My Hockey Alpha novel Chapter 418

Enzo

The gates rattled upward just as the silver ropes were cut from my hands and neck. Moments later, as I stumbled out into the dusty arena to battle one of my closest friends to please some bloodthirsty warrior queen, I felt my wolf begin to return to his usual strength.

“We should kill them,” my wolf growled, bristling from days of being caged in silver. “Kill them all. Especially that bitch queen.”

“I know you want to,” I replied. “But we have to go through with this first. It’s the only way for any of us to get out of here.”

“And put our friend in danger? For what? The Dragon ‘queen’ didn’t even make any promises.”

I narrowed my eyes as I peered up at the jeering crowd. “Neither did I,” I replied inwardly, raising my hands in a placating gesture. “I only said I would win the fight. I didn’t say I would kill him.”

My wolf snorted in excitement. Across the arena, the other gate raised; Luke stepped out a moment later, rubbing his wrists and looking a bit bewildered but determined nonetheless.

Our eyes met, and in that moment, I channeled all of my energy toward him in a singular gaze, as if to say, “Follow my lead.”

I knew that Luke understood, because he nodded almost imperceptibly. It was time for our plan to come to fruition. I just hoped that the so-called ‘queen’ was as gullible as I expected her to be.

With that, I shifted into my massive dark wolf form, my hackles raised and my lips curled to expose my deadly white fangs. The crowd cheered, stamping their feet on the stands. Drums pounded, shouts became deafening in the impossibly high ceilings.

Across the arena, Luke braced himself, blue sparks already dancing between his fingers.

I lunged again, snapping my jaws barely even half an inch from his torso. He jumped back, peppering my shoulders with stinging jolts. 1

Roars swelled from the frenzied onlookers above. I could hear them chanting and writhing, like a mass of flesh and fur and feathers; some of them in their human forms, some not. All of them mad and full of a lust for bloodshed.

We circled each other, Luke blasting out rapid shots from his fingers while I evaded and darted in to parry him with my fangs and claws. I managed to rake my claws across his chest, leaving deep gashes in his skin. He didn’t bleed, of course; but Mila didn’t need to know that. I caught my own leg in the frenzy, allowing blood to splatter across his skin.

There, that would look believable from afar, and that was all that mattered. Now, they wouldn’t know whose blood was whose.