Whatever it takes to get back to our omegas.
I’d never wanted a game to end so quickly before in my life. Before Roxie and Rylan, hockey was my life. Now they were all that mattered.
Hayes better have found an address. We had an alpha to murder.
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
Roxie
Time felt like it was in a weird stasis where it was passing, but I couldn’t feel it. I blinked, and an hour was over.
Rylan held me through everything. The hockey game was playing softly in the background, and I felt like a failure of an omega for not going to watch the game and supporting my pack.
My skin felt tight, like it didn’t fit right. The lights were too bright. Even my breathing felt wrong and ragged.
“Are you alright, little bat?”
“No,” I admitted. “I shouldn’t be shaking like this.”
“What can I do?” he asked gently, stroking my hair away from my face.
I could see that I was worrying him, but I couldn’t seem to snap myself out of this.
“Would it sound pathetic if I said I wanted to call my mom?”
I was still learning how to rely on other people, but my mom was the one constant in my life, and she was the one person who would understand.
“Of course not,” he promised.
I pulled out my phone and hit her contact, putting it on speaker between us.
“There’s my baby. I thought you forgot about me.” My mom’s voice instantly soothed me. The familiar rasp that she’d passed on to me was something that automatically had comfort washing over me.
“I’m not the one who’s out there going back to school and kicking the world’s ass,” I said, trying for light.
She let out a chuckle. “You’re not wrong. That conference was amazing, and I’m enrolled and starting classes in a month.”
“I’m so proud of you, Mom.”
She started to speak then paused. I wasn’t sure how to start, but, of course, I should have known Olivia Crane was never one for subtlety.
“Okay, I’m walking away from people, and you’re going to tell me what’s wrong because I can tell something’s up.”
Her heels clicked on a hard floor and then a door closed behind her.
“Alright, baby. Talk to me.”
I started at the top, explaining about the guys, the pack, how quickly everything was happening, how they were hockey players but different, and how I trusted them.
“I never wanted you to hate hockey players just because your dad was a bad egg.”
“The coach, the one I said I was mated to, knows my father. He stopped by to visit him the other day and we ran into him.”
“Oh.” Mom sounded stunned.
I’d managed to silence the woman. That might be a first in our lives.
