The Alpha’s Heir Forbidden Mate

Mara Bell’s POV

“Move your feet, Bell, not your mouth!”

That’s Coach Hendricks, yelling at me from across the rink like I’m one of his players and not the girl who refills the water bottles and mops up blood when guys forget how skates work. I roll my eyes and haul the equipment bag toward the bench anyway, because arguing with him during a home game is a great way to lose a paycheck I actually need.

Blackridge’s arena is packed tonight. Every seat full, students standing in the aisles, somebody’s little brother banging on the glass like it owes him money. We’re playing Ridgemont, our biggest rival, and the energy in this building could power the whole campus.

Rhett Veylor is out there doing what Rhett Veylor does best, being impossible to ignore.

He’s fast tonight. Faster than usual, like he’s got something to prove, which knowing him, he probably does. The crowd screams every time he touches the puck. Girls two rows up are holding up a sign with his number on it. I’ve watched him do this a hundred times and I still don’t understand how one person can be that arrogant and that good at the same time.

I hate that I know his stride from memory. I hate that I look up every single time he’s on the ice. He cuts across the blue line, weaving past a defender like the guy’s standing still, and for a second the whole arena leans forward with him.

Then it happens… A Ridgemont player comes out of nowhere, full speed, shoulders down and slams into Rhett so hard the sound cracks through the building like something breaking. Rhett’s body twists wrong. He hits the boards, not the ice, the boards, right where I’m standing with a stack of towels in my arms.

For one second, nobody in that arena makes a sound. Not the crowd. Not the announcer. Not even the ice itself.

Then everyone’s screaming at once, and I’m already moving, towels falling out of my hands, because my legs decided to run before my brain agreed to it.

I get to the boards before the trainers do. Rhett’s on his side, not moving, and there’s blood, a lot more than there should be running from somewhere near his temple onto the ice, dark red spreading against all that white.

The smell hits me before I even register I'm close enough to smell anything. And something inside me that’s been asleep for years opens its eyes.

Mine.

I stop so fast I nearly fall over my own feet.

I know that voice. I haven’t heard it since I was thirteen years old, since the day I decided my wolf just wasn’t going to bother showing up for anything, since I figured maybe some of us just don’t get that part of ourselves loud and clear. Except she’s not quiet right now. She’s wide awake and screaming one word over and over like it’s the only word she knows.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

No. No, absolutely not. Not him.

Rhett Veylor, who called me “the equipment cart” in front of half the hockey team freshman year. Rhett Veylor, who has spent three years making sure I know exactly where I rank in his world, which is nowhere. That Rhett Veylor cannot be my mate. The universe does not hate me this much.

Except then his eyes open. And they find mine.

Across the ice, through the chaos of trainers and teammates crowding around him, his gaze locks onto mine like there’s nobody else in this building. His face goes from pain to confusion to something I’ve never seen on him before, something raw, something that looks almost like fear.

His wolf feels it too. I can see it happen in real time, whatever calm mask he usually wears cracking straight down the middle.

Neither of us moves. The trainers are talking to him, the crowd’s still buzzing with worry, and Rhett and I are just staring at each other like two idiots who forgot how bodies work.

Then he gets up. He shoves off the trainer’s hands, ignores the assistant coach telling him to sit back down, and skates straight for the boards. Straight for me. In front of the entire arena.

For one stupid, hopeful second, I think maybe this is it. Maybe he’s going to say something. Maybe the wolf in him is stronger than three years of him treating me like garbage.

He gets close enough that I can see the blood on his temple starting to dry, and he says, loud enough for the first few rows to hear:

“Whatever that was, it means nothing. You hear me? Nothing.”

Somebody laughs behind me. I don’t turn around to see who.

“I don’t want a mate,” he says, “and I definitely don’t want you.”

The words land exactly where he wants them to. I feel my face go hot, my throat tighten, and I hate my own body for reacting like this actually hurts, because it shouldn’t. He’s nothing to me. He’s never been anything to me except a headache with good hair.

I refuse to cry. Not here. Not in front of three thousand people who already think I’m a joke.

“Great,” I say, and my voice only shakes a little. “Glad we agree on something.”

He grabs my wrist, I don’t know why, maybe to make some point, maybe by accident and the second his skin touches mine, the world drops out from under me.

I’m not standing in the arena anymore...

I’m somewhere dark. A hallway I don’t recognize, narrow and cold. There’s a man’s voice, low and furious, saying words I can’t make out. There’s blood on the floor, more blood than one body should have. And on a hand reaching toward me, catching what little light there is, a silver ring with a shape carved into it I’ve never seen before.

Then it’s gone, and I’m back on the ice, and Rhett’s yanking his hand away from mine like I burned him.

He doesn’t say anything else. He skates off toward the locker room, and the crowd starts cheering again because apparently a public humiliation is just as entertaining as a hockey game. I stand there shaking, and it has nothing to do with the cold.

Because that hallway, that blood, that ring. I know exactly what I just saw. The night Rhett’s father died wasn’t random. Somebody planned it. And somehow, whatever just happened between me and Rhett has pulled me straight into it.

I look up, trying to steady myself, trying to remember how to breathe like a normal person. That’s when I see him.

A man standing alone at the very top of the arena, far above the noise and the lights, wearing a long dark coat that doesn’t belong at a college hockey game.

On his finger, catching the glare of the overhead lights, is a silver ring.

The exact same ring from my vision. He’s not watching the game. He’s looking straight at me…