My Lucky Pucking Shot (Valenridge University #2)

Prologue One Lucky Shot

~SAGE~

~SAGE~

The puck leaves my stick with a crack that echoes through the arena like a gunshot, and for three glorious seconds, I watch it sail toward the top corner of the net with everything I have behind it.

Speed. Precision. Fury.

Every muscle in my body is screaming from two hours of drills, my lungs burning with that familiar fire that only comes from pushing past the point where your body politely suggests you stop and your brain responds with a very aggressive go fuck yourself.

My jersey is plastered to my spine with sweat, my legs are trembling under the weight of fatigue, and I can feel the blisters forming on my right hand where the tape has worn thin against the shaft of my stick.

But the shot is perfect.

I know it before it lands. Know it in my bones, in the muscle memory that has been carved into my body through fifteen years of early mornings and bruised shins and coaches who screamed until their voices cracked.

The angle is textbook. The velocity is elite.

The placement targets the exact gap between the goalie's blocker and the crossbar that only opens for a fraction of a heartbeat during a glove save.

The puck rips through that gap like it was designed for the space.

Top shelf. Clean. Untouchable.

The net bulges.

And the arena stays silent.

No horn. No cheers. No thunderous roar of fans on their feet and teammates crashing into my body with celebration. Just the hollow echo of rubber hitting mesh, followed by the soft scrape of my blades as I slow to a stop at center ice.

Because this is not a game.

This is a tryout.

And I already know how it ends.

The scouts are clustered behind the plexiglass at the far end, their clipboards angled away from me like shields.

Three men in identical navy parkas with NHL logos stitched onto the breast pockets.

They have been watching for the full two hours, and in that time, I have caught exactly zero of them writing anything down while I was on the ice.

Not during the skating drills, where I outpaced every single Alpha on the roster in the lateral agility test.

Nor during the puck-handling circuit, where I threaded the obstacle course two full seconds faster than the next closest time.

And certainly not during the scrimmage, where I stripped the puck from their best forward three times in four minutes and set up a breakaway goal that made Coach Briggs whistle through his teeth.

Nothing.

They wrote plenty when Michael Ross deked through the neutral zone with a move I taught him last week.

Scribbled furiously when Dillon Park completed a stretch pass that I set up by drawing two defenders toward my position.

Nodded and circled and underlined when Tyler Webb scored off a rebound that only existed because my initial shot forced the goalie to over-commit.

But Sage Holloway?

The Omega girl with the navy-and-emerald hair and the scarred knuckles and the defensive instincts that can read a play three passes before it develops?

Invisible.

I lean on my stick at center ice, chest heaving, watching my breath crystallize in the cold arena air.

The other players are drifting toward the bench in small groups, helmets tucked under arms, laughing about dinner plans and weekend parties and the casual bullshit that fills the space between meaningful moments.

None of them look at me.

That used to hurt. Back when I was fourteen and trying out for my first competitive team, the silence felt like suffocation.

Like the air had been sucked out of the rink and replaced with something thick and hostile that clung to my skin and whispered you do not belong here in a voice that sounded a lot like my mother's.

Now it just feels familiar.

The comfortable weight of being underestimated by everyone in the room.

Coach Briggs emerges from the bench area, skating toward me with the slow, deliberate stride of a man who has delivered bad news so many times that his body has developed a specific posture for it.

Shoulders slightly rounded. Jaw set but not clenched.

Eyes carrying that particular blend of sympathy and resignation that coaches perfect over decades of crushing young athletes' dreams.

He is a big man. Six foot five, barrel-chested, with a silver beard that makes him look like a retired Viking who traded his axe for a whistle. His scent precedes him across the ice: pine resin and black coffee and the faint metallic tang of old hockey equipment that never fully washes out.

Alpha, naturally. Every coach in competitive hockey is an Alpha. The league does not officially require it, but the unspoken rule is etched into the sport's DNA as deeply as the blue lines on the ice.

He stops three feet from me, plants both hands on the top of his stick, and exhales a cloud of cold air that hangs between us like a white flag.

