Retirement.
That’s as good as death to a hockey player. A life sentence. And I know with a certainty that burns hotter than the blood pouring down the side of my face that Sebastian knows it too. He knew the second he hit that net, and before the medics even reached him. The horrible, soul-deep realization that something had changed and there would be no undoing it.
I couldn’t stop my dad from beating me. His scars turned him into a man I could no longer recognize because of a fucking Alpha who couldn’t get his shit together. I couldn’t stop that from happening then, and I couldn’t stop it from happening now.
There are injuries, and then there’s this. Complete and utter brutality. Madness. My team dropped around me one by fucking one while I stood there breathing, processing the scene that unfolded almost in slow motion before me. Of my Beta, Holden, falling to the ice.
The roar that tears from my throat is more like a wound than it is a sound. Fueled by years of grief, the sound bellowing through the arena as hands grab at my jersey, their grips slipping while I fight them.
I need to find fifty-four. To show him just what playing fucking dirty means. Make him pay for what he stole. For the pain he’s just inflicted on the people I love, before I put the bastard six feet beneath the fucking ground.
My vision has reddened, blurring around the edges until all I can see is blood and the Alpha responsible for spilling it. Reason disappears beneath the grief and fury clawing through my body, every rational thought drowned out by the overwhelming need to tear him apart with my bare hands. I welcome it. I welcomeevery ugly, violent second of it. I want him to see what happens when he takes one of mine. I want him to know exactly what fucking with my pack costs. That is, until a soft, gentle voice filters through the chaos.
“Sasha, calm down. Seb is okay. The paramedics have taken him to the hospital. He will be alright.”
I try to listen to the words coming from the small Omega I know belongs to me, but I can’t. I can’t move past the anger. The hurt. The grief threatening to split me in two. The overwhelming need to do something other than the nothing they so desperately want from me. I continue to fight until a gentle hand touches my face. Blinking rapidly, I look down, finding a concerned Omega staring up at me, tears shining in her eyes. She doesn’t flinch beneath my growl. Doesn’t recoil from the blood on my face or the violence radiating from every inch of my body. She simply keeps her palm against my cheek, grounding me, giving me something solid to cling to while everything else threatens to drag me under.
I know her. But nothing is clear. Everything is hazy. Like I’m trying to see the world through shattered glass.
Breaking eye contact with me, the Omega looks at the people still trying to restrain me.
“You can let him go now. I’ve got him.”
I growl again, only this time, it’s when her eyes linger on the other Alphas for a second longer than I like. I want her eyes on me. Not them. Only me. She is mine. That much I know with absolute certainty.
I can smell it on her.
Taste it in every breath I drag into my lungs.
Why haven’t I claimed her?
Why isn’t her neck covered in my bite?
It’s wrong. Everything about Lennon Gilmore feels wrong, yet at this moment, I want nothing more than to make every asshole watching know she belongs to me.To my pack.
I feel the hands leave my body slowly, their grips loosening one by one, but never completely disappearing. They don’t trust me. They’re right not to. They’re waiting for me to snap again, waiting for the anger ripping around my insides to fight its way back beneath the surface. And I just might, if they keep looking at what is mine the way they are.
The moment her hand leaves my cheek, a low rumble begins building in my chest. Panic crashes into me so suddenly that it steals the air from my lungs, like she’s taken the only thing tethering me to reality with her. Before it has the chance to consume me, she slips her hand into mine. The noise in my head quietens. Not completely, just enough that I can breathe again.
“Come on, big guy,” she says, her voice soft, impossibly gentle against the violence still raging through me. The Omega leads me toward the tunnel, where I can see my Beta huddled with my Alpha, both men watching me with barely concealed concern. Their scents bleed worry into the air. Fear. Helplessness. I try to give them a reassuring look.
My Omega has me. I’ll be okay. As long as she doesn’t stop touching me.
She guides me through the halls, and I barely register where we’re going. My entire world has narrowed to the warmth of her hand in mine, the steady rhythm of her breathing as the scent wrapping itself around me like a weighted blanket. An anchor. The arena continues to move around us, people talking, doors opening and closing, but it all fades into meaningless noise. Nothing exists beyond her.
The Omega comes to a stop in front of a door, the name ‘Lennon Gilmore: Head Coach’ written in neat black lettering.
Lennon.
What once felt like nails on a chalkboard suddenly soothes something inside me. The name rolls through my mind, smoothing the jagged edges of my anger, if only for a heartbeat.
The moment the office door clicks shut behind us and her hand slips from mine, everything comes rushing back. It crashes over me, my body beginning to shudder as every muscle locks beneath my skin. My shoulders tense, my fists clench, until my nails bite into my palms. The need to deliver justice to the Alpha, whose name I can’t even remember, consumes me.
“I need to kill him,” I growl, the words scraping raw against my throat. “Not quick. I don’t want it to be quick. He doesn’t get to fucking do that.
“No, Sasha,” she says, shaking her head, refusing to give an inch despite the monster standing in front of her. “You are going to stay right here… with me.”
She tries to grab at me again, but I push past her hold.
