Page 2 of Claimed By the Goalie Alpha
And yet his eyes widened. Maybe he'd felt something too, even if he had no idea what it was.
"You should control your dogs." I winced as I said it because I sounded like the grumpy guy who lived on my street.
Grumpy? Yes. Old? Nah. I was in the prime of life.
"I know, I know. It's just that I usually only have three or four at a time, but one of my coworkers is sick and I'm covering her route." He was rambling and still smiling despite everything. "Anyway, sorry for blocking your path. And for the muddy paw prints."
My shirt was covered in mud and dog hair. My jeans had paw prints on them and I smelled like a wet dog.
"I have a game in three hours." I needed to go.
"A game?" His face lit up. He jerked his head toward the arena. "Are you a hockey player?"
"Goalie." I stopped myself there. "I need to finish my walk."
"Right, yeah, of course." He stepped aside, pulling the dogs with him. Most of them came willingly. The terrier tried to lunge at me again. "Sorry again! Good luck tonight!"
I walked past him and clenched my jaw while my hands fisted at my sides. My wolf was insisting I go back and figure out who he was and say that his scent had turned my life inside out.
I didn't. I had a game.
Our mate is more important than a hockey game.
I finished the walk but it was useless. I couldn't focus on visualization. All I could see was the hoodie that had been too big and how he had his sleeves pushed up to his elbows. And a scent that made me want to forget every plan I'd ever made. Climbing into the car covered in mud and running late, I was completely rattled.
This was going to be a disaster of a game.
I playedthe best hockey of my season, maybe my career.
The Comets came at me hard from the opening whistle, testing me early with three quality shots in the first five minutes. I stopped all of them. Their right winger tried the top corner twice—I'd watched him on film—and both times my glove was already there. It was as though the game had slowed down, and every play telegraphed a half-second before it happened.
In the first period I made eight saves and twelve in the second, including a breakaway that should have been a goal.
In the third period they got desperate and came harder. I made ten saves, two of them sprawling stops that had the crowd on their feet. The final score was 3-1 and the team crowded around me after the buzzer as if we'd won a championship.
Coach pulled me aside in the locker room. "That was the Renard I drafted."
I sat in front of my locker after everyone else had cleared out, still in my gear, trying to make sense of it. I'd spent eighteen months perfecting that walk, routine and the careful mental preparation. The one day it got completely torn apart, I played the best game of the season.
I already knew why and so did my wolf.
I thought about those brown eyes and muddy paw prints. Then there was his scent and the heat thatraced through me when we touched. He was covering for a sick coworker, so that wasn't his normal route.
My wolf said we could go back to the park tomorrow and see if he was there again. I wasn’t doing thatbut even as I said it, I knew I was lying.
I needed to see him again and find out if that scent, those eyes and that laugh in the middle of chaos were real, or if I'd somehow imagined how they'd made everything in me go quiet and loud at the same time.
That was what I told myself. But his smile was already burned into my memory.
TWO
JULIAN
I'd been thinking about the grumpy goalie for three days.
After our disaster of a first meeting, I'd gone home and googled him. Renard Conley was the starting goalie for the Silver Lake Storm, and had been with the team for five years. There were stats and game recaps and a few profile pieces, none of which he'd apparently given willingly. Every interview read like the journalist had extracted information with forceps. The articles used words like "intense" and "private" and "unapproachable," which seemed about right given how he'd bolted the moment I'd gotten the dogs untangled.
But the highlights were something else. I watched three of them, then six before I lost count. He moved in front of the net like the goal was built around him. He was completely still, then fast in a way that didn't seem possible for someone his size. There was a save from two seasons back where he'd thrown himself sideways, fully horizontal, to block a shot that should have scored, and the crowd noise spiked so hard the audio clipped. The comments under that one were all capitals and exclamation marks. I could see why, even through a phone screen at eleven at night.
