3. Orso
Orso
“Watch it!” my left wing, Tanner, yells, but it’s too late.
Two hundred pounds of pure alpha slams into my right, hurling me across the ice and driving me straight into the barrier, but not without me firing the puck to Tanner first.
By the time the familiar low wobble and rattle of the plastic shakes in my ears, Tanner is away, and I grab the Thorny Beast’s player to stop him from skating off.
“Fucker,” the Beast snarls as he throws his elbow back, getting me in the ribs. I should have fought, thrown a punch, kicked off the barrier, and hit him with my stick, but the faintest scent wafts in the air around me, and I’m suddenly distracted.
I’ve been smelling it since the game started, and I keep skating around the perimeter, trying to find it. I can’t tell if it’s another player or up in the crowd, but it’s close enough that hints of it brush me as I clear the rink.
I asked my mates Mathan and Artie, the Bears’ goalies, during the first period break if they had scented it, too, but neither of them had noticed a thing.
Through the chaos of sweat and ice that crowds my senses whenever I play, I might have just been imagining things. But the sweetest trace of sticky honey tickles my nostrils and sends a lightning bolt through my body.
And that’s when the asshole Beast gets me as he kicks my skates out from under me, and I fall to the ice.
“Fuck you!” I hiss as I go down, and the back of my head cracks off the ice.
The second pain explodes through my neck, I know it’s bad.
My lids fly open, but I can’t see shit, and a high-pitched whine rings through my head as agony takes over.
“Hey,” the Beast says with concern. “Hey, get the fuck up. Stop messing around.”
I look up at him, but his outline fades along with the white light of the rink, and panic tears through me.
Mathan nags me about wearing a helmet when I play, but I never bother because I prefer feeling the wind in my hair as I speed down the ice. Plus, helmets are sweaty as fuck.
“Orso! Hey, Orso!”
As I hear my mate’s voice, I frown. “Mathan? What are you doing?” I slur. He shouldn’t be anywhere near the center of the rink. His Scottish accent only shines through when he’s excited, horny, angry, or panicked, and it’s definitely not the first two.
“Yeah, I’m right here, Orso,” he says, his voice cracking. I can hear more people shouting around him. I need to make sure he’s okay. Panic blasts through the bond like a siren, but Mathan loses his shit whenever his mates get even a tiny bit hurt, so it’s hard to tell how serious it is.
I can barely raise my arm to reach out to him, but there are hands poking and prodding me from all angles, and I swear they are moving me. Everything is going too fast, and my brain is working too slowly, but I’m pretty sure they’ve put me on a stretcher already.
“You got to get back in the net,” I choke out.
“Yeah, yeah, I will. I promise. We just need to make sure you’re okay.” Mathan presses his hand against my shoulder, his wildflower scent breezing around me, relaxing me like it always does. It reminds me why I got distracted in the first place.
“I’ll be fine. You just have to find them…” I trail off.
“What? Who?”
“The honey…” I cough. “Something’s…”
“Orso, you’ve knocked your head; just stay still,” he gasps, his hand shaking. His panic thickens, clenching my heart, and I reach for Artie through the bond.
“No, keep him talking; he needs to stay awake,” someone else says.
I groan, nausea flooding me.
“Mathan! Get back here!” The coach’s voice echoes around the rink. “We’ve still got ten minutes left.”
Mathan won’t budge. Because, of course, he won’t.
His mates are always his priority, no matter how close we are to winning the lower leagues.
We just needed this win, and we’d climb up the rankings for the drafts next year.
Better players meant higher scores, and our small-town team might even make it to the playoffs.
“I’ll be okay. Go win for us.” My words slur as I push them out.
“You fucking better,” he growls before his presence fades in our bond as he skates away. But his fear still roars through me. I can’t tell if it’s mine, Artie’s, or his dominating the bond.
The ground wobbles under me as they lift me. My thoughts are as blurred as my vision, and all I want is another waft of honey.
There’s a slam as the doors fly open, and they move me off the ice. I’m vaguely aware of someone jumping over the railing to land right next to me.
“Give me the situation.” A sharp female voice suddenly cuts through the haze.
“We can take it from here, ma’am.”
“I specialize in neuroscience. It won’t do him any harm if I take a look while you wait for the ambulance.”
Before I know it, that sweet honey sweeps around me, and my body lights up again.
“It’s you…” I whisper. I reach up a numb hand as if I can grab her luscious scent.
She’s so sticky and rich and thick on my tongue. I need to scent her properly, to put my lips against her skin, and show her her alpha is here.
I fucking despise anyone coming near our pack like this.
Mathan and I were together for five years before we met Artie, and I fought to the bitter end to make sure he wouldn’t interfere.
He was only twenty, and his excitable energy clashed with ours.
But Mathan likes to say that opposites attract.
But I couldn’t deny my feelings for him, and after so much struggling inside myself, he became the center of my world, along with Mathan.
But I point-blank refused to expand our pack after that.
I’ve told them repeatedly that, no matter how much Artie wants an omega, we’ll never be more than three.
