Craved By The Cursed Hockey Alpha

Chapter Two

IAN

The cold air blasted against my face the second we hit the tunnel and something in my chest loosened. The ice stretched out ahead of us, gleaming under the stadium lights, and the roar of the crowd hit me like a wall of sound that vibrated through my bones.

This was the only place that made sense anymore.

Adrian fell into step on my left. The twins flanked right, shoulder to shoulder the way they always skated—like two halves of the same weapon.

Nate was already on the ice, warming up along the far boards. Say what you want about the guy—and I had plenty—but Calloway could play. He’d earned assistant captain the same way he earned everything, by being annoyingly good at it.

He didn’t look at me as we hit the ice. I didn’t look at him. We had a system. On the rink, the bullshit stayed in the locker room. He was my center and I was his captain and we played like two people who didn’t want to kill each other off the ice.

It worked because winning mattered more than feelings. At least to me.

“Let’s end this school on a high,” Zane said, tapping his stick against the boards.

“Highest note possible,” Rhys agreed. “Beautifully violently high.”

Adrian said nothing. He pulled his helmet down and rolled his neck. But I caught the faintest twitch at the corner of his mouth—the Adrian version of a war cry.

Our opponents were already on the ice. The Dark Falcons. From the next pack over. This was a friendly opening match—we’d be seeing them again at the Academy in a few weeks—but there was nothing friendly about the way their captain, Aaron Reynolds, was looking at me across the center line. I glared back at him, I wasn’t feeling friendly either.

We took our positions, the ref dropped the puck.

And I stopped thinking.

That was the gift hockey gave me. On the ice, there was no wolf. No Fenris. No noise. There was just the puck, the blade, and the brutal, beautiful mechanics of speed and violence.

I hit the first Falcon defenseman so hard his helmet bounced off the boards. The crowd erupted. The impact traveled up through my shoulder and into my chest and it felt like the first clean breath I’d taken all day.

More.

I wanted more.

The twins were doing what they did best—hunting in tandem. Zane drove wide along the right boards, pulling two defenders with him, and the second they committed, he flicked a blind backhand pass across the zone that landed on Rhys’s tape like they’d rehearsed it in their sleep. They probably had. Who knew, they probably dreamt in passing lanes.

Rhys didn’t even look at the net. He one-timed it. Top corner. The goalie never moved.

They collided into each other at center ice, helmets cracking together, laughing like maniacs while the crowd screamed. Zane pointed at the Falcon bench and blew them a kiss. Rhys did the exact same thing half a second later.

Adrian played a different game entirely. Where the twins were fire, Adrian was shadow. He didn’t hit. He didn’t taunt. He just appeared—always in the right lane, exactly where you didn’t want him to be.

Nate was doing his thing too. Working the middle of the ice like he owned it, winning face-offs with that quick wrist snap he’d perfected over the years. He set up Adrian with a backhand saucer pass through two defenders that had no business connecting but did, and Adrian buried it without celebration. Nate pumped his fist once.

Now, it was my turn.

My turn to shine.

I carved through the opposing team’s defense and fired a shot top-shelf that the goalie didn’t even see until it was already behind him. The horn blared. My team slammed into me on the boards. The crowd went feral.

“That was disgusting!” Zane screamed in my face, grabbing my helmet with both hands. “That was absolutely filthy, you animal!”

“I think the goalie’s still looking for it!” Rhys was cackling, pointing back at the net. “Someone check on him! Does he need a map?”

Second period. The Falcons came out swinging. Reynolds was in Nate’s ear every shift—chirping, slashing, getting under his skin the way rival captains do. On the next play, Nate carried the puck through the neutral zone with speed, deked past one defender, and then—

He coughed it up.

A lazy pass to nobody.

The arena groaned.

“Hey, Calloway!” Zane shouted from the bench as Nate skated past. “Your girlfriend jinxed the puck or what? Tell her to stop hexing us from the stands!”

Nate’s jaw tightened but he didn’t bite.

He made up for it two shifts later, he dug the puck out of a corner battle with two Falcons on his back—and fed me a cross-ice pass that hit my tape at full stride. I didn’t even need to think.

