A Very Generous Uncle

Coach 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 thrilled.”

“You have a look.”

“This is my face.” Frey rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Fated bonds are rare and they are sacred, and in this pack they are also a political disaster. Rogue or not, you are on my first line, Rourke, and the captain and his mate cannot be on the ice together unless they can keep it professional. Can you keep it professional?”

“I can if he can.”

“I can do anything,” said Jarrett, which was the most arrogant thing I had ever heard and also, annoyingly, probably true.

The door opened without a knock.

I knew who it was before I turned. The air in the room cooled by about ten degrees, and Jarrett’s spine straightened as though someone had run a wire up it. Alaric Locke stepped inside in his long gray coat, with silver hair brushed back from a handsome, patient face and the faint, kindly smile of a grandfather arriving at a birthday party. He looked fifty and he moved like a man of thirty, and his eyes were the exact same winter gray as his nephew’s, only warmer, which somehow made them worse.

“Marguerite, forgive the intrusion. I could not stay away.” He closed the door behind him with a soft click. “Miss Rourke, I do hope the journey was not too wearing. We have not had the pleasure.”

“Mr. Locke.” I stood, because everything in my body said to, and I hated it. “Thank you for the contract. It is very generous.”

“I am a generous man, as my nephew will tell you.” He turned his smile on Jarrett, and Jarrett’s expression did not change by a hair. “And what a welcome you gave her, Jarrett. I have been in this game for forty years, and I have never seen a more dramatic first shift.”

“It was unplanned, Uncle.”

“The best things are.” Alaric clasped his hands in front of him. “I will be direct, because I believe in being direct with family. A fated bond between my heir and a Coast alpha is a remarkable thing, and it is also a delicate one. There are people in the Reach who will not understand it. There are people on the Coast who will understand it a great deal too well.”

“What are you suggesting?” Frey asked bluntly.

“That we keep it quiet, my dear Marguerite, until we know how to tell the story.” His voice was warm as tea. “Miss Rourke will play on the first line, as promised. She will live in the guest wing of the family house, where she can be looked after. And of course, she will be free to go wherever she pleases.”

“The guest wing,” I repeated.

“I would not dream of putting a member of the pack in a hotel.” He tilted his head, and the smile did not waver. “And I always believe a person is safest where we can see her.”

There it was, wrapped in silk and tied with a bow. I felt Jarrett go very still beside me, and I knew that I should say yes to everything, be perfect and be quiet, exactly as Hank had begged me to be.

“That is kind,” I said. “But I would prefer an apartment near the arena, Mr. Locke. I like my own space, and I snore.”

Something moved behind the old man’s eyes, so quick that I might have imagined it. “Of course, my dear. We shall see what can be arranged.” He patted my shoulder, and the touch was so light and dry that it felt like a moth landing on me. “Welcome to Frostmere. I feel we are going to be very good friends.”

He glided out, and the room seemed to exhale.

“I need to go,” Jarrett said stiffly, standing. His face was carved from ice, but I saw his hand curl once at his side. “Coach, I will see you in the morning.”

“Locke,” Frey said quietly. “That was not a request, and it was not a suggestion. Do you understand what he just did?”

“I do.”

“Then do not make me regret keeping you as captain.”

He left without answering, and I caught up with him in the corridor beneath the trophy cases, where the lights were dimmer and the silence was thicker. He walked fast, and I walked faster, and I grabbed his sleeve before he reached the stairs.

“Hey. Captain. Stop.”

He stopped, and he looked at my hand, and I let go of his sleeve as if it were hot. “What do you want, Rourke?”

“An explanation. Why did your uncle look at me like I was a prize pig at a county fair?”

“He looks at everyone like that.”

“That was not a general look, that was a personal look.” I folded my arms. “He wanted to put me in his house, Jarrett. He wanted me where he could see me, and you stood there like a statue.”

“What would you like me to do?” His voice dropped, low and tight. “Contradict the pack chair in front of the head coach? Refuse him and make you a target? You do not know how things work here.”

“Then tell me.”

“I cannot.” He pinched the bridge of his nose, and for a moment he looked very tired, and very young. “Not yet. I do not know how much I am allowed to trust you, and I do not know how much I am allowed to trust anyone.”

“Well, that is the loneliest sentence I have ever heard.”

A reluctant, startled sound escaped him that might have been a laugh. It vanished immediately, and he straightened, and the mask slid back. “We will be professional on the ice. Off the ice, we keep our distance. That is my offer.”

“Fine.” I stuck out my hand and then pulled it back at once, remembering the last time we had touched. “Distance. Excellent. I love distance, it is my favorite thing after snacks.”

“Then we agreed for the first time. Goodnight, Rourke.”

“Goodnight, Captain, and do try to smile once before spring.”

He went down the stairs two at a time, and I stood in the empty corridor with my pulse thudding and my wrist still tingling, feeling like I had just lost an argument I had won.

My locker was at the far end of the room, and the rest of the team had gone home. I peeled off the borrowed jersey, and I was reaching for my own sweater when I noticed that the locker door had not quite closed. A folded square of white paper had been wedged into the slats near the top, as small as a fortune from a cookie.

I opened it with careful fingers. The handwriting was neat and slanted and a little shaky, the writing of someone who had written it fast and with their heart in their throat.

She was never hired for her skating.

I turned the paper over, and there was nothing on the back, no name and no signature. I stood there in the empty locker room with the cold air raising goose bumps along my arms, and above me the great arena groaned softly in the wind like a ship at anchor.

And then, from somewhere behind me in the dark of the showers, I heard a slow, careful footstep, and the quiet scrape of someone who had been waiting a very long time for me to be alone.