45. Riley
Riley
Ifiled into the gym behind Simon and his friends. After a sleepless night where my brain refused to quit showing me harrowing images of Lorna chained to a dungeon wall, I wasn’t in the mood for our afternoon PT class.
To my surprise, Leone, the lion shifter instructor, had returned. He stood wearing a stony expression, his arms folded across his very fine chest. Was he sad to be back on campus? It sure looked like it.
I wondered whether he’d want to restart my personal training lessons, and then I decided it would be better if he never mentioned them again. I still hadn’t recovered from the trauma of the last one.
“Leone looks majorly grumpy,” a raccoon shifter muttered nearby. “I hope he doesn’t have us running laps around the playing field again.”
I hoped not too. My head throbbed from not enough sleep, and I’d rolled my ankle on the assault course two days previously. Because shifting wasn’t an option, I had no choice but to rely on a stupid support bandage.
“Silence!” The lion glared, emitting serious pissed-off vibes. “Get outside and start running laps. Five laps each.”
“Fuck my life,” a snake shifter groaned.
I agreed but quickly joined the others heading outside.
It started raining toward the end of my first lap, and after three laps, a light rain shower turned into a torrential downpour.
I took it easy and finished mid-pack, my ankle aching but not enough to cause a limp. Simon was one of the last finishers. He and his friends looked miserable as they staggered over the finish line while the bigger shifters whooped and bayed.
“Settle down!” the lion yelled as he stomped over, shirtless despite the shitty weather.
Like all large mammalian shifters, he didn’t seem to feel the cold.
The cold didn’t normally bother me, but after running laps, my damp clothes clung uncomfortably to my sweaty skin. I’d have killed for a hot shower.
“Today we’re going to play dodgeball. The usual rules apply.”
I had no clue what the rules were and didn’t want to draw attention to myself by asking. If it was anything like human dodgeball, which I’d played in high school, I’d be fine.
Leone split us into two teams, with Simon and me on the same team, much to our captain’s disgust. It was obvious he considered us the weakest links. Well, more fool him. I was fast, and I had a good throwing arm.
“Keep it clean. I don’t want to see any dangerous tackles or excessive use of strength. Anyone who shifts gets disqualified and will run laps after the class ends. Are we clear?”
“Yes, sir,” both teams muttered, although I caught two of the asshole wolf shifters smirking at me and Simon. No doubt they’d bend the rules when Leone wasn’t watching.
“I hate dodgeball,” Simon whispered as Leone picked up a heavy leather ball and threw it onto the pitch. The whistle blew, and the game began.
Our captain leaped higher than his counterpart, capturing the ball in his meaty fists. He threw it at a small reptile shifter on the opposite team, knocking them to the floor.
“You’re out!” The guy shook his head and crawled off the pitch.
Fifteen minutes later, we had five players left, including me, and the other team had four. It had quickly become apparent that I was the main target for the other team, much to my team’s delight.
I dodged and weaved, narrowly avoiding the ball as the opposition launched it at me every time they got possession.
“Hybrid scum,” a wolf shifter hissed as the ball he threw sailed over my head and bounced off the grass. A tiger shifter on my team snatched it up and ran past me, checking me hard enough to send me sprawling into the mud.
“Hey! I’m on your team, asshole!” I yelled, but he ignored me.
Leone hadn’t noticed; he was too busy talking to a small feline shifter with a bloody head wound.
I dragged myself up and waited to see where the ball ended up. In the distance, a runner appeared through the trees. He paused and then changed direction, heading this way before stopping to watch the game.
By now, it was raining so hard I could barely see two feet in front of me. I wondered why on earth anyone would choose to be outside, let alone waste their time observing the world’s dumbest dodgeball match.
Losing focus proved a big mistake. The minute I stopped staring at the tall guy standing like a statue in the distance, I realized the asshole wolf shifter who’d spent most of the match trying to bash my brains in with the ball was currently barreling toward me.
