Fake Engaged to My Hockey Rival
"Still playing dirty, Huntress?" he taunted, pinning me with those piercing grey-blue eyes.
"Still hiding behind your daddy's money, Reaper?" I shot back, my blood boiling.
Lanaya Roux and Maverick Hayden are college hockey royalty-and bitter rivals. As the captains of competing university teams, their hatred on the ice is matched only by the legendary feud between their billionaire families' empires.
But when their ruthless fathers force them into a fake engagement to secure an $18 billion corporate merger, Lanaya and Maverick are thrown into the ultimate game of survival.
The rules are simple: Live together in the same penthouse. Smile for the cameras. Pretend to be madly in love for six months.
It was supposed to be strictly business. But behind closed doors, the venom they spit at each other quickly morphs into a scorching, undeniable addiction. Maverick is an arrogant, aggressively protective alpha who refuses to let her go, and Lanaya is the fiercely independent captain who refuses to submit.
Beneath their explosive chemistry lies a devastating secret: a shared tragedy from eight years ago that claimed the life of Lanaya's brother and shattered their innocent childhood bond.
With the national hockey championship on the line, scandalous secrets surfacing, and unseen enemies sabotaging their every move, the line between love and hate has never been so dangerous.
What happens when the fake engagement to your worst enemy becomes the only real thing in your life?
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Chapter 4
[POV: Lanaya Roux]
Friday arrived with the suffocating inevitability of a nightmare.
Lanaya stood in the center of Maverick's sprawling guest bedroom, surrounded by cardboard boxes that held the entirety of her life. Ash-wood floors. Slate-grey walls. A king-sized bed that looked more like a slab of marble than a place to sleep.
It didn't feel like a room. It felt like a cell.
"I can unpack those for you, Miss Roux."
Lanaya spun around. A woman stood in the doorway - older, sharply dressed, with eyes that saw entirely too much.
"No. Thank you. I'll do it myself."
"Mr. Hayden requested I ensure you are settled. I am Mrs. Gable. The estate manager."
"Estate manager," Lanaya repeated dryly. "Because calling this a penthouse isn't pretentious enough."
Mrs. Gable didn't crack a smile. "Dinner is at seven. Mr. Hayden expects you in the formal dining room."
"Tell Mr. Hayden I'm not hungry."
"He was quite specific that your attendance is mandatory. To discuss the upcoming press tour."
The press tour. The dog-and-pony show where she would have to smile, wave, and pretend the heavy diamond on her finger wasn't an anchor dragging her to the bottom of the ocean.
"Fine. Seven," Lanaya snapped.
Mrs. Gable gave a crisp nod and disappeared.
Lanaya sank onto the edge of the mattress, dropping her head into her hands. She had survived the morning press conference. Barely. The flashbulbs were blinding. The questions were invasive.
But the worst part wasn't the media. And for once, it wasn't even Maverick.
It was their fathers.
Camden and Alexander had stood together at the edge of the room while the cameras flashed. Not across from each other the way two men finalizing a business arrangement would stand. Side by side, speaking too quietly and too comfortably for men who were supposed to be meeting over a merger. At one point, Alexander said something low and her father nodded - not the nod of a man receiving new information, but the slow, automatic nod of a man being reminded of something he already knew. When someone nearby mentioned Crew's name, directing a question about the foundation toward Camden, both men went still at the exact same moment. Her father answered smoothly. Alexander said nothing. He simply set his glass down on the nearest surface, very carefully, and turned to look at the window.
Lanaya hadn't known what to do with that.
She still didn't.
She stood up, needing to move. She ripped open the nearest box and began shoving clothes into the walk-in closet, channeling all her vibrating anger into the simple task. By six-thirty the boxes were empty. By six-forty-five she was pacing. By six-fifty-five, the scent of cedar and dark musk hit her before the knock even sounded.
Her heart kicked against her ribs. She hated the immediate, traitorous reaction.
"Come in."
The heavy door pushed open. Maverick stood in the frame - dark jeans, fitted black t-shirt stretched across his broad chest. The bruise on his jaw was a dark, violent shadow. He looked too big for the doorway. Too dangerous for the room.
"You skipped lunch," he stated.
"I wasn't hungry."
"You need to eat. You have practice tomorrow."
