She’s a fucking Gilmore.
The daughter of the man who is at the root of every nightmare I’ve ever had. The man who caused my father to self-destruct. To turn his rage inward until there was nothing left but a hollow shell wearing skin. The man whose demands, expectations, and poison transformed a once good Alpha into someone unrecognizable. Into the man who raised his fists to his only child. My lungs burn, my heart threatens to stop altogether, and suddenly, I’m not twenty-nine anymore.
I’m nine.
Ten.
Twelve.
Standing outside my bedroom door, listening to my mother cry and praying my father doesn’t remember I’m there. Counting the cracks in the paint on the window frame to summon the courage to face him. To distract him long enough for my mother to run. All those lonely nights begging for someone, anyone, to save us from him. Or at the very least, save him from himself.
But I knew that was never going to happen. That sort of destiny wasn’t written for men like me. Men like me don’t get miracles. We work hard for everything we have. Crawl out of the fucking pits of hell and make something of ourselves, or we die trying.
Christ.Fate, in all its twisted cruelty, must be punishing me or something, because it has just placed the one person in this entire fucking universe I want to destroy, right in front of me, and called her mine.
My Omega.
That deep pool of hatred festering inside me turns rancid, poisoning everything it touches as it desperately searches for somewhere to go. Somewhere to sink its teeth. And after twenty years, it finally finds a face.Her.The promise of a broken little boy echoes through my mind. That a Gilmore will bleed for what has been done to his father. Done to me. And as I stare at the woman fate insists belongs to me, I make myself a new promise.
Her father ruined my fucking life and drove my mother to the grave.
So, I’ll return the fucking favor.
The coach's daughter will pay the price for his sins.
Eye for an eye. Debt for debt.
Dead or not, I’ll take everything from him.
Starting with his daughter.
And if fate is cruel enough to make her my Omega, then fate can watch me destroy her piece by fucking piece. Because grief made me, hatred raised me, and vengeance has spent so many fucking years clawing at the walls of my soul, begging to be fed. Now, it finally has something to feast on. Her blood will wash away the debt her father left behind.
And God help anyone who tries to stop me.
Cause I won’t.
Chapter Two
Lennon
It's times like these I wish my dad was still here so I could tell him exactly how fucking stupid he was. What the hell was he thinking? Out of all the ridiculous conditions he could have shoved into his will, he chose this. Coach the Vadena Cardinals. An all-male NHL team.
Easy.
Except nothing about this is easy.
Not when I am a woman, let alone an Omega.
These men are barbarians. The second I stepped into the locker room, every conversation stopped. Thirty pairs of eyes snapped toward me with varying levels of surprise, curiosity and outright disbelief. Something tells me it’s not the fact that I’m their late coach’s daughter that has them staring. No, I can already tell most of them see an Omega as nothing more than a warm hole to fuck. Fresh off the ice, with sweat still clinging to their skin and towels hanging around broad shoulders, some of them don’t even bother hiding the way their eyes drag over me, looking at me like I'm a gift wrapped just for them. Fresh meat for them to sink their sharp, brutish teeth into.
God, I hate it.
Feeling vulnerable isn’t something I’m used to anymore. I’ve spent years walking into courtrooms where people listen the second I open my mouth. I’ve gone toe to toe with judges, pissed off attorneys without batting an eye, but standing beneath the scrutiny of thirty hot-blooded Alphas and Betas with the smell of sweat and adrenaline thick in the air around me, I feel horribly out of place.
I want to throw up.
To turn around and walk the fuck out of here.
