“Left! Two on!” I shouted. The orc defenseman shifted, trusting my call without question.
A pass sliced through an opening. The shooter wound up.
I dropped into what Willa had called my butterfly just as the puck launched—low and fast as it headed for the corner. The shot cracked off my left pad with a sound like thunder. The rebound kicked out farther than I wanted but my defenders were already on it.
The puck cycled back toward me. Another shot came, this one high.
I tracked it through three players battling in front of me—human, orc, human—sticks flashing. A brief gap opened and I saw the puck fly. I exploded upward, my glove out. The puck smacked into it with a satisfyingthwump.
The crowd roared. And I flushed with a blast of adrenaline at their excitement over the save. I froze for a beat, savoring it. I could feel Willa watching from the stands, could sense her delight. My chest swelled. But there was no time to bask in my success. There was a game to play and this was only the beginning. So I dropped the puck to the ice and tapped it toward my defender.
But the human team was faster.
Time seemed to slow and I saw the move instantly. I surged forward, awkward on my skates but my stick out, chopping the puck away an instant before the human forward arrived. The player crashed into my chest like someone hitting a tree trunk. I didn’t budge.
Because I was an orc. A wall of muscles. And I would guard this net just as I would guard our kingdom from fae attack.
The referee’s whistle shrieked. The human forward bounced off me, glaring. “You can’t just stand there like a mountain!”
I tilted my head, tusks bared. “You are free to try to go around the mountain.”
The coach had called the next play in the game a “face-off” Ozar and a member of the human team waited for the puck to drop. Ozar’s stick hit the ice first, per the rules the coach had told us. Sticks slapped the ice in a frantic attempt to control the puck. Ozar pushed a shoulder forward, trying to angle the play away from our goal, but the human opponent won it and snapped a quick shot between Ozar’s legs straight toward me.
I reacted on instinct—stick angled. The puck pinged off it, found by another human who fired again. Save. Rebound. Save.
Where the fuck were my defenders? I was being pummeled here and desperately needed a break. The puck was a blur. The actions of the human players were a blur. The movements were happening so close to the net and so fast that I feared I might not be able to keep the other team from achieving a goal.
The third shot came from nowhere, a shot that should’ve gotten past any man, but I wasn’t a man. I was an orc. I dove sideways, stretching every muscle and inch of my limbs to the limit. My glove shot forward to catch the puck, and grab it tight.
For one heartbeat there was silence. Then the arena erupted—stomping, cheering, chanting my name.
“Eng! Eng! Eng!”
I carefully rose, awkward on my skates and breathing hard. Steam curled from my lips in the cold. My defenders skated in and thumped their sticks against my pads, a wordless show of approval.
At the bench, our coach shouted, “Attack! Get that puck to the other side of the ice!”
I lifted my mask just long enough to grin—a wide, toothy, fiercely proud grin. I glanced toward the stands again, and sawmy shrew screaming and jumping, out of her seat, her firsts pumping in the air.
This was my goal, my net. This was my job—to protect the net, the team, and her with everything I had.
41
WILLA
“Oh. My. God. Eng is the goalie?”
Jordan turned to stare at me with wide eyes.
I held back a grin. “He is, and he’s very good at it. Seems he’s not super great at skating, which is one of the reasons he spent other games propping up the wall. He’s got great reflexes though and the coach and I feel he’s ideally suited to be the goalie.”
It sounded a bit smug, but I loved feeling like I had a part in the performance of the team, and inside knowledge, even though both Jordan and Abby had inside knowledge of their own.
“You sure he hasn’t been kidnapped by aliens and this is a doppelgänger?” Abby teased. “Or his not-so-evil twin?”
I laughed. “No, it’s Eng with the shields down, being the orc he truly is inside the cocky prince asshole.”
“Well then, go Eng!” Stephanie shouted with a fist pump.
