Beck Rhodes has never hated anyone. He's making an exception. Eleven hundred interviews, not one bad quote, porch-light manners he carried up from Kentucky — Beck is the most likable captain in hockey, and everyone has a story about it. He has exactly one exception, and expansion just put it in the stall across from his. Julien Thibault ended his best friend's career three years ago and never said sorry. The league calls him the most hated man in hockey. Julien lets them. Being a monster is cheaper than being asked questions, and in twelve years nobody has looked closely enough to ask what actually happened that night. Now they're both Austin Hellhounds. Same locker room. Same top line. Same hotel hallways, night after night, in a barn full of castoffs that's starting to feel like the only family either of them has ever had. The hate is real. So is the other thing. The thing with rules. Never at home. Nothing below the neck. Nobody finds out. Rules are just a way of buying time. And the truth about the most hated man in hockey is going to cost them both everything they've built. OPEN ICE is Book 1 of the Austin Hellhounds: enemies to lovers, secret relationship, forced proximity, one very shared hotel room, a found family that barks, and the slow unraveling of two men who were never actually enemies at all. Full standalone HEA. No cliffhanger. Open door — very open.