The Ascendant goalkeeper was good. Big and fast, with reflexes that had probably cost his team a fortune in retro-genetic optimization. He saw Raaze’s approach angle and set himself perfectly, weight balanced, hands ready, every line of his body screaming you’re not getting past me.
Raaze smiled behind his mask.
The Raaz-or wasn’t a move you could teach or even anticipate. It was instinct and muscle memory wrapped in the absolute certainty that your body would do what your mind ordered and physics could just go and get draanthed.
A sharp cut that shouldn’t have been possible at that speed, a twist that used momentum instead of fighting it, and then the goalkeeper tried to grab empty air. Raaze sailed past him, twisted mid-leap to slam the sphere down behind the line.
The final whistle blew, and he stood there, chest heaving and blood dripping from a dozen wounds.
He’d won.
Draanth, he’d actually draanthing won.
The crowd went silent. Then it exploded.
He let the sound wash over him. The crowd was screaming, not laughing anymore, not jeering, but screaming his name.
Well, not his name, but “Raaz-or , Raaz-or , Raaz-or!”
Time to fix that. Reaching up, he pulled the mask off.
The stadium screens flickered, and his face appeared on every one of them… not the masked wildcard, but Raaze.
The screaming died. Not a slow fade, but an instant, heavy silence that sucked the air straight out of the stadium.
Good. Raaze dragged a hand through his sweat-soaked dark hair, letting it fall back to the nape of his neck. Look at the male you threw away.
Up in the booth, the commentator’s mic picked up a sharp drag of air. A hushed, trembling voice echoed through the massive arena.
“By the gods… It’s him.”
There was a silence so thick Raaze could practically chew it.
“Raaze S’Vre,” the announcer stammered, professional slickness completely gone. “The… the striker every team wanted on their lineup. The champion of champions. Exiled after a surprise Blood Rage diagnosis.”
Surprise. Yeah, that was one word for a faked test.
For a second, nobody moved.
Then the stands tore apart. It wasn’t a cheer. It was a roar of pure, unfiltered noise that shook the entire stadium.
The commentator scrambled, professional instincts snapping hard back into place. He pitched his voice to a bellow, spinning the trall as though this had all been planned.
“You are witnessing history right here, right now! Welcome the king of warball back to the pitch!”
17
Chapter 16
“The king of warball,” a female voice cut through the air, issued from the arena’s speakers. “And a man with enemies.”
Every screen in the stadium flickered and changed. Raaze’s face vanished, replaced by a grainy feed of the R’Tev box high above the pitch.
Raaze blinked once. Then his lips curved. Cait. She’d come back. After everything he’d said, after he’d watched her ship pull away, the stubborn, impossible, beautiful female had come back.
His female.
The knowledge hit his chest like a full-contact tackle, sweet and brutal all at once as warmth spread through his chest.