"Don't tell me what I need." She crossed her arms. "And stop monitoring my meals."
He stepped fully into the room. The sheer heat radiating off him immediately changed the temperature of the air. "I monitor everything in my house."
"I am not one of your possessions, Maverick."
"No," he agreed, his voice dropping an octave. He closed the distance until he was standing entirely too close. "You're my fiancée."
Lanaya let out a harsh laugh. "Only on paper."
"The media doesn't care about the paper. They care about the performance."
"I gave them a performance this morning."
"You looked like you were being led to a firing squad." He reached out. Before she could dodge, his fingers wrapped around her wrist, pulling her left hand up between them. The diamond caught the light. "If you look at me like a hostage on the press tour, Alexander will know we're faking it."
The name came out the same way it had in the tunnel - flat and load-bearing, worn smooth by long practice. Not hatred. Not pride. The specific blankness of a man who had learned exactly how much pressure that name could apply, and had stopped flinching under it years ago. For a moment his jaw tightened in a way that had nothing to do with her.
Then his eyes came back to her face and the shutter closed.
"Then let him know," she said. She tried to pull her hand back, but his grip was iron.
"If he knows, the merger dies. The foundation dies." His chest brushed against hers. The friction sent a shocking, unwanted spike of electricity straight through her. "Is that what you want, Huntress?"
"I want you to let me go."
"I can't."
The raw honesty in those two words made her freeze. She looked up. The cold, mocking mask was gone. His grey-blue eyes were storm-dark, fixed on her mouth with a starving intensity that made her breath hitch.
"Maverick," she warned, her voice trembling.
"We have to make them believe it," he whispered, his thumb tracing the frantic pulse in her wrist. "Starting right now."
Before she could process the threat, his hand tangled in her hair, and his mouth crashed down on hers.
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8.3
I was the long-lost Donovan heiress, finally brought home after a childhood in foster care. My parents adored me, my husband cherished me, and the woman who tried to ruin my life, Kiera Reese, was locked away in a mental facility. I was safe. I was loved.
On my birthday, I decided to surprise my husband, Ivan, at his office. But he wasn't there.
I found him at a private art gallery across town. He was with Kiera.
She wasn't in a facility. She was radiant, laughing as she stood beside my husband and their five-year-old son. I watched through the glass as Ivan kissed her, a familiar, loving gesture he’d used with me just that morning.
I crept closer and overheard them. My birthday wish to go to the amusement park had been denied because he’d already promised the entire park to their son—whose birthday was the same day as mine.
"She’s so grateful to have a family, she’d believe anything we tell her," Ivan said, his voice laced with a cruelty that stole my breath. "It's almost sad."
My entire reality—my loving parents who funded this secret life, my devoted husband—was a five-year lie. I was just the fool they kept on stage.
My phone buzzed. It was a text from Ivan, sent while he stood with his real family.
"Just got out of the meeting. So exhausting. I miss you."
The casual lie was the final blow. They thought I was a pathetic, grateful orphan they could control.
They were about to find out just how wrong they were.
9.3
My father ordered me to marry into the cursed Vaughn family.
Their heirs were rumored to die young from a mysterious genetic agony. My sister Kayden laughed, saying she wasn't going to waste her youth planning a funeral. So, I became the sacrificial lamb.
When I refused, my father slammed his hand on the table and threatened to throw my dead mother's ashes into the city dump.
"You are a struggling actress with no money and no power. You have no choice," he told me coldly.
To make matters worse, my own agent drugged my drink at a business dinner, trying to sell my body to a sleazy investor just to secure project funding.
I was completely cornered, suffocating under the weight of their cruelty. I couldn't understand how my own flesh and blood could be so vicious, treating me like a worthless pawn to be traded and discarded.
But none of them knew that while escaping the drug-laced dinner, I crashed directly into the terrifying Vaughn heir, Algot.
When his glowing crimson eyes locked onto me during a violent episode of his cursed pain, we discovered an impossible truth: my physical touch was the only cure for his agony.
Looking at the dark bruises he accidentally left on my neck, I chose not to run. Instead, I pulled out the private business card he gave me and dialed his number.
"You need me," I whispered to the dangerous billionaire. "And I am going to use you to destroy them all."
