Claimed By The Three Hockey Alphas

Freya's pov

My hands shake as I look in the mirror, and the person staring back doesn’t feel like me anymore. My black hair sticks up in every direction since I chopped it off two weeks ago, and my face looks sharp without my long auburn hair to frame it. The socks stuffed in my sports bra press against my ribs, uncomfortable and awkward.

“Freya, this is crazy,” Mum says, her voice cracking as she paces our small room, wringing her hands like she did that night in London when Marcus and his pack surrounded our house. “What if they figure out who you are, or someone recognizes you?”

“They won’t,” I say, forcing my voice deeper, but it still sounds off, like I’m trying on someone else’s clothes. I’ve been practicing for weeks, and it has to work, because there’s no other option.

I shove another sock into my sports bra, fumbling with the padding, and the oversized hockey jersey hangs loose on me, which is what I need, but my stomach twists anyway. I feel desperate, because I am desperate.

“You don’t even look like a boy,” Lily says from her bed, where fake documents are scattered around her, including the birth certificate that says Frederick Sterling instead of Freya. “Your face is too—”

“I’ve got it handled,” I snap, and she flinches, which makes guilt hit me hard. I pull the black beanie over my hair, tucking every strand under. “Sorry, I’m just…”

“Scared?” Lily asks, her voice soft.

“Focused,” I say, but it’s a lie, and we both know it.

Mum slumps into the desk chair, her worry heavy in the room, and the lines around her eyes look deeper than they did three months ago when we fled London in the middle of the night. She looks older because of me, because of this plan I can’t let go of. “When I let you play hockey as a kid, I never thought you’d…” She picks up the fake transcript, her hands shaking, and continues, “If your father were alive, he’d lock you in your room before letting you do this.”

My throat tightens, and I say, “Dad would understand,” but my voice comes out softer than I mean, sounding young and scared. “He always said I was too stubborn to quit.”

“Stubborn is one thing,” Mum says, her voice sharp, “but lying about who you are to get into an elite boarding school, that’s not stubborn, Freya, it’s insane.”

I turn away from the mirror, because looking at myself makes my chest feel tight, and the hockey gear feels heavy, like it belongs to someone else. But I think about holding my stick, the burn in my legs as I moved across the ice, the joy of playing, and that feeling is mine, always has been, even when people said hockey wasn’t for girls.

A loud knock makes us all jump. “Frey, car’s here!” David calls through the door. “You sure about this, or you