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But I also knew that ice was in their blood. From their figure skating coach parents, to the nearly professional college hockey career. They’d even coached a bit over fifteen years ago before abruptly stopping after the deaths of their wives in a car accident.
Most of what I could find on the internet about them was surface level and earlier articles barely mentioned their three daughters. It wasn’t until Brynn Peterson had gone public with the two alphas that were currently skating toward our coach and Aurelia Peterson had mated into a billionaire pack that they appeared in the media at all.
Ciara Callaghan was the most elusive of the three sisters. Of course, her exploits as a late bloomer figure skater were available at the click of a button. Other than that she didn’t have any social media and rarely stepped out at public events with her family.
It made me feel like an absolute scuzzball to even try and look any deeper.
…But at the same time she kept running away from me.
The first time I’d seen her in the hallway after coming to Seattle her eyes had widened like she couldn’t quite believe what she was seeing… and then she turned and ran headlong in the opposite direction.
Nash, who had been right behind me, told me not to take it to heart and that Ciara was… complicated.
As if I hadn’t already gotten that much after she’d completely rocked my world that night in Scotland and then disappeared.
It felt like every single night she danced behind my eyelids and her scent lingered on my tongue.
A scent match.
I didn’t think it could happen with another alpha, and yet here I was thinking about her while my coaches were talking.
“Park, are you even listening to me?” Cookie, the defense coach shouted from his place next to Maxim. “Get the cotton out from between your ears, you’re in the middle of practice!”
The other players who were standing closest scooted away from me, probably afraid of incurring the coach’s wrath.
“Sorry, Coach,” my apology was immediate. I’d learned early on that arguing with a coach just got you and the rest of your team a bunch of drills that were sure to make you vomit up half a kidney.
Cookie looked like he wanted to tear into me a bit more, probably to show me—the new guy—that he meant business. I didn’t mind it. People yelling at me never made me feel anything other than bored.
My mother’s side of the family were some of the loudest group of humans I’d ever met, so Cookie had nothing on them.
Cookie, seeming to find no fault with my demeanor, finally huffed a sigh. “Fine, make sure you don’t zone out again.”
There was a rumbling of snickers from the men around me that I ignored, giving him a resolute nod.
I managed to get through the rest of practice without getting my head bit off, though I was completely drenched in sweat by the time we finally made our way off of the ice.
“Don’t take it to heart, Wiz,” Nash said as he skated to catch up to me. His alpha counterpart, Dutch, quickly flanked my other side.
“Yeah, Cookie’s like that with everyone. He’ll warm up eventually and be a total sweetheart to you.”
“It didn’t really bother me,” I told them as we put our skate guards on. My back ached and I was really looking forward to taking the hottest shower I could stand once we got back into the locker rooms.
Dutch snorted and shook his head with disbelief. “Doesn’t seem like anything gets you riled up, huh? Keep it up and we’re going to rename you inner peace or some shit like that.”
I gave him a gentle shove with my elbow. I liked Dutch. Out of all of the guys on the team he seemed to operate on the same wavelength as I did.
“Says the man who apologized to the barista when she was the one who dropped his coffee this morning,” Nash teased, peering around me at his packmate.
The burly alpha glared at him and reached behind my back to give the man a shove.
We got up and headed to the locker rooms, Nash throwing an arm over my shoulders as we walked.
The inside was already filled with steam thanks to all of the showers being on full blast and I set to work peeling myself out of my pads.
It was the best feeling in the world to take them off at the end of a particularly rough practice and I rubbed at my red, sweaty skin and I gathered my shower stuff.
I was the last in, and as always, I had to use the janky stall at the end of the long row. Upon my arrival, the guys told me there was a hierarchy to the showers—probably their way of hazing the new guys.
