Page 28 of Knot Your Pucking Secret

He’s been watching.

His eyes never leave me. Or more specifically, the jersey stretched across my shoulders. Recognition washes over his face in an instant. His expression doesn’t change, but his eyes…his blue gaze darkens, and I don’t miss the way his jaw locks so tightly I can see the muscle feather beneath his skin even more. Something fractures behind those eyes. Not anger. Or jealousy.

Grief. Raw and tortured.

Because he recognizes it. The number stitched across my back. His number. The position I filled and played without a second thought.

His throat works around a swallow, and I hold his gaze as I reach the bench as though wearing his number means absolutely nothing. As though I hadn’t just reminded him just how replaceable he really is. This team wasn’t built around one player.

Not even its captain.

Behind me, I hear the scrape of metal.

I don’t need to look back to know he’s stepped away from the glass.

He can watch. He can ache and wonder if I wore his jersey to get a reaction out of him. He’ll never know. I’m a little poetic like that.

That’s the difference between who I used to be and who I am now. Sasha feeds on the fight. The challenge. The chase.

He won’t get one from me.

He doesn’t get anything from me.

If he’s searching for her, he’s standing over a grave.

And I hope what he did haunts him. I hope that me being here haunts him for the rest of his miserable fucking life.

Chapter Eleven

Holden

The locker room emptied almost fifteen minutes ago, yet I’m still sat where I had dropped onto the wooden bench, elbows resting on my knees as I stare down at the tape wrapped around my gloves. Around me, the sounds of practice have long since faded. The sharp hiss of steel carving through fresh ice has been replaced by distant voices somewhere deeper in the arena, the occasional clang of equipment being packed away and the only thing louder are my raging thoughts.

My mind is still out on the ice.

Still standing opposite Lennon as she effortlessly dismantles everything I’d spent years convincing myself I was. Not Holden Woods, one of the best forwards in the league. Not the alternate captain. Not the player every team dreaded lining up against. Just another forward who hadn’t earned his place.

That was the thing about our Omega. She didn’t care who you were yesterday. She cared about the player standing in front of her now. Records, reputation, goals scored three months ago, none of that matters. The only thing she measured was you, theplayer, before her. There are no free passes because you’d once been great.

I wish she extended that same courtesy across every part of life, but I’m not stupid enough to forget what we’d done. If the look in her eyes was anything to go by, I'd be pushing shit up a hill if I thought we’d ever have a chance to move past it.

Can’t even blame her.

Today’s version of me wasn’t good enough.

She showed me up, plain and simple and I fucking fumbled. Big time. In front of the entire team. She proved that less than five minutes into practice, exposing every weakness in my game until there wasn’t anywhere left for me to hide. Seeing her wear my Alpha’s jersey threw me off long before she blew that whistle. Not because it belonged to Sasha. Because I knew exactly what she was saying the moment she pulled it over her head in this very locker room, of all places.

Knowing what it meant. Or rather…what it didn’t.

It wasn’t some sentimental gesture, regardless of how fucking hot she looked in it. Every instinct inside me screamed to rip that jersey from her perfect body and remind her what it felt like to have me. To have my hands on her again. To pull her against me after months of forcing myself to stay away and give her the space she deserved. Every possessive part of me wanted the rest of the team to see exactly who she belonged to.

To make her fucking moan my name and show every other asshole watching that I was hers as much as she was mine. That Lennon belongs to Ars Mortis.

But I couldn’t.

Because I’d forfeited any right to think like that. We don’t hold any sort of claim over our Omega, and we only have ourselves to blame. And wearing our Alpha’s jersey… It was a statement. She didn’t wear it for any reason other than to prove to every single one of us that we’re all replaceable. That the number stitchedacross our backs, the V stitched across our chests, wasn’t a promise. It was a privilege. One we had to earn every time we stepped onto the ice.

I’d be insulted if she didn’t play so fucking well.