I wanted to believe she’d be the one to finally stay.
Chapter
Five
Kota
Sweat was dripping down my face and making my gear underneath stick to my skin. Every muscle was on fire.
I dramatically flopped onto the bench, my face dripping with sweat.
Our new coach wasn’t just thorough. He was fucking brutal.
I’d never worked that hard on the ice outside of a game in my entire time playing hockey, and I was known for being the most energetic out of all of us.
Even pulling off my gear was a chore. By the time I was showered and back into my regular clothes, I was ready for a break.
It wasn’t until I finished that I realized everybody was still sitting there.
“What’s going on?” I questioned as I dropped back onto the bench, wincing as my muscles protested.
Hayes cleared his throat. I hadn’t even noticed him sitting across the room, arms crossed. His expression was anything but amused.
“Management sent in a journalist,” Coach said, his voice dripping with annoyance as he finally started speaking.
He was clearly not pleased, which was interesting considering he was new here and hadn’t dealt with even a fraction of the bullshit we had from our old first line.
“After everything, management has decided we need a babysitter, so we have a journalist fromThe Gathering Placejoining us.”
“And by joining us, you mean…” Williamson trailed off, looking up at Coach for the full depth of what we were about to face.
“Meaning she’s here to trail us to games, interview each of you, and show a better face of the Narwhals… or so they said.”
“Well, unfortunately a few bad eggs—” Evans tried to start but he cut his words off as Hayes glared fiercely. The poor guy snapped his mouth shut immediately.
Coach was, apparently, not having any of it, which felt a bit shortsighted to me. Maybe because he was young and felt like he had a lot to prove.
It came off as dismissive.Wewere the ones here dealing with the bullshit. The ones having to clean up the mess and face the allegations.
“Wait, isn’tThe Gathering Placethat forum for lifestyle and pack things? What does it have to do with hockey?” our goalie asked.
“Yes,” Hayes growled. “She covered the story on the old starting line and now I guess she’s here to do it again. I guess they’re expanding into sports.” The contempt in his voice was strong. With the way he stared around the players he thought we’d all agree.
The silence was telling. He was more upset by this than any of us. We’d done the work to prove we deserved to be in our topranks, that those assholes didn’t ruin our team, just their own reputations.
Coach sighed and scrubbed a hand down his face. “Regardless, we don’t get a say. To make matters worse, this supposedunbiasedjournalist has no plans of painting us in any kind of good light.”
“She said that?” I blurted out. That explained some of his fire. But why would they pay her to do this if that was the case?
My question earned me the full force of Coach Hayes’ intense stare.
“She called it unbiased. You fuck up, it’ll end up in the papers. I’m not sure why they would allow this, but what do I know?” he said with a shrug that was anything but unbothered.
There would’ve been no point in arguing with him, but I couldn’t help thinking maybe it was time we proved through our actions and our game that we deserved to be part of the AHA.
Even our own fans had turned against us after everything came out. We were slowly earning them back, but it was brutal.
There were a lot of alphas in the league who acted as examples to younger packs and newly designated alphas, and the last thing they needed was more macho bullshit or alphas acting like they were God’s gift to omegas.