But my head is fucked, and my logic and reason have been kicked out of the window when an omega who smells like heaven leans over me.
I want my alpha side to step back and stop calling for her, but I know what’s happening. I can fucking feel it from a mile off.
I need to shake my head to get my eyes to focus, but all I can see are golden locks of hair as she works around me.
Four loud rips punctuate the white noise, and cold hits my chest as she tears the Velcro strips of my padding.
“Getting into it already?” I try to smirk, but it hurts too much.
My eyelids are so heavy that I can’t keep them open to gaze at my omega. I groan as soft, cold fingertips run over my collarbones and trace the lines of my neck. The moment she touches the back of my skull, I jolt, agony ricocheting through my body.
“Oh, that’s not good,” I murmur.
“Tell me where it hurts, Mr. Williams,” she says, her voice cool and her words clipped. I’ll probably get arrested if I push her hand against my cock, straining under my jockstrap, and ask her to examine me there.
She keeps prodding my neck, and I might be exaggerating my moans just so she could hear how it would sound if we were in a different position.
I regret telling Mathan to go back and play, so I tug at my mates through the bond because they need to get the fuck over here.
But they won’t be allowed to move until the game is over, and I’ll be gone by then.
They’re already carrying me outside, and I can hear a siren in the distance.
They always keep one ambulance on standby just in case.
If anyone needs to see her, it’s Artie. His freshly cut grass would blend perfectly with her honey.
We sit out in the parking lot, waiting for the ambulance, and she’s still fondling my neck.
“You’re too hard,” she tuts, igniting me in a wash of need and honey as her thumbs crease my throat. “How am I meant to treat you under all this muscle?”
I wince as she pokes at me like I’m a mannequin.
“Say it again,” I demand. “Tell me how hard I am for you,” I chuckle, clutching her sleeve.
“Mr. Williams, I need you to focus,” she snaps through my hazy thoughts, but she’s not fooling me. I know she can feel it too.
Her lovely fingers leave my neck, sweeping behind my ear like she’s marking me. What do I need to do to make her explore me further?
Her left wrist hovers over my mouth, and I want to lean in and taste her skin, but as my lips brush soft honey, her fingers nudge something at the back of my head.
Sharp pain fires through me, and my whole body jerks. I yell out, my head shooting forward, and pure horror tears through me as my teeth connect with flesh.
She gasps, whimpers, and whines as my tongue presses over her skin. My teeth are buried in her before I can stop it.
There’s a second of pure silence and shock before it explodes. Her presence soars through me, and I pour into her as moans drop from us both. The bond hits us so furiously that she falls, her hand slamming next to my ear on the rickety stretcher as her chest thuds against mine.
She rips her arm away just as I open my mouth, but it’s too late. Pure fucking pleasure bursts inside me, and we both moan again. Her face is over mine, and I clasp her arm to stop her from pulling away.
She trembles under my grip, and her presence floods our bond.
Like when I first bit Mathan and Artie, I can feel her heart beating inside me, joining us, connecting us so strongly that if I sink into it any deeper, we’ll permanently mate.
And fear barrels into me, because I can’t let it happen. I won’t let anyone else in. I’ve seen firsthand what new scent matches can do to a pack because my mom matched with another alpha when I was eight, and it tore her and my four dads apart. I refuse to do it now when my pack is stable.
And the moment I decide to reject the bond, as soon as I start to break the cord that connects us, she slashes through it from her end.
It’s so rough and sudden that it’s like ice pouring into my veins. I choke, gasping, wheezing as she vanishes, leaving me drained and hollow.
The pleasure that rushed between us shatters, and her honey fades as she pushes herself up and steps back.
“The ambulance is here,” she says, her voice empty. The soft moans and whimpers she gave me are gone.
Fear swarms through me because I’d almost made a horrible mistake, but there’s still a bolt of outrage. She rejected the bond first, and I need to know the fuck why. Even though I’ll never want an omega, why the hell aren’t we good enough for her? And why doesn’t she ask me the same thing?
“My mates,” I groan, stunned by how powerful our bond had been, even in those few seconds, and how lifeless I feel without it. “You have to meet my mates.” They must have sensed what just happened, even in the middle of the game.
No matter how much I don’t want an omega, my mates deserve to be here. It’s a pack decision, but she’s already made the choice for us.
“Mr. Williams, please release me.” She sounds fiercer than an Alaskan storm, and it turns me on even more. “The EMTs need to take you away.”
I can hear them talking around me as they start to move the stretcher, but I can’t let her go.
“Mr. Williams,” she presses, a growl in the back of her throat.
“Your voice is so sexy,” I sigh, just as she rips her sleeve from my grasp.
“Wait!” I shout, struggling to sit up as the ambulance crew pulls me away. “Tell me your name!”
But the ambulance’s siren drowns out my words. It doesn’t matter how hard I listen; the only noise around me is the voices of the EMTs as the doors close behind me, and the rumbling engine as they drive me away.