Craved By The Cursed Hockey Alpha

Chapter Three

ELARA

“Your boyfriend is going to cheat on you!”

Kirsten yelled it through the blaring speakers. I snatched my hand out of hers so fast you’d think she burned me.

“You said palm reading would help my anxiety! That was the whole point, Kirsten. Now you’re—” I gestured between us. “—building a panic attack from scratch!”

Ignoring my glare, she shrugged. “I’m just telling you what it says. A special person in your life is going to betray you. And we both know Nate is the only special person you’ve got.”

I took a rapid sip of my drink. The alcohol didn’t help. Her words had already spiked up my nerves. “Nate would never do that. He’s the most loyal man alive. If loyalty was a disease he’d be terminal.”

“You really love him, huh? Like, love love?” She rolled her eyes, flipping her blonde hair over one shoulder. Everything about Kirsten was loud—her laugh, her opinions, her looks. She was tall and golden, built like the goddess had taken her time on the sculpting. High cheekbones, full lips, blue eyes that are framed by naturally long lashes.

“Is there room for me in your little relationship? I could be the third wheel. I’d be cute at it.”

I snorted. “Don’t be weird, Kirsten.”

“Okay, okay.” Kirsten stood up with the kind of energy that meant trouble.

I watched suspiciously as she adjusted the straps of her dress, pulling the neckline down just enough that a whole new territory of cleavage appeared. When she caught me staring, she blew me a kiss.

“I’m buzzed enough. Time for the mission,” she said.

My jaw dropped. “Please tell me you were joking.”

“About shooting my shot on Ian Nightshade?” She said it like she was reading off a to-do list. “I was not joking. I am not joking. I will not be joking.” She smoothed down her dress and her expression went dreamy. “Didn’t you see him staring at me at the rink earlier? During the second period? He literally looked right at me.”

“Kirsten—”

“Look.” She grabbed my arm and squeezed once, firm and quick. “Good luck tonight. The mate thing. I really do hope it’s you. You deserve it. Truly.”

Then she was gone, swallowed into the crowd.

I sat there. Alone. My cup of whatever getting warm in my hand. The dress Nate bought me riding up my thighs no matter how many times I tugged it down.

He’d given it to me this morning. A little black dress—short and fitted. It was the kind of thing I would never in a million years have picked for myself. I looked sexy tonight, and hoped Nate would get to take it off.

We hadn’t slept together yet.

It was his idea we waited, actually. Which surprised me because he was a guy and an eighteen-year-old werewolf. Those two things combined weren’t exactly known for their patience. But Nate wanted it to mean something.

I’d never felt anything like what I felt with him with any other guy. Not even close. I didn’t have a wolf to tell me he was mine, but my body knew.

And I knew he felt the same way. We had to be mates.

There’s no way we feel like this and we’re not.

I checked my phone. 11:45PM.

Fifteen minutes until midnight, until Nate’s birthday.

My knee bounced under the table. My fingers were cold around the cup.

“Look, the Alpha is here!” some girls giggled near me, and I could feel the energy in the room shift at the mention of his name. I nearly rolled my eyes out of my skull.

Ian Nightshade.

The soon to be Alpha of our pack. The Icy Captain. Hockey god, emotional void, six-foot-four wall of hostility wrapped in a striking face.

The guy didn’t smile. I was fully convinced his facial muscles weren’t wired for it.

And I could not—for the life of me—understand why every girl in our class, including my best friend, acted like he was the goddess’s personal apology to women.

He was mean. He was a fuckboy. A cold, heartless, unapologetically cruel fuckboy.

I didn’t want to know these intimate details about him, but the information kept finding me anyway. Uninvited.

Apparently, Ian Nightshade was—and I’m quoting multiple sources here against my will—incredible in bed and, quote, gifted below the belt.

I did not ask for a single piece of this information. Not one. It had been dumped on me and I wanted a full refund and a memory wipe.

He was still a jerk. Knowing that a jerk had a big d**k didn’t make him less of a jerk. It just made him a jerk with a big d**k.

I shook my head hard, like I could rattle the thoughts loose.

Where was Nate?

That was the only question that mattered.

Nate was the best thing that had ever happened to me. And I know how that sounds. I know it sounds dramatic, maybe even pathetic. But when you’ve spent your whole life being the girl people whisper about—the wolfless one, the one who brings bad luck—you stop expecting good things.

Nate was the future Beta of our pack. He was charming and popular without even trying.

We made no sense together. I knew that.

I was a nobody. Born without a wolf, which wasn’t just unusual in our pack—it was an abomination. A defect. Something people talked about in hushed voices like it might be contagious.

But Nate didn’t see any of that. When people whispered behind my back, he stood in front of me. When the pack looked at me like I was cursed, he looked at me like I was special.

I loved him so much it scared me sometimes.

I’d turned eighteen last month. In every other werewolf story, that would’ve been the big moment. My wolf bursting to life, the mate bond snapping into place like a lock finding its key.

But I didn’t have a wolf. So there was no burst. Just me, blowing out candles on a grocery store cake in Nate’s kitchen, smiling too hard and pretending the hollow space in my chest was just birthday nerves.

Tonight, when his wolf fully woke up, he’d know if we were mates.

