth in any locker room. Then a scandal she did not cause wiped out her pack in a single week, and now she is an alpha with no territory, no team and a reputation that follows her like a bad smell. Every Southern club has blacklisted her, and she has been paying rent by coaching kids on a rink that leaks.
Then a contract arrives from the north. Frostmere, the proudest club in the Northern Reach, wants her on its top line, no questions asked, and Tessa is desperate enough to sign before reading the fine print. The fine print, naturally, is where the trouble lives.
Her new captain is Jarrett Locke, a cold, controlled Northern alpha who has never lost a faceoff and never shown a feeling. The moment they touch, his wolf names her as his mate, and both of them are furious about it. She is a disgraced Coast rogue and he is the golden son of the Reach, and their packs have hated each other for a century.
Tessa has one season to prove she belongs on the ice, one captain she cannot stop arguing with, and one secret to uncover. The north is paying a fortune to hide the one alpha the south wants back, and she intends to find out why.
Read
Chapter: A Very Generous UncleCoach Frey’s office had one window, one desk and two hard chairs, and she made us sit in them like children outside a principal’s door. Jarrett lowered himself into his with the stiff precision of a man being fitted for a suit. I flopped into mine, because I had been awake since four, I had been slammed into a wall and I had decided that dignity was a luxury for people who had slept.“Well,” said Coach Frey. She stood behind the desk with her arms folded and looked at us for a very long time. “I have coached this team for eleven years, and I have seen broken legs, brawls and a goalie who proposed to a referee. I have never seen a captain say mine to a new hire on the ice. So one of you will tell me what happened, and you will not lie.”“It was a bond reaction,” Jarrett said evenly.“I am aware it was a bond reaction, Locke, I have eyes.” She did not blink. “I am asking whether it is real.”“It is real,” I said before he could answer. “I am as thrilled as you are.”“I did not say I was
Last Updated: 2026-11-04
Chapter: The CheckI have been hit by some of the biggest players on the Coast, and I have learned that the trick is to see the hit coming and make sure it lands on something you can afford to lose. Jarrett Locke moved faster than anyone that size had a right to, and I saw him coming from forty feet away, so I did what I always did. I dropped my shoulder, leaned into the boards and made him miss.He did not miss.The impact rattled my teeth. My back slammed against the glass with a crack that echoed through the whole arena, and the puck skittered off toward the far blue line while the entire first line whooped. I got an arm up on instinct to shove him off, and that was the moment his bare right hand closed around my wrist.The world went quiet.Heat poured through my arm like someone had opened a furnace under my skin, and it did not stop at the elbow. It rushed up my shoulder and flooded my chest, and my wolf, who had been polite and sulky and silent for six long months, rose up inside me with a howl s
Last Updated: 2026-11-04
Chapter: Rogue RiskI stared at the back of the driver’s head, and he stared at me in the mirror, and the car hummed on through the snow as if nothing in the world had happened. The man had a gray cap and a thick neck and a scar across his left eyebrow that I knew from somewhere, and it took me three full seconds to place it, because the last time I had seen that scar it had been dripping with bus window glass.“Hank?” I said. “Hank Dube? You drove the Tides bus for twelve years.”“Thirteen, if you count the year I only drove the second string.” His mouth twitched. “Good to see you, Coach. Although I would have preferred a different car.”“You work for Frostmere?”“I work for whoever lets me keep my pension. And before you ask, yes, I know everything on that sheet of paper, because I was the one who put it in your folder.”I almost dropped the contract. “You wrote the note.”“Pencil, in the glove box, while Mr. Voss was inside charming you.” Hank sounded almost embarrassed. “He leaves the folder on the s
Last Updated: 2026-11-04
Chapter: Pack for Snow“March ninth,” Priya said for the third time, as though repeating it might change the ink. “The auditors showed up at the Tides office on the fourteenth, and the Tides office was my office, Tess. I remember because I was labeling skate bags and a man in a blue suit took the box cutter out of my hand.”“It could be a clerical mistake.” I turned the gray slip over in my fingers and tried to sound like a person who believed that. “Maybe they approved a different contract that week and recycled the paper.”“For a rogue who was not a rogue yet?”“Maybe they planned to poach me from the Tides the normal way.”“Frostmere has never poached anyone from the Coast, and you know it.” She snatched the slip back, held it up to the light as if it might confess, and then gave a short, humorless laugh. “Do you want to hear the worst part? I had a feeling when he said the word alpha. My wolf went quiet like she does when a storm is coming, and I ignored her because I wanted you to be happy.”“I am stil
Last Updated: 2026-11-04
Chapter: The Fine PrintThe roof of the Harbor Street Rink has a leak directly over center ice, and that morning it decided to aim at my head. A fat, cold drop landed between my eyes while I was kneeling to tie the skates of a very serious eight year old named Bo, and I took it the way I took most things lately, with a long breath and a muttered curse that I pretended was a cough.“Coach Tessa said a bad word,” Bo announced to the whole rink.“Coach Tessa said ouch,” I told him. “Ouch is a very old word with a lot of meanings.”“It did not sound like ouch.”“Then your ears are still growing. Go show me a crossover, and if you fall, fall like a professional.”He shuffled off toward the bucket at the blue line, and I stood up and let my knees crack. Six months ago I had stood on ice under a glass dome while forty thousand people screamed my name. Now I had a whistle on a shoelace, a thermos of terrible coffee and eleven children who thought I was fascinating because I could skate backward without looking.“Rou
Last Updated: 2026-11-04
LOGIN
