Chapter 4 THE GHOST STYLE

The clothesroom was a place of refuge. It was odorous of wintergreen ointment and floor-wax, and the cozy odor of old equipment.

At least, it used to.

It was like a trap now, as I laced my skates in the far corner. I hunched my head, and even my fingers shook as I drew the laces tight into the skin of my ankles. The bathroom incident yesterday, the honey incident in the morning, was going round my head like a record.

I had sprayed neutralizer on my patches twice. I smelled like nothing. I stank of sterile air and nerves.

Bang.

The two doors flew open, striking the wall with such force as rattled the bench.

Damon Sterling walked in.

He was in his practice jersey, its white C of Captain embroidered in the breast. He was as dark and fierce and intent to ruin something as a storm cloud. But, passing the defensive line, heads turned.

A huge Alpha called Miller, who was one of the defensemen, sniffed the air. He grimaced, and he moved his nose.

Whoa," Miller said, and poked the man beside him. "Captain? You wearing perfume?"

I froze. My blood turned to ice.

Damon stopped dead. He glared at Miller. "Excuse me?"

You smell good, man, said Miller with a grin and wigging eyebrows. "Like... sugar. Were you up to have a girl in the suite this morning?

Some of the other Alphas laughed, that low, rumbling sound, which shook in their breasts. o-oh, the Captain has a sweet-heart.

I stopped breathing. I looked at my skates and wished the floor would open up and go the whole way through.

It wasn't a girl. It was me.

The steam from the bathroom. The dampness had swept away the slight remains of my stress perfume--my Omega smell--and stuck to the wet skin of Damon. He was pacing around in my fragrance as though it were his second skin, and he was not even aware of it.

Damon's face darkened. He sniffed his own shoulder. His face became distorted with confusion. He smelled it too. That pure lowly sweetness of wild honey.

A look around the room made all his faces search. And when his eyes settled upon me in the corner my heart audibly knocked my ribs together as in a fist.

Soap, soap," Damon growled, and his voice bit like glass. And when you start paying attention to my smell rather than the puck today, Miller, you are running round till you are sick. Get on the ice!"

He ranted away, slamming the heavy doors on his way out.

I gave a breath which I did not know I was holding. That was too close.

Practice was a nightmare.

Damon was in a foul mood. The mockery had gotten him in the skin. He skated more, struck more, and shouted more than ever. And, unfortunately, I was his favorite prey.

"Vance!" Damon bellowed out of the half- line. "You're lagging! Move your ass!"

I wasn't lagging. I was second in the line. But I didn't argue. I merely bent my head, and skated more, my edges cutting deep into the ice.

My legs were screaming because of the morning run, but I fought the pain. I had to. And whenever I slowed, Damon was watching me--evaluating, totting, inventing ways to have me down.

In one hour of fierce races Damon blew his whistle. The voice reverberated in the spacious arena as a shot.

He was at the blue line looking with cold predatory eyes at the team.

Damon declared: we have a problem.

The company assembled, breathing hard, steam bursting out of our shoulders.

We have a Striker, Damon said, and looked straight up at me, with eyes that were fixed on mine, and said, I can dance around contact. He believes that hockey is non-contact sport.

He pointed his stick at me. The blade was black and looked like a weapon.

"Vance. Front and center."

My stomach dropped. I made my way out to the middle of the ice. I was very small in the company of the great Alphas.

"You prefer not to get hits, eh, so we will see whether you can evade all of us, eh," Damon said and his voice dripped with contempt.

He resorted to other team members.

"The Gauntlet," Damon ordered.

The group shouted--a low, carnal noise. They scrambled to form in line in the length of the ice in two lines, and left a small, perilous passage between them.

It was a hazing drill. A suicide run. The task was easy: I needed to pass the puck to the other end of the ice with all the other players in the line attempting to check, trip, or run over me.

Lose the puck and you begin again, if you lose the puck, said Damon smiling cruelly. If you fall, you start over."

I looked down the gauntlet. It was a tunnel of pain.

"Scared?" Damon taunted.

I looked at him. I hated him. I despised his arrogance, his finances and how he could oppress me with the mere presence of him beside me.

"Blow the whistle," I said.

