Page 67 of Knot So Perfect Omega

CHAPTERTWENTY-FIVE

Kane

Iwas in this surreal sort of headspace as we sat in the locker room, waiting for our time to go warm up in the training facility.

Kayla wasn’t answering our calls and texts, and we were on edge. She might have been taking a nap, but that didn’t explain why her phone went straight to voicemail—unless she’d turned it off.

We’d started our day with a delicious spread for breakfast with Kayla then headed to the stadium for a practice and debrief on the schedule for the day. After that, we’d showered and done several interviews, including a segment for one of the sports broadcasts on how Alphaball is played. One would think doing anything before a game would leave us tired, but it only amped us up more for our games.

Brian had been surprisingly quiet since arriving shortly after us. Maybe he’d finally realized his time with us was over. We didn’t make the decision lightly since we’d have to find a new manager and coach.

“I’m going to check the cameras,” Beck muttered from across from me.

We had several cameras around our property, but none in the house. That might need to change if Kayla was going to be staying there by herself often. If she’d let us. The reason we didn’t have any inside in the first place was because we weren’t confident that they wouldn’t be hacked.

“We’re up on the practice field and then will be going straight out into the stadium for the National Anthem.” Brian didn’t look up from his phone he’d been texting away on for the last several minutes.

The four of us stood from where we were lounging around in our small locker room. We had on special edition all royal blue uniforms with our signature pack of gnomes with butcher knives in hands screen printed on the front and last names on the back. The blood-red cleats had our gnome printed on the side with a printed signature. The look would be launching on our Alpha Fit website at the start of the first game.

It had been Rio’s idea to do an exclusive limited run of our championship uniform, and our website tech team was already anticipating a sell-out within minutes of going live.

I grabbed my cell phone and followed my pack out of the locker room, texting Kayla that I couldn’t wait to see her later.

“Did we leave the gate open?” Beck fell into step beside me. “I could have sworn I waited for it to be shut. Am I losing my mind?”

“No, I’m pretty sure you shut it because in my head I was thinking about what a lunatic you were for blocking the car that pulled up behind us while it shut.” I grabbed his phone as we walked down the corridor. “Let me back it up. We left at what? Nine?”

We made it to the practice area and Brian nearly clotheslined me as we filed in through the door. “Put the phone away.”

“Dude. What the actual fuck? I am a grown-ass man.” I rarely lost my temper, but I was about to. I shoved past him and backed the camera footage up to nine when we left.

“We are less than thirty minutes away from game time now. I need you four to focus. Surely your omega is fine.”

“Weren’t you the one who pushed for us to have an omega?” Rylan snapped, setting his phone down on a bench and taking off down the half-field doing high knees.

“The gate was definitely shut.” I put the feed on a slow fast forward.

“Here, I’ll watch the damn thing and you go get warmed up.” Brian held out his hand for Beck’s phone.

“It’s on three times the speed.” I handed him the phone and put mine on the bench next to Rio’s and Rylan’s.

I took off across the field, running through the quick agility drills we did before every game and then grabbed a weighted ball to toss back and forth with Beck to warm up our arms.

“How the hell are we going to focus if we’re worried about Kayla? We should have just brought her with us and kept her next to us the whole time,” Rio said from next to me where he was tossing a ball with Rylan.

“Like we’d be able to focus with her here. We’d be looking for her every second. She’s probably just taking a nap or something.” If we thought things were bad now with us worrying, when we bonded it was going to be crazy.

“She said she was going to watch us so she should be texting or calling us back soon.” Rio caught the ball and didn’t throw it again. “I think I’m good with my warm-up since our first game will be like playing for fun.”

“You can say that again.” Beck jogged in with our ball and we walked as a pack over to the benches where Brian was to grab our phones. “Anything on the camera?”

“No. It seems to have opened by itself. Probably needs to be checked by a technician.” Brian handed Beck his phone back. “All ready to win this thing?”

“Do you even have to ask?” Rylan walked to the door leading back to the main corridor of the stadium. “Let’s roll some heads!”

We all shouted in agreement and my excitement started to grow. I was stronger, faster, and had more energy than I had in months. There was no way we were giving up the win.

Outside of the practice room, the rest of our team was waiting for us, including our team doctor in case one of us was injured, our publicist, and a photographer. Waiting on the field for us were a few teenagers we’d met at the foodbank when volunteering, who would be giving us water and our towels when we needed them.

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