All Chapters of The Captain's Forbidden Mate: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

LENAI couldn’t stop staring at that photo.Back in my dorm, I sat on my bed with my laptop open, the picture of Cole blown up on the screen. No matter how many times I zoomed in and out, his eyes still looked wrong.Like they belonged to something that wasn’t fully human. I kept telling myself it was just the arena lights. Or maybe the flash on my camera acting up. Hockey players sweat a lot. The ice reflects everything. It had to be that. Right?Still, I couldn’t delete it.The next morning on campus, the whispers followed me everywhere. I was grabbing coffee when I overheard two girls talking near the counter.“You’re seriously going near Cole Arden for that article?” one of them asked. “Girl, be careful. He’s violent. Like, actually scary.”The other one nodded. “Yeah, last semester some guy bumped into him at a party and Cole almost broke his jaw. He’s unpredictable. Hot as hell, but dangerous.”I pretended I wasn’t listening, but their words stuck with me. Everyone kept warning

LENAThere were only two things on my mind.Get that interview with Cole. Save your scholarship.I repeated those words over and over again like a mantra. I was going to kindly do this interview and didn't care what it cost me.Cole might be arrogant. But I am just as stubborn and was unwilling to back down without a fight.The moment I stepped on the ice. My breath hitched as something hit me in an instant.There he was. Cole Arden. In his full glory. Someone the whole school adored, Northcrest star hockey player, most celebrated sports player.He was shirtless, a shirt thrown over his shoulder and a helmet held in one hand. My eyes slowly trailed his chest, abs, and bulging biceps.For a moment, I just stood there. Staring at him with intent and couldn't give a damn if I was called out as a pervert.Then a voice shouted, “Take a picture. It lasts longer.”The other boys laughed. Different words of mockery were thrown around and my cheeks became flushed with embarrassment. I tried t

COLEI told myself I wasn’t checking on her.I told myself a lot of things that week.But when Noah mentioned casually, too casually, dropping it in between like it was nothing, that half the Ridgeview pack had been at a party Friday night, and that a girl matching Lena’s description had walked in on Damien’s arm, I was in my truck before I finished processing the sentence. I didn’t even grab a jacket. I just went.“Where are you going?” Noah called after me, spoon still in his hand.“Nowhere,” I said, which was a lie, because I drove straight past her dorm three times before I made myself stop, engine idling at the curb like some kind of criminal casing a house.She was fine. I could see her shadow moving behind her curtains, alive, unhurt, probably furious if she knew I was sitting outside like some kind of stalker. I made myself leave before I did something even worst, like knocking on her door at midnight with no good reason to give her.Noah texted me twice while I sat there, fir

COLEIt was almost midnight and I was standing barefoot in my kitchen arguing with myself about whether to text her one more time when the pull hit me hard, doubling me over mid-stride, coffee mug shattering against the tile before I even registered, I’d dropped it.I’d felt it building for hours, a low hum under my skin I’d been ignoring since sundown, telling myself it was nothing, telling myself the bond wasn’t real, wasn’t mine to feel, was something I could simply refuse if I refused it hard enough. But this wasn’t a hum anymore. This was a scream. Every cell in my body went up in flames at once, an alarm with only one word behind it.Her. Her. Her. Danger. Now.I didn’t decide to move. My body simply did it, keys forgotten on the counter, shirt torn half off my back before I even cleared the front door, bones already rearranging themselves under my skin with a violence I hadn’t allowed myself in years. Every joint screamed as it reset itself mid-stride, and I welcomed it, becaus

COLEI broke six generations of pack law in a gas station parking lot at two in the morning, and honestly, I’d do it again.I told her everything. The pack. The Alpha line. My father’s ultimatum and the thirty-day clock ticking down whether I wanted it to or not. I told her what a mate bond was supposed to feel like, and how mine had been screaming her name since the second week of September, and how I’d spent every day since trying to convince myself it was a mistake, a glitch, anything other than what it actually was, anything that would let me keep pretending my life could stay simple.She listened without interrupting once, arms wrapped around herself against the cold. When I finally ran out of words, she just sat there in the dark, chewing the inside of her cheek, doing that thing where her whole face went very still while her mind clearly did not.For a long moment she said nothing at all, just stared out the windshield at the gas station’s flickering sign, and I found myself ca