Page 4 of Sincerely, Pack Pucked
It was the first time I had seen him without a shirt. I had seen their hands and sometimes their feet in photos when they were showing me things in their lives, but this was the most they had ever revealed.
S
What do you think, Maple Leaf?
His nickname, combined with that photo, made me tingle in places it shouldn’t. Part of me wanted to answer, but thankfully, the café got busy, and I was pulled into work.
I still hadn’t cooled down by the time my shift ended.
I tossed my apron back into my locker, slamming it a little harder than I intended. Between dealing with Kyle’s incompetence and feeling all sorts of things over the photo S had sent me, I wasn’t in the best of moods.
We were online friends, that was it. He had no right to get me all riled up by showing off his impossible abs.
Then again, maybe it was my own fault for challenging him.
As I trudged out of the shop, not bothering to say goodbye to anyone, I did my best to ignore the growing unease under my skin. It was like an itch, but it was deep.
The campus was fairly large, but I didn’t mind the almost thirty-minute walk back to my dorm. I could have lived in one of the dorms closer to the center of campus, but they were expensive.
Avalon University was a good school, and its campus was stunning, with old buildings and pretty architecture combined with modern features. All around me, students were hurrying to their classes or talking among themselves. It was bustling but not overcrowded.
It only took ten minutes to get to the part of campus where the people started to thin out until I only saw someone every few minutes.
Usually, my walk was fairly easy, but sweat was starting to bead on my brow. My footsteps felt heavy and sluggish, as if I was wading through quicksand.
Was I coming down with something?
I paused, looking around, when the first cramp hit me like a wrecking ball, viciously tearing through my abdomen and making it crystal clear what was happening.
“Shit, shit,shit!” I hissed under my breath, bent over, clutching my stomach.
I was going into heat.
How? Usually, there was a schedule and, more importantly,warning signs.This had popped up out of nowhere.
Glancing around, I was relieved to find that there was no one nearby who had noticed my predicament. That was good. I typically sequestered myself in my dorm room so I could ride it out solo. Going into heat in the middle of a public place was a recipe for disaster because my scent and perfume would attract every alpha within ten miles.
The smell of an omega in heat was potent.
I needed to figure out where to go, and fast.
The part of campus I was in housed a lot of larger buildings, like the football training field and the ice rink.
There was no doubt I reeked; I could smell myself. It was like a maple syrup factory had exploded, filling the air. Mentally, I scrambled to find a solution. There was no way I could continue walking home like this.
Washing off my scent was the only solution—but how?
Chapter 2
Saint
There was nothing like spending time on the ice. It refreshed me, cleared my mind.
I had just finished a pretty strenuous solo rink session and was changing, slamming my locker shut as I threw on a T-shirt. Despite having access to the NHL rink and training area, sometimes the campus rink was easier and calmer. My shooting had been a little off recently, so I had decided to spend my afternoon quietly taking shot after shot here in an attempt to hone my skills before our next game. We were already halfway through the season, with it being late January, but there was always time to improve and work on my game.
Thankfully, it was a random afternoon, so there wasn’t anyone around and the locker rooms were dead. I tended to come when I knew there would be fewer people because I didn’t like the attention. I hated the termcelebrity, but as an NHL hockey player practicing at a university hockey rink, naturally I got recognized sometimes.
Checking my phone, I sighed at the lack of reply from a certain someone. I’d shown my impressive body to someone with no reply; it was a touch disheartening.
