Page 1 of Broken Ice
CHAPTER ONE
Beau Lavoie was having a bad fucking day.
“This is the worst thing that’s ever happened to anybody,” Beau declared as he hit another red light.
From the other side of the phone line, his brother, Noah, snorted. “Oh, yeah. Being traded to a cup-contending team—I’m crying for you. Really, I am.”
Beau huffed. “I want it on the record that I never loved you and that Cleo has always been my favourite.” Cleo, their little sister, who had just gotten into medical school and was smarter than both her brothers combined, was the unequivocal best Lavoie.
“Same,” Noah retorted, the cretin.
Noah had absolutely no reason to be so snarky. Although younger than Beau by two years, he was the captain of his own team, the New Orleans Spirits, and, more importantly, hadn’t just been traded to his rival team.
Something that had happened to Beau during the off-season. Unfortunately.
“What if they murder me?” Beau complained. It was a real concern. Known for hitting hard, chirping constantly, and scoring enough goals to be a legitimate problem, Beau didn’t exactly have the most pristine reputation in the league.
“Then Cleo will avenge you,” Noah reasoned.
“You’re the worst. Theworst,” Beau hissed as he neared his new practice arena.
The Miami Manatees. What a fucking name. And, okay, their jerseys went kind of hard—hot pink and neon blue were colours Beau could get down with. The logo was cool, too, a chubby manatee with fangs.
It was biologically inaccurate, but it looked cool, so who gave a fuck?
The point was that Beau had been done dirty by the Atlanta Warriors for the way they’d pushed him out without so much as a warning.
Not that Beau had been too keen to stay there, but it was the principle of the thing.
“You’re actually okay, though, right? You fucking hated Johnson,” Noah pointed out.
“I didn’thatehim,” Beau lied, lip curling at the thought of his old coach.
“He put you on those fucking suppressants that messed you up! I still think you should sue them. They—”
Beau cut him off—he’d heard this particular rant several times. “We’re Canadian, Noah. We don’t sue people.”
“Well, now you’re just saying dumb shit.”
“Your face is dumb shit.”
Noah sighed with the deep exasperation of an annoyed sibling. Beau smiled to himself as he parked by the Manatees’ practice rink. Despite the shit show of last year and how fuckingexhaustedBeau was with life sometimes, he could still irritate the crap out of his brother.
And that counted for something.
Johnson had been one of those old-school guys whose main motivational tactic was berating players until they did exactly what he wanted, exactly when he wanted.
And it wasn’t as though Beau hadn’t been able to take it. He hadn’t been the captain, but he’d worn an A—had been a leader in that group and a buffer between Johnson and the rest of the team, trying to make sure the coach didn’t cross any lines. As grating as it had been, Beau had managed.
It was the suppressants that had done him in. Beau had been the only Omega on the team, which was weird enough. It had been ten years since Orion Young from the Brooklyn Cats had been outed as the first known Omega in the league, and Beau had refused to hide his dynamic even a year before that, when he’d presented at thirteen. Things had supposedly progressed. People had stopped hiding their dynamic before the draft. Everybody was welcome in the NHL…or so they said.
Truth was, there were still some stubborn assholes clinging to ‘the good old times.’ When Johnson had been made coach at the beginning of the previous season and asked Beau to be put on suppressants, Beau had been caught off guard.
“We don’t need any distractions in the locker room,” Johnson had said, his small, beady eyes staring at him. “You want to win, don’t you?”
Beauhadwanted to win. Wanted it desperately. The Warriors hadn’t even made it past the second round of the playoffs in the five years Beau had been in the league, and he’d been sick and tired of flaming out.
If smothering his scent and heats was the answer to that, he’d give it a chance.
