Axel (Carolina Reapers 1)

They all looked at me, every single one of them on the ice and off it. With my luck, even Langley heard me in her office.

“Expansion teams are hard,” I said loud enough for them to all hear. “You’re shoving everyone together who came from different teams, different methods of play, different defenses and offenses. Hell, I think your ice is too small. But if you pick each other apart now, we’re fucked when it comes to preseason, and if you keep it up, we’ll get the number one draft pick next year.”

Everyone mumbled, knowing the last team in the rankings scored the number one draft pick.

“Pull your shit together and forget what your jersey said last year. Play for what’s on the front of your damned jersey this year.” I skated off the ice as Coach called practice, no doubt ready to ream my ass for laying into everyone.

“What the hell got into you?” Lukas asked, switching to Swedish as we headed for the locker room.

“I’m sick of the whining and the grudges. They’re all on the same team, and we need to call them out on it, or they’ll just keep it up. What?” I snapped when he narrowed his eyes in my direction.

“Axel, I’ve known you since we were kids, and I’ve never seen you lose your temper like that during a practice. Even at games, you’re lethal, but you’re in control.”

“I’m firmly in control. It’s them who can’t get their shit together,” I waved at the people ahead of us. Everything I’d said was true. I’d left Tage to be here. Tage, who’d only been on his own for a few weeks, and now I was across the fucking ocean.

“Not disagreeing. I just think that maybe you need to blow off some steam.”

“I’ve been running eight miles a day,” I snapped, throwing my helmet under my arm.

“Right, that wasn’t the exercise I was thinking about,” Lukas hinted as we approached the locker room.

“Don’t say it,” I warned him.

“My friend, you need to get laid.”

“Fuck you, Lukas,” I snapped.

“I only tell you this with the love in my heart,” he promised. “You’ve wanted Langley since she came to Sweden a year ago. Fuck, you married the woman when I know you never had the intention of marrying anyone. Maybe it’s time to let yourself have her.”

“Shut up.”

“Seriously, my friend. If you won’t do it for you—”

“Nyström!” Coach yelled from the hallway. “My office now!”

“Fuck,” I muttered.

“—then do it for the rest of us.”

I glared him into the locker room, and headed for Coach’s office.

I firmly expected him to yell, to curse, and mostly, to put me in my place.

He didn’t do the first two but went all the way with the third.

He handed me a Captain’s C.

I was the first Captain of the Carolina Reapers.

6

Langley

“What’s the count up to now?” Echo asked as she poured the girls and me another round of shots. I glanced over my shoulder, glaring at where a good deal of the Reapers’ starting line sat at one of the round tables in the back left corner of the bar.

Lukas was howling at something Axel had said, while our right wing—Cannon Price—couldn’t be bothered to crack a smile. Covered in tats and with a problematic record dating back before he’d played for Detroit, he was the one I’d have to watch. His reputation primed him for a media meltdown I’d have to clean up. Lucky for his future fallout, I was damn good at my job. I still hoped he surprised us all, though.

Noble and Porter drank club sodas and limes, their eyes focused on something on Porter’s iPad—likely practice reels.

Exhaustion clung to Logan Ward’s—one of our defensemen—eyes as he declined yet another provocative offer from one of the many puck bunnies that had come to frequent the bar the Reapers had quickly laid claim to. The bunnies sashayed in and out, some scoring with the single players, but most not. I was surprised to see Ward turn down so many—he was gorgeous, with hair as dark as his eyes and a smile that could melt even the iciest of hearts. But I’d never seen him leave with anyone, shocking for one of the single guys.

Players like Connell MacDhuibh—another of our defensemen—could score a chick with his Scottish accent alone, not to mention his Jaime Lannister good looks and his Jim Halpert sense-of-humor. He’d already pranked Axel, much to my admiration—anyone who could get my Viking to jump out of his skin because he opened the locker room door only to have a giant bucket of ice water dumped on him had my vote.

“Paging Boss-lady Langley,” Echo taunted, and I turned around in my barstool, shaking my head. “Did you hear me?”

“I heard you, Gothic Princess,” I teased. “I was doing a mental tally,” I lied. I knew the exact number of days it had been since my husband refused to sleep with me. “Seven agonizing weeks.”