TWEEEEET!

I exploded off the line.

The two initial players swung the sticks. I squirreled and held the puck near my skates. I was expeditious--swifter than they all. My physique was less heavy and more aerodynamic. I moved ahead of the first two like smoke.

"Get him!" Damon screamed on the sidelines.

The following couple intervened. Miller jumped to my defence. He was a wall of muscle. There was no way around him.

So I went under him.

On the ice I had fallen on my knees and covered the puck with my body. Miller looked around at the vacant air where I had been a half an hour ago. I leaped back to my skates again without going slow.

"Whoa," someone muttered.

I was halfway through. My lungs burned. My legs shook.

At the head of the line was the last boss.

Damon.

He was not watching any more. He had entered the gauntlet. He was the last obstacle between me and my goal.

He didn't lunge. He waited. He crouched low, and with his arms open, and seemed like a bear that wanted to maul a deer.

I picked up speed. I couldn't go through him. He was the fatter by eighty pounds. He would snap my ribs, were he to clash with me head-long.

I had to use the "Ghost Style."

I faked left. Damon didn't bite. He leaned his body in a way that was about to squash me against boards. He had me trapped. There was nowhere to go.

My body took over the moment I was pure in panic. I didn't think; I just reacted.

I took my right skate and turned myself in a back-ward direction.

My spine assumed a C-shape that was impossible. It was a gesture of flowing grace--a hyper-flexibility which no hard-muscled Alpha had possessed. It was an Omega quality, a biological perfection that was meant to evade and survive.

I curled up like a reed in the wind. My chest was scratched by the shoulder of Damon who missed me by a millimeter.

There was a momentary slackness in time.

Damon's eyes went wide. He watched me bend. He perceived the unnaturality of my spine.

What the hell? his expression was screaming.

I slipped past him. I tossed the puck into the goal post.

"Yes!" I gasped.

But I was premature in my rejoicing.

Damon was not pleased by my getaway, an incident that was made more disorientating because of what he had just witnessed. His Alpha instincts wanted a blow. He flailed his stick in a frenzied manner. It wasn't a check; it was a slash.

CRACK.

My right lower ribs were struck by the composite stick.

"Gah!"

My air came wheezing out of my body. And I fell to the ice, with my side. I felt the pain as white-hot, and it burnt my chest. I rolled up like a ball, and made an attempt to breathe.

"Get up!" With towering height Damon shouted, and he was towering over me. "Don't lay there like a--"

Suddenly, Damon stopped.

He gasped.

His hand flew to his own chest. He took his right side--the same part that he struck me in.

He reeled back his colour draining out of his face. Down to his own ribs, he glanced down, and at me.

"What..." Damon whispered.

He rubbed his chest. There was no bruise on him. No one had touched him. But I could read the perplexity of his eyes. He felt it. He heard the ghostly repercussion of my anguish.

The Mate Bond.

It was low, and just a whisper, but it existed. As an Alpha hurts his Fated Mate, the connection punishes him. It shares the pain.

The arena was silent. I saw, and then lay gagging on the ice, endeavoring not to weep.

Damon stared at me. Anger was not there anymore, something different was there. Fear? Awe?

He shook himself, as though unclouding his mind. He skated over to me. I imagined that he would help me up a second. I imagined that he would apologize.

Instead, he leaned down. His voice shook, and could scarcely be heard above the noise of my painful breathing.

And that, he hissed, pointed at my back. "That bend. Where did you learn that?"

I coughed, tasting copper. "Yoga," I lied.

Damon didn't look convinced. He gazed at me as a stranger who was speaking a language that I was almost familiar with.

Go to the trainer, Damon said, and turned his back. He refused to look at me again. Still rubbing his chest he was winking. "Check your ribs. And Vance?"

I was standing on top of the ice with my side.

Never again, sir, do that, he said with a low menacing voice. "It looks... wrong."

He skated away to the locker room, and the practice was terminated twenty minutes prematurely.

I watched him go. My ribs were flaming, but my heart had been banging at a kind of other cause.

He had felt it. I saw it in his eyes.

The bond was waking up. And before I know what happens, it would not be only my secret that would be uncovered. It would be my soul.