My body knew what to do.

My shoulder connected with a Falcon winger’s chest hard enough to send him spinning into the boards. The ref’s whistle blew but the crowd didn’t care. They were screaming my name. Night-shade. Night-shade. Night-shade.

Wrister. Glove side. In.

The horn blared again.

“Stay down, buddy!” Zane yelled over the boards at the Falcon sprawled on the ice. “It’s safer down there!”

“He’s fine,” Rhys called out next to him, grinning. “Just a love tap. Right, bro?”

The Falcon didn’t get up for another ten seconds.

My wolf was aggravated. She was in the crowd. I could feel her gaze on me.

I didn’t want to look. I told myself I wouldn’t look, but I failed.

She sat in the third row, next to some blonde girl from the pack—and the second my eyes found her, she looked away quickly. Like my gaze was something hot she didn’t want to touch.

Even from this distance, and over the roar of the crowd, my hearing picked it up.

“Oh my god,” the blonde girl hissed, grabbing Elara’s arm. “Ian is looking this way. He’s literally staring at us right now.”

“He’s such a jerk,” Elara whispered back. “I wish he’d get crushed. Just once. Is that too much to ask? He took all the credit for the pass Nate gave to him just now,”

I smirked.

Everything about that girl’s hatred—that pure, undiluted, bone-deep loathing—lit a spark in me that I couldn’t explain.

You wish I’d get crushed? Watch this.

I took the next face-off and won it clean. I split two defenders with a between-the-legs deke that made the crowd gasp, and then I buried the puck so hard it nearly ripped through the netting.

The arena erupted.

People were on their feet, screaming so loud the sound distorted into something that didn’t even sound human anymore. My teammates mobbed me. Zane jumped on my back. Rhys jumped on Zane. Adrian skated over and tapped my shin pad once with his stick.

And I turned—just slightly—and looked right at her.

Her arms were crossed and her expression was tight with disappointment.

The final buzzer sounded. We won.

The arena gates opened and fans started pouring onto the ice. Families. Friends. Girlfriends.

I saw her before I could stop myself.

She came running through the crowd, her wavy brown hair bouncing behind her, that stupid face of hers lit up with a smile too wide. She launched herself at Nate, her legs wrapping around his waist.

“You did great!” I heard her say to him.

She kissed him. Not the grandmother kiss from the locker room. This one was different. Hard, happy and messy, both of them grinning too much to do it properly.

“Well, well,” Zane appeared beside me, watching the spectacle with open amusement. “The lovebirds.”

“Soon to be birthday boy’s getting his real present tonight,” Rhys said, appearing on my other side. “Bet you twenty bucks he’s tearing that dress off her before midnight.”

“Twenty? I’ll bet fifty he doesn’t make it past the car,” Zane snorted. “Did you see the way she jumped on him? That girl’s climbing him like a tree.”

“The Muteblood’s gonna get bred tonight.”

“Calloway’s gonna fold her like a lawn chair—”

“That’s enough!” The words came out of my mouth before I knew they were coming.

Both twins looked at me. Surprised.

I didn’t know why it bothered me. It shouldn’t have bothered me. Nate and his Muteblood girlfriend could do whatever they wanted with their night. I had zero reason to care. She was nothing to me. Less than nothing. She was a wolfless, scentless nobody who had no business taking up space in my head, and whatever she did with Calloway in whatever bed they fell into tonight was absolutely, completely, entirely none of my—

Fenris slammed against the inside of my skull.

Not the normal strain. This was violent. Furious.

My hands were shaking. My skin was burning.

The whole rink was vibrating with noise and adrenaline and—

I couldn’t breathe.

I couldn’t stay here for a second longer.

The locker room was too far. Everything was too far and Fenris was too close and if I didn’t get out right now I was going to shift in the middle of the arena.

The forest.

I ran toward the tree line. My jersey ripped at the seams. Bones snapping and reforming before I’d even cleared the parking lot. Pain exploded through me. I hit the trees on two legs and left them on four.