Rejected By The Hockey Alpha

Sloane had learned a long time ago that the trick to surviving inside a wolf pack while pretending to be nothing was simple. Keep your head down, your scent masked, and your hands busy.

Tonight her hands were busy taping the blade of Killian Ashcroft's spare stick, which meant she had exactly zero excuse to be standing this close to the man himself twenty minutes before the Ironclad Wolves' draft night gala started.

"You're staring at the tape like it insulted your family," Nash said beside her, grinning as he checked his own gear. Nash was a rookie defenseman, human as far as Sloane could tell, and blissfully unaware that half his locker room howled at the moon on weekends off.

"I'm concentrating," Sloane said.

"You're avoiding looking at the door."

She was. Killian Ashcroft had walked through that door eleven minutes ago in a suit that cost more than she made in a year, and every wolf in the building had gone very carefully, very deliberately still, the way lesser wolves did around an Alpha who hadn't technically claimed his father's title yet but ran the room like he already had.

Sloane kept her eyes on the tape.

"Calloway." His voice cut through the equipment room's noise before she'd fully braced for it, low and even, the kind of voice that didn't need volume to make people listen. "You did the blades yourself again."

"Somebody has to make sure the highest paid athlete in this city doesn't crack his stick during warm ups."

The corner of his mouth moved, not quite a smile. Killian rarely smiled all the way. Sloane had catalogued that fact three years ago and never let herself think too hard about why she'd bothered.

He crouched to check the tape job anyway, close enough that she caught the clean, cedar and rain scent that always clung to him, and

felt her pulse do something inconvenient and entirely against her better judgment.

Then his whole body went still.

Not the ordinary stillness of a wolf assessing a room. Something sharper. His head tilted a fraction, nostrils flaring, and Sloane felt every instinct she'd spent three years burying scream at her to run.

"Killian," she said carefully.

He looked up at her like he was seeing her for the first time, which was absurd, because she'd handed him a water bottle every single game night for three straight seasons.

"Say that again," he said.

"Say what."

"My name."

Sloane's heart slammed against her ribs. She understood, with the particular horror of watching a carefully built wall crack in real time, exactly what was happening. The scent suppressant she wore, the same one she'd worn every single day since she was fourteen years old, had finally, catastrophically failed.

"I have to go check the visitor bench," she said, already backing away.

Killian caught her wrist before she'd made it three steps, and the second his skin touched hers, his entire expression changed, shock and disbelief and something raw and hungry all colliding at once.

"You're my mate," he said, quiet enough that only she could hear it. "Sloane, you're actually my mate."

**

“Let go of me,” Sloane said, though her voice came out considerably less steady than she

wanted.

“I’m not letting go.” Killian’s grip gentled but didn’t release, his thumb tracing an absent,

unconscious line across her wrist that made her skin feel electric. “Three years. You’ve been

standing in this locker room for three years and I never once caught this.”

“Because I made sure you never would.”

That got his attention properly. His eyes sharpened, gold flickering at the edges the way

they did right before a shift, though he held it back with the kind of control only a true Alpha

bloodline could manage. “You’ve been masking your scent. On purpose. From me

specifically.”

“From everyone.”

“Why.”

The gala’s opening announcement crackled over the intercom before she could answer,

some assistant’s cheerful voice reminding staff that doors opened in five minutes, and

Sloane felt panic claw up her throat. Three hundred people were about to fill this arena, half

of them wolves from six different packs, every single one of them able to smell exactly what

had just happened the moment they walked close enough.

“We need to talk about this somewhere private,” she said. “Not here. Not tonight.”

“Tonight is exactly when this needs to happen,” Killian said, something fierce and immediate

in his voice that she hadn’t heard from him before, not in three years of careful, practiced

distance. “Sloane, do you understand what this means?”

She did. She understood better than he could possibly know, because she’d spent her entire

adolescence being taught exactly what it meant to be claimed, and exactly why she needed

to make sure it never happened to her.

“I understand,” she said. “I also understand your father has three hundred people arriving in

the next four minutes, half of them from packs your family needs to keep happy tonight.”

Something flickered across Killian’s face, calculation warring with whatever instinct was

currently trying to drag him toward her. “That doesn’t change what just happened.”

“It might.”

He studied her for a long moment, and Sloane watched him war with himself, watched the

Alpha in him want to simply claim what his wolf had just recognized, and watched the son in

him remember exactly what tonight’s gala was actually for.

The Calder pack was arriving in twenty minutes. Everyone in the organization knew the

merger discussions had been happening for months, a business deal wrapped in pack

politics, an alliance the Ashcroft pack needed considerably more than anyone was saying

out loud.

“Come with me,” Killian said finally, tugging her gently toward the equipment room’s private

door. “Just for a minute. I need to think.”

They made it exactly four steps before the door swung open and Damon Ashcroft filled the

frame, considerably taller than his son, considerably colder, his gaze sweeping across the

scene with the particular precision of a man who never missed anything important.

“Killian,” he said. “The Calders just pulled into the lot. I need you at the entrance in ninety

seconds.”

“Dad, something happened.”

“Whatever it is, it waits.” Damon’s eyes finally landed on Sloane, on the way his son’s hand

still hadn’t released her wrist, and something in his expression went very carefully, very

deliberately blank. “Ms. Calloway. I need to speak with my son alone.”

Sloane felt ice settle in her stomach.

He already knew.

Killian didn’t let go of her hand until his father’s stare made it clear he genuinely wasn’t

going to leave until he did.

“I’ll find you after,” he told Sloane quietly, and then he was gone, following his father into the

hallway, and Sloane stood alone in the equipment room with her heart still hammering and

her scent, unmasked now, filling the space around her like a confession she couldn’t take

back.

She should have run right then. Some old, buried instinct told her exactly that, the same

instinct that had kept her alive and hidden since she was fourteen. Instead she found herself

creeping toward the hallway door, pressing close enough to hear voices carrying from

Damon’s office two doors down.

“Do you understand what you just did,” Damon was saying, his voice pitched low and

furious. “In front of the entire arena.”

“I didn’t do anything. I recognized my mate.”

“You recognized an equipment manager with n