But he didn’t. He actively avoided it.
That shit hurt just as much as disappointing him had.
Not only that, but I’d been craving this rendezvous since I’d suggested it. Every nerve in my body felt rewired only to receive and experience Eli’s touch. I had jerked off three times since waking up and still couldn’t satiate the hunger. It had even messed me up on the ice. I found myself more distracted than I’d ever been, hyperaware of every move Eli made when I should have been focused instead on our opponents.
Unfortunately, though, there was no time to dwell on the heavy feeling in my chest or the one building in my balls.
Not with the news Dylan had brought me.
An iron collar. Here. In our arena. On our home turf.
The threat couldn’t be more clear.
I hurried down the empty hallway, past the training room, past the administrative offices. I reached a heavy exit door marked with orange and blue claw marks. I pushed it open and was met with Emmy, his fists anxiously balled up at his sides. A thick copse of red maple trees crept right up to this back entrance of the arena. “The other guys are already on their way. I wanted to hold back for you. Don’t think it’s wise for any of us to be traveling alone right now.”
That heavy feeling in my chest morphed into something sharper, more venomous. Fear. My pulse quickened, throat tightened. “Thank you,” I said.
We both gave our perimeter a quick once-over. When we were sure we were alone, both of us fell to our hands and knees and began to shift. Thankfully, we only had to worry about clothes ripping if it was a full moon and we were shifting into our much larger forms. But for a regular shift—our body mass getting smaller as we changed into a wolf—everything on our possession could phase in and out with the change.
Bones painlessly rearranged themselves; limbs and fingers and toes reshaped themselves into claws and paws and four powerful legs covered in fur. Nose turned to snout, ears grew outward, organs shifted and morphed. And all I felt from the transformation was a soft pressure at the base of my skull.
Emmy’s sleek midnight-black form appeared next to mine. We were both the same species of wolf but had very different appearances. He was all one color, as if someone had grabbed him by the tail and dipped him into an inkpot. He was also a little bulkier than I was, built more for strength than for agility.
I was the opposite. My coat was mottled with beige and grays, and my tail ended in white as if it’d been dipped into a paint can. My wolf body mirrored the leaner but still-muscular build I had in my human form, allowing me to run extremely long distances without feeling like I overexerted myself in the process.
Emmy gave a low growl at my side before he took off like a black comet into the woods. I followed close behind, practically nipping at his tail. Even though the circumstances for this run weren’t good, that didn’t erase the thrill of racing and weaving through the trees with Emmy. It was an instinctual need to feel the chill wind flowing through my fur, the cold, moist dirt under my paws.
I followed the instinctive ping that tugged at my internal compass. I already knew the pack was meeting at Raquel’s house, but that didn’t erase the subconscious alarm bells that rang as loud as police sirens, leading me through the woods. It didn’t matter that I could still scent the trail left behind by the other wolves who had run ahead; I’d still be able to find my way to my destination with my eyes closed.
Fifteen minutes later, we crashed through the border of the woods, directly onto a wide and unfenced yard. Emmy and I slowed to a stop before quickly shifting back into our human forms. A nasty bruise was beginning to form on his thigh from a hit he’d taken during the game. His shifter genes would have it healed before the night was over.
The sliding glass door was open. Inside, the energy was tense. Dylan, Chris, Soren, and Raquel were huddled around something on the dining table. Yuni Walters, the matriarchal anchor of the pack and the only other shifter who would talk back to our alpha, paced around the carpet, furiously typing something on her phone. Allattention seemed to shift to Emmy once he entered the room.
“Any new information?” he asked, not even a little bit out of breath after our run.
Three people tried to answer at once. Soren, the highest-ranking beta in the group, took the lead. Our pack had a simple hierarchy that kept things functioning smoothly. Emerson was our alpha; he made final decisions and kept everyone in check. Under him were the betas—Soren, Chris, Dyl, Myself, Yuni, and Raquel—each of us knowledgeable and skilled in different aspects of pack life but always adhering to the final word said by Emmy. To round out the family, there were the omegas. Our pack had three of them: Nicky, the baby of the group, her biological grandfather Fredrick, and Cody Richfield, who was Dylan’s younger cousin and a bit of a recluse. These were the ones in the pack who were more vulnerable and weren’t as involved when it came to big decisions or tense moments like these.
“The Savannah pack is threatening us,” Soren said. He wore a loose-fitting white button-up shirt with most of the top buttons undone. “Leaving this right underneath our noses. On our own home turf.” Soren moved aside and motioned at the iron collar on the table, lit by the harsh white overhead lighting. It was smooth and seemed to pull light toward it. There was a hinge and a lock that allowed it to open and then clamp shut. Through the center of the collar was a thread of tightly braided and woven rowan leaves underneath a slick-looking coating of resin to hold it in place.
My fists balled up tight. I instinctively fell into fight-or-flight mode, not wanting to get any closer to the collar. Touching it wouldn’t necessarily hurt me, but if that thingfound its way around my neck, then I’d be incapacitated, rendered completely useless and at the whim of whoever managed to put it on me. It was one of a shifter’s biggest weaknesses.
“Fucking flea-ridden dickhead furry chucklefuck assholes,” Dyl said. That got a dry laugh out of Chris and Raquel.
“Who found it?” Yuni asked. She had no qualms about picking up the collar and examining it closely. I had the urge to smack it out of her grip.
“I did,” Dylan responded.
Chris looked as repulsed by the collar as I felt. His eyebrows pushed together, and his nose flared like he had picked up on the stench of rotten milk. “Where was it?”
“In the hallway. Outside of our training room. It was after the game and right by where the Sharks had to leave to get out of the arena. One of them left it there. Had to be. I think it was Viktor—I saw him lagging behind his entire team. He was talking to Harrison.”
“Why would Viktor be talking to our GM?” Chris asked.
“He might be wanting to poach him,” Dylan suggested. “Either way, I know Viktor was around that hallway during a time no one else was. He easily could have had that in his duffel bag and dropped it on his way out.”
“But why would they have that with them?” Raquel asked. “Couldn’t it backfire? Not like they’re immune to it, either.”
“Maybe they planned on taking one of us hostage? And thought it was wiser to threaten us instead?” Soren said. He glared at the collar as if it were seconds from growing legs and launching itself at his throat. “And their alpha has been vocal about pushing their pack in this direction. Viktor’s been wanting Burlington for years.”
