Craved By The Cursed Hockey Alpha

Chapter Seven

ELARA

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“Elara—Elara, wait!”

Nate’s voice chased me down the corridor, but I didn’t slow down. I couldn't. A second later, his hands clamped around my upper arms, spinning me around.

“Please, just… can we talk?!”

I was biting my lip hard, just to keep from sobbing right in his face.

My wrists were still throbbing with a dull, raw burn where the chains had been. My neck felt tight and suffocating, like the weight of that iron collar was still actively choking the life out of me.

“It’s over, Nate,” I said, my voice hollow with exhaustion.

“No, it’s not. I’m going to fix this.” His grip tightened, his fingers trembling against my skin, his brown eyes blown with pure desperation. “Hear me, Elara—I’ll fix this. My father and I are leaving for MoonCloud Pack this afternoon for the Academy arrangements, but when I get back—” He took my face in both hands, forcing me to look at him. “—when I get back, I’m going to make the council rewrite the verdict. I’ll talk to Elder Crane. I’ll talk to every single elder individually if I have to. I’ll find a way.”

His thumbs brushed my cheekbones.

“Wait for me,” he said. “Can you do that? Just wait for me. A few days. That’s all I need. Don’t let them break you while I’m gone. Please, Elara. Just hold on until I get back.”

And for one horrible, treacherous second, I almost said yes. Almost let myself sink into his hands and believe him the way I’d always believed him—blindly, with every stupid, stubborn cell in my body.

But I couldn’t. Because holding on meant hoping. And hope was the cruelest thing anyone had ever given me.

He ran his hands through his hair, “I know you’re hurt, it’s all my fault. I shouldn’t have left you alone. I shouldn’t have chased after Kirsten. I should have stayed—”

“I SAID IT’S OVER!”

The sheer, raw agony of my own scream shocked me. With a violent wrench of my shoulders, I ripped myself completely out of his grasp.

Nate froze, staring at me as if I’d just struck him. Those big, beautiful eyes that used to make me feel safe—that used to make me feel like the only girl in the room—now burned with a devastating mix of hurt and utter confusion.

“W-what? What do you mean?” he stammered, his hands hanging uselessly in the air between us. “If this is about my wolf taking over last night and going with Kirsten—”

“Stop. Just stop!” I inhaled a ragged breath, but the air felt hurt. Every single fiber of my miserable existence was aching, bruised from the inside out. “Do I really need to spell it out for you? You found your fated mate, Nate. Our relationship is dead.”

He took a step forward, panic completely overtaking his face.

“No—Elara, no. I rejected her. You saw me. I chose you—”

“And it almost killed her!” I screamed, my chest bubbling over with a cocktail of frustration and heartbreak. I forced myself to hold his sorrowful stare, refusing to look away. “Look at me! Kirsten is my best friend. You can’t just reject a fated match without literally destroying the person's soul. She’s your mate. She has a natural claim to you, and I won’t…” My throat constricted, cutting off my air, but I forced the brutal truth through anyway. “…I won’t be the reason my best friend dies inside.”

“Elara, please!” a tear finally escaped, cutting a clean path down his cheek.

“Just stop, Nate!” I snapped, weaponizing my anger to mask my shattering heart. I had to stay angry. Because the alternative was collapsing to my knees right here, crying, and begging him to choose me anyway. But I couldn’t do that. I had no right to his destiny.

“From this second on, we’re strangers. Don’t interfere with my life, and I won’t touch yours. We’re going to treat our entire relationship like it never even existed.”

I turned on my heel before the lie could literally choke me.

One foot in front of the other. Don’t look back. Don’t look back. Don’t you dare look back.

A sob was building deep in my chest, heavy and violent, until my shoulders were visibly shaking with the effort of holding it in.

“Elara—”

I didn’t look back. Instead, I ran.

I ran away from my Nate. No—he wasn't mine anymore. He belonged to Kirsten now.

My chest was burning with a fierce, physical fire. My eyes overflowed, blurring the hallway into a chaotic smear of colors. My throat was raw, my nose running, and a sickening fever of pure grief was clawing at me with both hands, dragging me under water.