Please.

The Moon Goddess had already taken everything she could from me. My wolf. My parents.

She wouldn’t take Nate too. She couldn’t.

Right?

I checked my phone again. 11:50

My stomach felt like it was slowly being tied into a knot by invisible hands.

I pushed into the crowd to look for him.

Something slammed into my shoulder hard enough to spin me sideways. Before I could catch my balance, a boot came down on my foot and a sharp pain shot up my ankle.

“Ow—hey!”

I looked up.

The twins. Zane and Rhys. Ian’s personal shadows and the two most irritating people in the SilverCrest Pack.

They were carrying Sheila—the redhead cheerleader queen—between them. She was draped across their arms, wearing what used to be a dress but was now mostly just suggestions. Her top was hanging off one shoulder, her skirt was bunched somewhere around her waist, and she was giggling with the unhinged joy of someone who was five drinks past caring about anything.

There were rumors about Sheila. That she’d slept with every member of the hockey team. Every. Single. One. The only name people left off the list was Nate, because even the rumor mill had to admit he was disgustingly loyal.

Zane looked down at me like he’d just noticed a stain on the floor. “Oh. The Muteblood.”

“Watch where you stand,” Rhys said without slowing down. “You’re in the way. Again. It’s kind of your whole thing.”

Sheila lifted her head from Rhys’s shoulder, looked at me through mascara-smudged eyes, and burst out laughing for no reason.

They disappeared down the hallway, Sheila’s giggles trailing behind them like perfume.

I stood there. Foot throbbing. Shoulder aching. My pride in a puddle on the floor.

Yep. This was the standard Elara experience.

The house was a maze. I turned a corner and opened a door to a bathroom where a girl was sobbing into her phone. “Sorry, sorry—” I backed out.

I tried another hallway, grabbing the handle of another door and yanked it open.

The sound hit me before the visual did.

Moaning. Loud, shameless, pornographic moaning. The slap of skin on skin, hard and rhythmic, the bed frame knocking against the wall in a pattern that felt personally offensive.

And then—eyes. Grey eyes. Ice cold, sharp, completely unbothered. Staring right at me over the girl’s shoulder without even the slightest hitch in his rhythm.

Ian Nightshade.

He didn’t stop. He didn’t cover up. The asshole didn’t even have the basic decency to look embarrassed.

And I—goddess help me—I looked down.

I didn’t mean to. It was involuntary. A reflex. The way you look at a car crash or a spider on the wall or anything horrifying that your brain screams DON’T LOOK at but your eyes do anyway because they’re traitors who don’t follow orders.

I looked down and I saw it, every single rumor I’d ever been forced to hear was confirmed in one devastating, anatomically unreasonable glance.

The sources had not been exaggerating. If anything, the sources had been conservative. That was not a gift below the belt. That was a punishment. There was a whole horse between that man’s legs.

“Either get in or f**k off, Mute,” he said in a bored tone that still managed to be icy and insulting.

Before I could even process the absolute insanity—

The brunette beneath him arched up, fisting the sheets, and let out a moan so loud it had to be fake. “Don’t stop—I want you all to myself—”

I gagged.

Like, physically. My throat convulsed. My body rejected the entire scenario on every level.

I slammed the door so hard the walls shook.

What the f**k. What the actual f**k.

That image was in my brain now. Permanently. I could feel it settling in. I was going to need therapy. Several rounds. Possibly hypnosis.

I pressed my palms against my chest and breathed.

Okay. Okay. At least one good thing came from that traumatic experience—the girl under Ian was a brunette. Not blonde. Which meant Kirsten’s mission had failed, and I was relieved about that because I didn’t want my best friend to be his victim.

Right now I needed air. I needed Nate. And I needed to never open another closed door for the rest of my life.

I checked my phone as I pushed toward the back of the house.

12:01 AM.

Midnight.

Please. Please. Please.

The back door spilled me out onto the patio, and the night hit me like cold water. It was clean and quiet here. The noise from inside dulled to a muffled thrum.

“Kirsten—” I started calling out, because I could see her near the tree line, the shape of her blonde hair lit up faintly by the light from the house.

But she wasn’t alone.

My feet slowed before my brain caught up.

Nate.

He was standing in front of her. And even from twenty feet away, I could tell something was wrong. His shoulders were stiff. His hands were clenched at his sides. His face, when I got close enough to see it—

Pale.

Sick pale.

“We have to tell her,” Kirsten was saying. Her voice was shaky, as though she was crying.

My stomach didn’t just drop. It—plummeted with dread.

“T…tell me what?”

They both turned at the same time, wearing expressions I’d never seen before. Nate looked like he was drowning. Kirsten looked like she was trying very hard not to burst into tears.

“What do you have to tell me?” My voice trembled.

“Elara…” Nate started.

His eyes were wet. I’d never seen his eyes wet before, and the sight of it sent something cold and jagged through my ribs.

I could feel it coming. Every nerve in my body lit up, screaming at me to run, to cover my ears, and not let the words land.

“Don’t,” I whispered. I didn’t even know what I was begging him not to say. Just don’t. Please. Whatever it is, keep it inside you.

“We’re mates,” Kirsten said.