Full Moon Faceoff (Wolves of Burlington #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter One

Fresh Meat

ELI

The energy in the locker room always shifted from team to team.

Some were filled with more of the goofball types, snapping wet towels at each other’s bare asses and laughing like it was the funniest damn thing in the world.

Others were more game-focused, constantly discussing different strategies and plotting ways they could get their hands on the Calder Cup.

It was my first day in the Bobcats’ locker room, but I could already tell these guys leaned more toward the former than the latter.

Emerson “Emmy” Meyers, one of the team’s D-men and a verifiable unit of a man, stood with a towel wrapped around his waist and a skimpy pair of hot pink underwear hanging off a finger.

“Dyl, if you swap my underwear for another pink thong again, then I’m just going to wear it, take a picture of it, and set it as your phone’s wallpaper.

” He tossed the underwear at Dylan Raye, whose grin slanted as he chuckled.

He wore a Bobcats sweatband around his forehead—black with white and baby blue stripes—which held back a sweaty head of dark brown hair.

A white streak of hair cut across the side of his temple, matching a similar white streak that went across the top of his left eyebrow.

He stuffed the thong into his already overflowing duffel bag. “Dumbass.”

“Whose are those anyway?” Soren Volkov asked in a thick Eastern European accent.

He was the goalie on the team, and a damn talented one at that.

He was one of the reasons I was okay with this trade—there were a couple of other reasons, but playing on the same team as Soren made me excited.

It surprised me that he hadn’t made the jump from the AHL to the NHL yet.

And he wasn’t the only one on the team who had next-level kind of stats.

“Got them on for a Halloween costume,” Dylan replied nonchalantly.

“Mhmm,” Emmy said. “Maybe Eli wants to try them on? A little initiation ritual.” Emmy cocked his head and crossed his arms over his bare chest. He winked at me.

“Don’t think they’re my size,” I said, getting a laugh from the guys.

Soren, already fully dressed and halfway out the door, stopped and pointed sternly in my direction. “Don’t let these puck-brained fucks bully you. Give ’em a smack behind their head. Coach allows it.”

“Pfft, you saw him on the ice,” Dyl said. “A smack from him’s going to give me a fucking concussion.”

“Or it could restart whatever engine is malfunctioning in there,” Emmy quipped.

“Fuck you,” Dyl said, his words having zero bite behind them.

The banter continued until it was only me and Chris Rodriguez left in the locker room.

He was one of the centers on the team and one of the first guys to reach out to me when the trade was announced.

He had short, cropped blond hair and a nose that sat slightly off-center underneath a pair of hazel green eyes that reminded me of my mom’s.

Meant I instantly trusted him.

“Nice job on the ice today,” Chris said as he stood up from the bench, his duffel bag strapped over his shoulder. “I can already tell we’ve got a good season ahead of us.”

I grinned up at him, happy to receive the compliment.

I’d researched the entire team before moving to Burlington.

Chris had seniority on the team, even though Emmy was captain.

He also had some serious stats under his belt.

Last season, his average goal per sixty minutes was three, which was a feat that even some NHL players had trouble achieving.

Made me wonder again why this team was so damn stacked and why no one seemed to be moving up?

“It’s a solid group of guys here. The talent is through the fucking roof,” I said.

“We’ve got talent and brotherhood here. It’s a lethal mix for any of our rivals.”

“I noticed the brotherhood vibes. The last team I was on felt close, but the Bobcats look like they’re on another level.”

It wasn’t just based on my observations from today.

Chatter online said that the Burlington Bobcats were known to be a tight-knit—and slightly mysterious—group.

They avoided a lot of the spotlight by often forgoing after-game press interviews, keeping a pretty quiet social media presence, and staying out of gossip or trending topics.

In fact, the only thing I could find online that was anything beyond the couple of videos posted on their social media was an interview the head coach, Julian Romanoff, had given where he stressed the importance of a family-type bond between his players.

Chris chuckled, showing an endearing gap in his front top teeth.

“Yeah, it’s something that we’re all proud of.

We get along like family, bicker like it too.

Shoulda seen Gio and Emmy going at it last week after Gio accidentally ate some cake Emmy was saving.

You’d think Gio slept with Emmy’s girl. Then, five minutes later, the two were making plans to go out that same night.

” Chris glanced at his watch. “Shit, speaking of plans. Gotta run and meet my girlfriend, but keep your schedule clear for tomorrow evening. The team usually goes out to eat together every Tuesday after practice.”

“Sounds good, man.”

“Glad to have you, bud.” Chris gave me a squeeze on the shoulder before leaving the locker room.

I sat on the bench and let go of a breath I felt like I’d been holding since I stepped on the plane and left behind my disastrous life in Florida.

All I wanted to do was grab my phone, pull up my texts, and send a message to the first person on the list, telling him how good a day I’d just had.

How fucked was that? He’d broken up with me almost a month ago, and I still couldn’t get him out of my head.

It was as if the four years we’d been together had formed invisible manacles around my wrists and ankles, attached to a heavy weight I’d been dragging around ever since I heard those five fucked-up words: “I’ve fallen for someone else. ”

I hadn’t even known he was talking to anyone else. Our relationship had been a strictly closed one since the start, so to say I was fucking blindsided was an understatement.