When I turned to sprint away, I lost my footing in the sticky mud. The wolf shifter threw the ball at me, but his aim was so poor it missed again. I couldn’t resist laughing at his furious scowl as I scrambled after the ball.
Unfortunately for him, he was both slow and wide, which meant I had no problem hitting him as intended—right in the nuts.
“Loser!” I yelled with a whoop when he dropped to his knees with a pained grunt. His teammate picked up the ball and threw it back at me, but I ducked again while taunting them both.
Which was a mistake, I soon realized. Two enraged male shifters thundered toward me. In trying to evade them, my weak ankle gave way, and I fell just as the two wolves piled into me.
Neither of them reacted to my agonized shriek. A fist slammed into my side. I heard something crack a fraction of a second later before one of my lungs quit functioning.
“Get off me,” I tried to say, except nothing but a wheeze came out because I was slowly suffocating under the combined weight of two bulky wolf shifters.
Fuck, was this shitty field where a reaper came to collect my soul?
I sure as hell hoped not. It would be a highly undignified end to my pathetic life. Squashed to death by a pair of buffoons.
My ears rang as blows rained down on my head and torso, each one hard enough to break bones. Just as I was about to pass out, a distant roar caused both shifters to lift their heads and put the brakes on their attack.
“Fuck,” one grunted shortly before something grabbed his shirt and tossed him several hundred feet away. The second shifter had barely enough time to roll off my broken body before a gigantic wolf clamped its jaws around his neck and shook him like a chew toy.
I winced at the awful screams while praying I wasn’t next because I definitely wouldn’t survive that level of ferocity.
“Scott!” The lion shifter’s panicked voice broke through the nightmare where I ended up wolf chow. “Tell me what hurts!”
“Everything?” I croaked. No lie. I had at least one broken rib and possibly a concussion. It was hard to tell at this point. Hopefully, the feline females had excellent makeup skills because it was going to take some serious concealer to hide these bruises.
Another ferocious roar nearly deafened me, but the lion ignored it.
“You need to see the healer, Scott.” He touched my ribs, provoking a pained grimace. And also a rush of heat in my core because, shamefully, serious injury did nothing to cool my libido.
Thank the goddess for all the mud plastering my lower body, or the lion would detect my, ahem, interest.
“I’m going to lift you,” he told me in a surprisingly gentle voice. “It might hurt.”
Only when he moved to scoop me up the massive wolf snarled in his face, making it clear he didn’t want the lion touching me.
“Shift back now!” the alpha lion commanded. The air pulsed with alpha dominance, but the wolf remained a wolf. The two alphas stared at each other, both snarling, one in their beast form and the other still human.
I gulped. Fuck, was I about to become a victim of an alpha beast tug of war?
That sounded even less fun than being a wolf’s chew toy.
Ignoring the pain from my broken rib, I lifted my head to make eye contact with the wolf. My she-wolf insisted he wouldn’t hurt us. She seemed to think he was ours and he’d intervened to protect us. She said the same about the lion, but I didn’t believe that either.
However, since the wolf hadn’t tried eating me yet, I took a gamble and addressed him directly. The lion was correct. I needed to see the healer before my lung collapsed, or worse, I suffered a fatal brain bleed. Neither sounded fun.
“Hey, wolfie,” I gritted out. The beast stopped snarling at the lion shifter and turned its golden eyes toward me. “Can you back off so Simba here can take me to the healer? Pretty please?”
The wolf cocked his head to one side as if he were actually considering my request. Then, to my surprise, he shoved past the lion shifter and nuzzled me, huffing loudly.
A cold, wet nose sniffed my neck. It tickled, and I couldn’t stop myself from giggling.
The wolf chuffed and licked me before backing off.
With a crack of bones, he shifted back into a male.
A large, very handsome, and very naked male.
“I’ll deal with you later,” Leone snapped before turning his back on the male, who growled threateningly in response.
“Be a good boy,” I warned the wolf shifter male, who instantly stopped growling.
Two large hands carefully lifted me from the ground. I wanted to thank the wolf for saving me, but the pain from being moved was so intense everything went dark before a single word passed my lips.