"Holloway."

"Coach."

"You skated well today."

I wait for it.

The word that always follows a compliment directed at me. The conjunction that transforms praise into pity. The linguistic pivot that coaches have been performing since I first laced up skates, turning you are talented into you are talented, but…

He sighs, the sound carrying more weight than his two-hundred-and-forty-pound frame.

"Don't get the wrong idea."

I tilt my head, letting the silence stretch. Letting him fill it with whatever version of the truth he has rehearsed during his walk across the rink.

"You are extremely good, Sage. Better than most of the Alphas on my squad, if I am being blunt about it.

Your defensive reads are professional-level.

Your skating speed is elite. And that shot you just put in the net?

" He gestures toward the goal behind me with his stick.

"That was NHL caliber. No exaggeration."

The compliments land like punches to the chest. Each one a reminder of what I am capable of and what the world refuses to let me have.

"But," I say.

Not a question.

A statement. An inevitability.

"Because there is always a fucking but."

Coach Briggs winces at the profanity but does not correct me.

He knows.

They always know.

"No team is risking an Omega on their professional team."

The words land on the ice between us like a body check that connects with your blindside. The kind of hit you do not see coming even though you have been bracing for it your entire life.

Behind the plexiglass, the scouts are packing their clipboards into leather briefcases. One of them laughs at something his colleague says. The sound carries through the barrier, tinny and distant and completely indifferent to the fact that it just punctuated the destruction of my afternoon.

"The concerns are the same as always," Coach Briggs continues, his voice dropping into that careful register that men use when they are trying to soften a blow they know is going to leave bruises.

"Pack dynamics on a full Alpha roster are already volatile.

Adding an Omega into that mix introduces variables that scouts are not willing to gamble on.

The scent complications alone make front offices nervous.

And then there is the heat cycle situation. "

"I take suppressants for that." My voice is flat.

Mechanical. The response I have given a hundred times to a hundred different coaches in a hundred different rinks, each time hoping it will be enough and each time watching it bounce off the wall of systemic bullshit like a puck off thick plexiglass.

"I take blockers for that shit. Have been on them for years.

My cycles are regulated, controlled, and medically supervised.

I can provide documentation. I can submit to random testing. I can sign whatever waiver they need."

Coach Briggs rubs the back of his neck, the gesture so tired it makes his age show in ways his physicality usually conceals.

"It is not about the medical side, Sage. You and I both know that."

I clench my jaw so hard my teeth ache.

Because yes. I do know that.

It is never about the medical side. It is never about the suppressants or the waivers or the documentation. It is about the optics. The tradition. The deeply rooted belief that Omega bodies belong in certain spaces and hockey rinks are not one of them.

"Look at me," I say, gesturing at myself with the hand not gripping my stick.

"I am clearly not a distraction. I look like I rolled out of a gym bag.

My hair is shoved under a helmet ninety percent of my waking hours.

I have the sex appeal of a cinder block in compression shorts.

" I spread my arms wider, inviting inspection.

"Should I cut my hair shorter? Start cosplaying as a man?

Would that make the scouts feel safer about letting an Omega on their precious ice? "

The sarcasm is scalding, and I do not bother to cool it.

Coach Briggs holds up a hand, palm out.

"I understand your frustration. Genuinely, I do. And none of what I am telling you reflects my personal assessment of your abilities. If I were assembling a roster purely on talent, you would be my first pick. No hesitation."

"But you are not assembling a roster."

"No," he admits. "I am not the one making these calls. I am just the messenger."

He pauses, and something flickers across his weathered face. Regret, maybe. Or the ghost of a conviction he abandoned years ago when the politics of professional sports ground it to dust.

"You are simply not the best fit for their team right now.

The landscape is what it is." He taps his stick against the ice, a nervous rhythm.

"Maybe next year? Give it another season.

Let the conversation evolve. There are people pushing for integration at the league level, and momentum is building. These things take time."

Time.

Next year.

Maybe.