And my dumb ass was still thinking about him.

Wishing things were different. Wondering what the hell I had done wrong this time.

What could I have done better? Was there a way to have prevented this?

Did I even want to prevent it? Looking back on those last couple of years, there were bright spots that made me hopeful, but they were surrounded by stressful fights and arguments that would last for weeks, leaving me in a constant state of anxiety.

It fucking sucked.

But at least for me, so did being alone.

I’d been lucky throughout my life. Tragedy seemed to avoid me.

I still had three of my grandparents, both my mom and dad, who loved me and supported me—even when I came out to them during a particularly unhinged family Christmas gathering, which also happened to be my fifteenth birthday—and I’d managed to create a career for myself playing a sport I truly loved.

I had good friends I could call on, though they were scattered around the globe by now.

Broken a couple of bones, fucked up a few teeth, dealt with a shitty case of depression in my early twenties, but none of that had been excruciating or traumatic.

None of it made me question if the universe had it out for me or not.

The universe had felt like my best friend for a long-ass time.

Yeah. Shit had been going great for me.

Then I met and fell in love with Ben, his dimples always on display from a toothy and handsome smile, even when he was holding a knife behind his back the entire time.

Even when he would lash out at me with his words.

Even when he’d cut down my confidence, when our arguments turned so toxic that the shit he’d tell me continued to ring through my skull like the hollow clanging of a distant bell.

A haunting sound that drowned out everything else.

All the praise and the positivity couldn’t make it past the shit he’d shout at me.

Fuck.

The trade couldn’t have come at a better time.

I was ready to start fresh, in a city I’d never been to, surrounded by a completely new cast of strangers I could lose myself in.

I had friends and family I was leaving behind, but they all understood my need for the move.

My mood and motivation had taken a dive into the deep end after the breakup.

They supported this, like they had supported every other decision I’d made in my life.

I sucked in a deep breath. The silence of an empty locker room was almost meditative for me. A stark contrast to the brotherly chaos and shit-talking that echoed up and down the black and light blue lockers a little less than an hour ago.

“I’ve got this,” I said to myself, a simple mantra that had carried me through quite a few life changes recently.

I didn’t need a relationship to be happy.

I didn’t need someone to hold my hand, or to cuddle with me in bed, or to talk game with after a difficult practice.

I had to be okay being independent because all men were fucking dogs, and I didn’t need to be chasing after one.

It didn’t matter that I had genuinely thought I was going to be married and live that white-picket-fence-type life that had called to me since I was a kid.

I was so obsessed with that idea that I ignored all the blatant red flags.

I continued to fall into a cycle that would only serve to hurt me.

That stupid-ass fantasy was exactly that: a fantasy. A farce. Maybe some people were able to find and keep that kind of life, and that was good for them, but I had to be okay with a different reality.

I zipped up my duffel bag, shut my locker, and decided it was time for me to head home.

The Bobcats Ice Arena was the team’s home arena, which was made obvious by all the bobcat logos that decorated the wide hallways.

The place was mostly empty except for a few maintenance workers and cleaners.

I said hi to all of them, introducing myself as the new player on the team.

I liked feeling like everyone was part of the roster, even if they never played on the ice.

The people who maintained and cared for this arena were just as important as the guys skating around in it.

I zipped up my coat and stepped out into the fresh night air. The sting of a cold late October night bit at my cheeks. Being a hockey player meant I thrived in cooler temperatures, so the shift from Florida weather to Vermont weather didn’t bother me one bit.

My car was parked toward the end of the lot, next to a bank of trees that marked the beginning of a pretty dense forest.

That was another difference between Vermont and Florida: the foliage here made me feel like I’d traveled all the way to Jurassic Park.

I unlocked the car, opened the trunk, and tossed my bag inside. There were an extra pair of blades and sticks in there as well. I made sure they were tucked safely against the side before I slammed the trunk shut.

As I was getting into the driver’s seat, a rustle in the bushes caught my attention. I leaned halfway out of the car and stared into the shadows.

There it was again! Something big moved behind those bushes. There was a slight breeze, but nothing strong enough to rattle branches and leaves with that kind of strength.

Could it be a deer? Maybe a stray dog?

A serial killer who had a taste for freshly traded hockey players?

I didn’t like any of those options. Deer spooked me for some reason I couldn’t quite explain. I was more of a cat person than a dog person, and serial killers were just never my thing.

The rustling ceased. My curiosity shouted at me to get up and investigate, but my sanity kept my ass firmly planted in the leather seats.

I turned the car on and flipped the lights to high-beam mode.

The shadows turned even more severe as the bushes and trees in front of me became spotlit by the bright white light.

Nothing. There was nothing—and no one—there.

Thank fucking God.

I turned the car on and was about to flick off the high beams when, through a sliver of clearing in the bushes, I saw a pair of paw prints leading away from my car.

Huh. So it was a stray dog. Guess that was the better option out of the three. I decided I’d ask the team if anyone knew about it. Maybe it was lost.

I turned off my high beams, pulled out of my parking spot, and left the lot, not thinking much of it.