I just needed a place to hide. I managed to drag my aching body to my parents’ old quarters, the one sanctuary where I hoped to collapse and lick my wounds in total isolation, only to find the heavy wooden door swung wide open.

I could hear the noise before I even reached the threshold—the aggressive, careless clatter of things being tossed around.

My personal belongings were being scattered across the floor, and fabrics hitting the ground with heavy, disrespectful thuds.

I stood paralyzed in the doorway, and what little was left of my stomach completely sank.

Three omegas were inside. I recognized all of them—Maren, Judith, and small, pinch-faced Greta, who used to occasionally give me a polite nod in the hallways. They were tossing my entire room apart, pulling open my drawers and stuffing my belongings into plastic baskets like they were clearing out a yard sale.

“What are you doing?” My voice shook with a volatile mix of panic and outrage. “What the hell are you doing with my things?!”

Maren spun around, her eyes landing on me.

“Your belongings are being cleared out and transferred to the sub-basement omega quarters,” she said, a nasty little smirk playing on her lips. “Alpha’s orders.”

Behind her, Judith casually reached onto the windowsill and grabbed my mother’s blue ceramic vase—the one that had been her absolute favorite. My mom used to keep fresh wildflowers in it every single week, and after she vanished, I’d taken over the ritual. I put the exact same flowers in the exact same vase every single week. It was probably a stupid, sentimental habit, but I held onto it because it was the last physical piece of her I had left.

“What are these nonsense scraps even doing here?” Judith grunted, carelessly tossing the vase toward a cardboard box.

“Careful!” I lunged forward, my heart leaping into my throat. “Stop! Stop touching my things!”

Greta looked up from the drawer she was emptying, letting out a loud, dramatic huff. “She’s an omega just like us now, Maren. Why do we even have to pack her stuff? Why are we treating her like she’s royalty?”

“Because the Alpha explicitly said to move her things,” Maren replied, though her tone made it perfectly clear she completely agreed with the complaint.

She turned back to me, “The Alpha’s orders were to handle your belongings with care. So we’re handling them. If you’d stop interrupting us, we’d be out of your hair faster.”

“Ian has absolutely no right to kick me out of these quarters. This quarter belonged to my parents!”

“Well, it doesn't anymore,” Greta corrected smugly, sounding like she’d been waiting her entire life to deliver that line.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Maren’s hand reach for the framed portrait sitting on my nightstand.

A surge of pure adrenaline hit my veins. I dove across the room—

Too late.

The portrait slipped right through her fingers.

It hit the hard stone floor with a sickening smash.

I watched in absolute horror as the wooden frame cracked completely at the corner. My parents’ faces stared back up at me from behind a fractured web of broken glass.

My dad’s bright smile. My mom’s laughter. My tiny, stupid, ecstatically happy face—the only remaining proof of a time when my family was still whole.

All of it cracked. Destroyed.

“Oh. Was that piece of trash important to you?” Maren asked. She took a purposeful step forward—and her heavy boot landed directly on the photograph. Right on top of my mother’s face.

She looked down at her shoe, then up at me, and the expression on her face was something I knew I would remember for as long as I lived. It was a toxic blend of pity, contempt, and just the faintest, cruel edge of absolute satisfaction.

“Why would we care about a stupid picture of dead people anyway?” she scoffed.

My eyes burned with blinding tears as I dropped heavily to my knees, my hands hovering helplessly above the ruined portrait.

My head felt like it was physically on fire—like someone had poured pure acid directly into my skull and it was eating its way outward. I wanted to scream until my lungs bled. I wanted to tear this entire room apart with my bare hands. But most of all—more than anything I had ever wanted in my entire miserable, pathetic life—I wanted to find Ian Nightshade and use the jagged shards of broken glass on this floor to repeatedly stab whatever cold, dead thing sat in his chest where a heart should have been.

I wanted to kill him.

The thought was so crystal clear and so incredibly specific that it actually terrified me.

“What’s with all the noise?”