“Hell yeah!” Whiskey says, grinning again. “New blood means fresh meat for me to whip into shape.”
I stand, suddenly feeling the need to move. To do something other than sit here and…bond. "I'm going to hit the gym," I announce.
Whiskey looks at me like I've grown a second head. "Dude, it's ass o'clock in the morning. Don't you ever sleep?"
I ignore him, making my way to the state-of-the-art gym that takes up most of the pack house's basement level.
But my mind keeps circling back to the equipment room, to those warm, freshly sharpened skates. To the feeling that something's off. That there's a piece to this puzzle I'm missing. That it’s somehow important.
And Iwillget to the bottom of it.
Chapter
Five
IVY
Being out and about during regular hours feels fuckingweird.
Everything in me screams to retreat back to the safety of my hidden nest, especially since I woke up feeling like shit, but I force myself to keep moving through the arena's maintenance area. After Plague's late-night inspection of the equipment room and how he was clearly suspicious of blades being sharpened so late, I need to establish myself as a legitimate presence just in case. Hell, the lazy security team might even be checking the cameras for once.
I adjust my plain navy uniform, making sure it hangs loose enough to hide my figure so I don’t get any unwanted attention from the male alphas and betas that work here. The equipment manager ID badge clipped to my chest just says “Hannah,” of course. Not Ivy. I grabbed it from a back room a few weeks ago and stuck a white rabbit sticker from a vending machine on it. Figured it would make the badge look more legitimate if I decorated it.
Here, I’m just another forgettable face in the arena's vast workforce. Employees come and go all the time. There’s always some kind of drama going on, so if I lay low and keep to myself, I should blend right in.
At least, that's what I'm hoping.
The sound of voices draws my attention. I recognize a few faces—Megan from housekeeping, an equipment manager with electric blue hair named Sam, and a couple of newer girls around my age.
One of the interns gestures wildly with her free hand. "I'm telling you, Gabrielle quit because she saw a monster in the tunnels. If you make me go down there, I'm bringing backup."
"Maintenance halls, you mean?" Megan rolls her eyes as she sloshes her ropey mop in the soap bucket on her cart. "You're making it sound like we've got alligator-infested sewers down there."
"Has anyone been able to reach her?" another girl asks. She has pink streaks in her light brown hair and is picking at her equally pink phone case. "I texted her, but she’s ghosting me. We were supposed to go out for drinks later, too.”
"She told me she thought it was Wraith at first," the intern continues, clearly enjoying being the center of attention to the expense of everyone else trying to talk. "She caught him drinking a bottle of water in a back room, and then he turned around, and she realized it was some kind of demon. And that's the last I heard from her. Trust me, girl, she’s ghostingeveryone. It isn’t personal."
“Please,” Megan scoffs. "Gabrielle was a pill popper. She was probably hallucinating. Everyone knows Wraith's scary as fuck, but ‘demon’ is a little dramatic.”
"Scary andhot," one of the other equipment managers chimes in. "No way someone that tall and built is ugly under that mask, no matter what Gabrielle thinks she saw."
"Uh, hello? The scar through his eye?" the intern counters. "Who knows what else he's hiding."
"It's probably fake. You can buy those at Spirit Halloween."
The group erupts in laughter.
"He is scary though," Pink Streaks says quietly. "I mean, he never talks. And after what he did to Daniels..."
"Daniels was an asshole who probably had it coming," Sam cuts in, not looking up from the skate she’s grinding. "And the new winger is hot asfuuuuck, so we’re getting an upgrade anyway."
Pink Streaks perks up. “Where did you hear that?”
“Fan chat,” Sam replies, popping a piece of gum in her mouth and giving it a chew before continuing. “Shit got leaked on there this morning.”
“Who is he?” Pink Streaks asks.
“Something like Vlak, I think?” Sam says. “Or Valek?”
