When vengeance strikes in the form of a bullet out for the princess's blood, Princess Aleia VonAuclair must flee the heart of her country in order to protect the people she loves and take back the pieces of her soul she'd lost to the girl she once l...
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The first game of the season took place at home base on a wintery, Friday evening. Cara, Lily and I held up court at the front of the stadium, second row from the rink as per usual by Bryan and the entire security team.
I could already spot Sam, another guard on Bryan's team, three rows up, where he sat between a group of squealing girls clad in blue jerseys and a hustle of volunteers manning the food baskets on the staircase. Cara insisted I wear one of the guy's jerseys, but since I didn't have one of those and the boys had been too busy prepping ahead of their first game for me to ask, I'd decided on stealing one of Nate's extra jerseys instead.
"How long until this thing starts?" I asked, munching on a bag of chocolate chip cookies.
"Not long. Usually they wait for both teams to be ready before they introduce them to the crowd," Cara said from where she sat beside me, clad in Luke's jersey.
A raucous commotion of noise exploded through the stadium and not a second later, the emcees of the event bellowed into their mics, their voices flagging the start of the game as they riled up the already hyped crowd.
When Lily had broached the subject of the game a couple days ago, they'd fully expected me to decline their offer and stay home. In fact, they even insisted if I didn't feel comfortable with it.
But following the recent events of the letters, then the discovery of Edrian and possibly the rest of them being agents for Matt's agency, I'd needed something mundane - something normal for me to distract myself from the other parts of my life that were far from normal.
And this was it. A college varsity hockey game I barely understood but was willing to enjoy.
The stadium couldn't have been more packed than it already was and while that still made the nerves in my stomach twist into angry knots, they'd loosened a little bit since the last time I'd been in this exact spot.
The throng of people on both sides of the arena rivaled that of the pep rally, their cheers and whoops swarming with a buzzing electricity in high anticipation of the night's kickoff game.
"And now- welcome to the ice, State Side University's very own players. The bold, the brave - The Beagles!"
An uproar of cheers rounded from the other side of the arena, their mass of bodies swathed in colours of oranges, whites and black. The roar only soared higher though, when The Beagles' players emerged on the ice from their tunnel, circling and pumping their fists through the air.
An orange rubber band sat idle on my wrist - a coping mechanism. Whenever and if I ever felt the pricklings of an oncoming panic attack, I'd snap it against my wrist. I snapped it.
"Oh, there they are! I see them," Lily said, nudging me with her knee.
I leaned forward in my seat and spotted a wrangle of helmets and blue jerseys toeing the edge of the home tunnel, waiting for their turn to get in the rink. One of them, in particular, had his head angled down to the ground, mentally zoning in, lasering in on the game and his words from the family picnic day at the park rang through my mind.