7.1
Barrett handed me a Montblanc pen and a legal document, his voice as cold as the rain lashing against his Tribeca penthouse. He told me to sign an admission of guilt for an SEC violation I never committed.
"Eighteen months in prison, Anaya," he said, adjusting his cufflinks without looking at me. "The trust fund is set up. You'll get twenty million dollars the moment you step out."
I was being sold. The man I had loved for ten years, the man whose secrets I had kept, was trading my freedom to save his merger with Adele Townsend. He had scrubbed the digital logs of Adele’s illegal trades and pinned everything on me. When I refused, he didn't see my heartbreak; he only saw a malfunction in a business transaction.
"Do not speak her name," he hissed when I mentioned Adele’s fraud. "This merger is bigger than you."
He forced the pen into my hand, calling me dramatic while his security guards dragged me to a locked bedroom to "cool down." I spent three days parched and starving, listening to the muffled sound of champagne corks popping down the hall. They were celebrating my destruction. My heart finally gave out in that luxury cage, the darkness swallowing me as I realized I was nothing more than a disposable asset to him.
I died in that room, alone and betrayed by the person I trusted most. How could he do this? How could a decade of loyalty be worth less than a stock price? Why did I let him treat me like a sacrificial lamb for so long?
GASP. I shot up in bed, my lungs burning, but I wasn't in the penthouse. I was in my old, peeling Brooklyn apartment, and the date on my phone was May 12th—three years ago.
My phone buzzed with a text from Barrett: "Where are you? Bring the Townsend files. Now."
A cold, cruel smile touched my lips as I typed the reply that would start his nightmare.
"I quit."
7.5
Bryn hovered as a translucent soul over her own fresh grave, just three days after she was buried.
She had been shoved off a cliff by Keifer, the boyfriend she provided for, while her adopted sister Fabiola watched and laughed.
Now, they stood at her grave crying fake tears, ready to steal her massive inheritance.
Suddenly, Dominic Hutchinson, the arrogant school tyrant who made her life a living hell, arrived.
He didn't come to mock her. He dug up her grave with his bare, bleeding hands, hugging her freezing urn as he sobbed in pure despair.
He ruthlessly exposed Keifer and Fabiola's murder plot, sending them to federal prison.
Three months later, Dominic stood before her rebuilt headstone in a pristine white tuxedo.
"It's finally over. I can finally come pick you up."
He pulled out a silver scalpel and slit his own wrist, leaving a bloody kiss above her carved name as he died.
Bryn fell to her knees, screaming and sobbing uncontrollably.
The boy she thought hated her had loved her with his entire life, while the parasites she trusted had killed her.
Why had she been so utterly blind?
A blinding light swallowed her soul, and Bryn suddenly snapped her eyes open.
She was standing by her high school lockers, completely alive.
She had returned to exactly three years before her death.
9.7
What else could Bella Kiretti possibly want?
She had the perfect billionaire husband, the cars, houses,vacations and even the most beautiful children.
Everything was given to her on a golden plate.
But so everybody thought.
With her husband always on business trios and her children now in College, Bella is left home alone most of the time.
Everything was automatically running for her...wake up, eat, scroll through social media, walk the dog and sleep.
Until there was a knock on the door; her twenty year old Nephew,Jack is in town and he wants a place to stay.
"You have grown, and matured."
He was no longer the boy she carried when he was young, he was taller, bigger and his d**k was just the perfect size.
7.3
Betrayed by the man she loved. Katrina Donovan's death was supposed to be the end. Instead, when Katrina opens her eyes, she isn't in heaven-She's in Rachel Sterling's body. The very woman who stole her lover, harvested her heart. The villain everyone hates.
Now trapped in the life of her enemy, Katrina must pretend to be the spoiled, manipulative heiress while hiding the truth that would destroy them all.
Worse-Owen Blake, the cold and powerful billionaire adopted son of the Sterling family, watches her every move. He despises "Rachel", believes she destroyed the only innocent girl he ever cared about. He doesn't know the girl he mourns... is standing right in front of him.
With hatred burning in her veins, Katrina swears she will not waste this second chance. She will expose the lies. Reclaim what was stolen. Make every person who carved out her heart beg for mercy.
But revenge is dangerous-Especially when the only man who might uncover the truth is the one who wants her dead.