Page 2 of Slick Handling

Our pack consists of three Alphas and one Beta.

There’s Griffin, who is the pack fuckboy and the Center of the line I’m Left Wing on. He’s been my best friend since Kindergarten when some kid tried to steal my lunch and Griff promptly pulled down his pants, and pissed on the kids leg.

He’s 6’2 and lies to every girl he meets and tells them he’s 6’4. I swear he gets the two inches from his hair that he obsesses over. Since he‘s loyal to a fault, I don’t call him out on it. Even if he is the short one.

The second Alpha of our pack is Apollo Mathers. He’s the lead Alpha and we go by his name for our pack name. He’s already graduated and plays defense for the Orion Otters, our city's professional hockey team.

We got lucky that he got drafted close, because he’s able to stay in our pack house instead of us having to commute further to school. He sort of paved the way for us to be noticed by a lot of scouts too.

At 6 '5 and 235 pounds, I’m fairly confident that no one is going to tell him no when he pulls the pack card when we announce our intentions for the draft. Some teams want to do backroom deals with players to go against league rules and change where people end up. Apollo would never want us all spread out. He believes in a pack being close and having each other to rely on.

McKinley and Griffin both already know that they want to go pro and be drafted. I do too, but I’m starting to get worried about not being good enough. Every game I play feels like another battle to make sure I’m noticed. Hockey has started being more about where I’m going to go and not about the game I once enjoyed playing.

Hopefully it’s just a phase.

“I need you guys to get your blood work then stick around to see who needs to get a rut blocker booster. The sooner we get this done the sooner you guys can leave.” He claps his hands again as we all start to form lines.

Ruts are common in sports with Alphas.

That rough and aggressive energy that fills us when we’re on the ice can trick our bodies. Most guys have one or two ruts a season, since Coach doesn’t want all of them blocked. He thinks it will mess with our bodies too much.

I’ve already been blocked twice this year.

The first time was during the summer camp we had been forced to go to for a few weeks at the start of June.

I was in a bad mood because my parents had started to talk about getting a divorce; which was stressful since I was supposed to be home with them enjoying my time off from school. They insisted that things were being worked out, but something wasn’t sitting right in my stomach. The fact my girlfriend had also started acting strange didn’t help things.

The second time was at the start of the season.

I had broken up with my long term girlfriend, Terry. My parents were going through with the divorce, after a summer that made things worse. Moving into a new house with my pack was supposed to be exciting but ended up stressing me out endlessly. It was as if everything that made me happy was all wrong.

Terry and I met Freshman year, at a mixer hosted for new student athletes. She played volleyball and was tall and gorgeous. Her brown hair and pretty silver eyes were stunning.

I thought she would be it for me, but the guys started talking about getting an Omega in a couple years. An Omega would be the center of our pack and calm down a lot of the stress that we carried. It also helped with the ruts; Omega’s going into heat could trigger a rut or at least help work out a lot of those hormones. Since we all played sports this would be a huge deal.

It made sense.

So, I went to Terry and talked to her about joining our pack. We would still be in our relationship, and if we chose, we could be in a relationship with an Omega too. McKinley even talked to her, he explained how Betas could balance out the pack with their even heads. Alphas and Omegas could be more crazy with their instincts. He painted her a picture that made it so Terry felt like she would be the bond holding everything together.

We were going to be happy.

Until she told me she was pregnant, and I knew it wasn’t mine. Every time we had been together I had worn a condom, and I never knotted her.

That’s when she let me know she had slept with my father.

So my emotions were a little out of whack at the start of the season and I had almost fallen into a rut.

Now, it was the start of October and I was feeling pretty balanced as they took my blood, and slid a sample into the machine. It would read my levels and then I could be on my way.

“Vaughn,” the team doctor looked at me and I frowned. “You’re going to go into rut in the next day. I recommend messaging your teachers for any course work and getting back home to make sure you’re in a place you feel comfortable.

A rut?

Again?

My ruts had never been this often. Maybe because I was getting laid regularly and now I was on a dry spell this was happening. But it had only been two months. How could this happen?

Coach squeezed my shoulder, nodding his head to get me moving along. He followed me back to the locker room as I gathered up my stuff in a daze.

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