The Alpha’s Offer

Mara Bell’s POV

By the time I get to my first class, half the campus already knows my business.

I catch it in pieces. A girl at the coffee cart whispering to her friend, both of them glancing at me like I’m a car crash they can’t look away from. Someone in the back row of my lit seminar mutters equipment girl and somebody else laughs like it’s the funniest thing they’ve heard all week.

“I heard Rhett actually touched her,” a girl says behind me in the hallway, not even bothering to lower her voice. “Why would his wolf even react to that?”

“Maybe it’s broken,” her friend answers, and they both laugh.

I keep my face still and my spine straight and I don’t give either of them the satisfaction of a reaction. I learned a long time ago that the fastest way to end this kind of thing is to act like it doesn’t touch you at all, even when it does. Especially when it does.

I make it through two classes before Coach Reyes finds me outside the gym, looking more stressed than I’ve ever seen her.

“Bell. Just the person I need.”

“I have a shift at four.”

“Forget the shift for a minute.” She rubs her temple like she’s been doing it all morning. “Danika broke her ankle last night at practice. We’re down a player two weeks before regionals, and I have exactly zero options on the bench.”

“That’s rough,” I say, already trying to figure out how to leave this conversation. “I hope you find someone.”

“I already did.” She looks at me like she’s about to ask something she already knows the answer to. “Rhett tells me you can skate.”

My whole body goes cold. “Rhett doesn’t know anything about me.”

“He says otherwise.” She crosses her arms. “Says he’s seen you on the outdoor rink at six in the morning more times than he can count, and you’re better than half my current roster.”

I don’t know how long he’s been watching me do that. I don’t know what’s worse, that he noticed, or that some small, stupid part of me is flattered by it.

“I don’t play competitively,” I say. “My mom made that very clear before she died. It wasn’t up for discussion.”

“Your mom isn’t here anymore, Bell.” Coach Reyes says it gently, but it still lands like a slap. “I’m not asking you to sign your life away. I’m asking for two weeks. One tournament.”

I tell her no. I mean it when I say it.

Rhett finds me an hour later outside the library, like he already knew I’d refuse and was just waiting for his turn to argue.

“You need to say yes,” he says, no hello, no warning.

“I don’t need anything from you.”

“Someone broke into your dorm last night looking for something connected to my father’s murder, and you think staying far away from the team is the safer option?” He steps closer, and my whole body reacts to it whether I want it to or not. “Being close to the team means you’re never alone. It means people watching your back.”

“Or it means being close to you,” I say. “Which isn’t exactly comforting.”

Something shifts in his jaw. “There’s something else.”

“Of course there is.”

“Someone accessed university security files two nights ago. Files connected to my father’s case.” He pulls out his phone, shows me a screenshot he clearly wasn’t supposed to have. “Your name’s in there, Mara. Somebody flagged you.”

My stomach drops. “Flagged me for what?”

“I don’t know yet. But whoever’s digging into this isn’t just watching me anymore.”

I hate that he’s right. I hate that saying yes to him feels like losing, and saying no feels like painting a target on my own back.

“Fine,” I say. “Two weeks. That’s it.”

~~~~

My first practice is a disaster before it even starts.

Nobody wants me there. I can feel it the second I step onto the ice, the sideways looks, the whispered comments, the way the girls cluster together like I might be contagious. Rhett runs the drills like he runs everything, sharp and demanding, and he doesn’t cut me any slack just because half the team thinks I don’t belong here.

“Faster, Bell,” he barks during a passing drill. “You’re not mopping floors anymore.”

“Wow. Original.”

One of the senior players, a girl named Priya who’s clearly been named team captain of the resentment squad, comes at me hard during a scrimmage, too hard, elbow up where it shouldn’t be, catching me in the ribs so sharp I nearly go down. It’s not an accident and everybody on that ice knows it.

I don’t go down. I plant my skate, absorb the hit, and shove back with everything I’ve got, sending her stumbling into the boards instead of me. The whistle blows. Coach yells something about control. But for one second, the entire rink goes quiet the same way it did the night Rhett got hurt, except this time it’s because of me.

I skate past Priya without a word and steal the puck clean off her stick two plays later.

From across the ice, Rhett watches me the whole time, and something in his expression has changed. He’s not looking at the girl he used to knock chairs out from under. He’s looking at me like I’m something he underestimated, and it makes something warm and dangerous curl in my chest that I immediately try to shove back down.

After practice, he catches me near the bench, close enough that his voice drops low, just for me.

“Your wolf’s messing with mine,” he says. “I can feel her every time you’re near me.”

“Not my problem.”

“I didn’t say it was.” He studies me for a second too long. “My father warned me once. About a girl who’d become my mate.” His jaw tightens like the words cost him something. “He said she’d either save this bloodline, or she’d be the one to end it.”

I don’t have anything to say to that. I don’t think there’s anything that could be said. He walks away before I can ask what he meant, and I stand there feeling like the ground under me just tilted a few degrees.

~~~~

That night, I couldn't sleep, and I couldn't stop thinking about his father, and the note, and the ring, and the symbol carved into that puck. So I do something stupid. I sneak into the hockey building after hours, using the master key I definitely wasn’t supposed to keep from my old equipment job, and I make my way to the alumni lockers where the old coaching staff and legacy players used to keep their things.

Marcus Veylor’s old locker is still there, untouched, like a shrine nobody’s brave enough to clear out. I don’t know what I’m expecting to find. I definitely wasn’t expecting this.

Taped to the back wall, hidden behind an old jersey, is an envelope, yellowed at the edges like it’s been sitting there for years. Three words are written across the front in handwriting I don’t recognize.

MARA BELL — OPEN.