Alex POV
I think Ivan is going to kill him.
The worst part is that I'm too powerless to stop it.
I'm lying on my back on the ice. It feels cold against my body despite the layer of my jersey. My head feels like it's been hit by a hammer. I can see the dome of the rink over my head, but I can't hear the roaring of the crowd and my teammates, even though I know they are there.
The only thing I can feel is pain. Just five minutes ago, my world flipped over literally as one of the attackers of the opposing team crashed into me, his shoulder digging hard into my chest, knocking the air out of me. I lost my balance and I flipped over, crashing hard against the ice.
The first thing I saw was Ivan's face. Ivan. My shadow. My bodyguard. My sin.
His strange hair is as white as frost. He keeps it short, shorter than my black one, but it's still thick enough to run my fingers through. The first thought I think is that he's beautiful. His eyes are as dark as onyx, so black that I can't even make out his irises. His face is a study in geometric perfection. Defined eyebrows, high cheekbones, a delicate clean-shaven jawline that would have looked at home on a female model.
His eyes find me, and they burn with rage.
He doesn't say anything. Doesn't help me up. I've known him for thirteen years, and he's always looked at me like I've angered him in some way that I can never hope to redeem. We never talk, as he doesn't talk to me now. It's how I know the terrible truth that he's going to kill the guy that hurt me.
The sounds return with a rush. I sit upright, touching the side of my helmet with a gloved hand. There's a headache building up there, but the good thing about being a wolf shifter from an alpha bloodline is that my healing is impeccable. The sharp pain in my chest dulls and soon disappears. I stand up, still feeling groggy.
The medics are stunned, of course. If anyone had fallen the way I did, they would be out of the game. I give them a tired smile. "I'm okay. … I can play, I can play. … No, I don't think he did it intentionally. Probably an honest mistake."
The lie rolls easily off my tongue, but I'm speaking to the wrong people. I can make Ivan on the other side of the rink, his face masked and unreadable. He's staring ahead, stoic as a mountain range. Dread grips my chest. He's looking at David, the guy who hit me.
Oh, no.
The referee blows the whistle. The game resumes.
I grip my stick in my hand, squeezing the wood in my grip. My eyes find the fast moving puck. I'm defense so I can't take my eyes off the puck for a second.
Ivan is attack. And he moves like a whirlwind.
I've never seen anyone move as gracefully as Ivan. He puts every hockey player I've watched to shame.
His eyes are closed, as if the world around him doesn't matter in the slightest. His knees are bent, his whole body tensed as if angling for a jump. His skates tear thin invisible lines in the ice, and Ivan moves like a god.
Every motion of his is fluid. It's like he's swimming through water. He moves faster and faster, gaining momentum until he's almost a blur, even to my enhanced eyes.
A shifter like myself has physical abilities beyond a human's, but I've seen Ivan train. I've seen him kill. His terrible grace is all his doing.
Ivan is moving so quickly that there's no hope of catching him. Attackers dive at him, but they're always a fraction too slow. It's as if Ivan sees them move before they actually do, and he's out of the way they can catch him.
David sees Ivan, and even from across the field, I see the fear register in his eyes. It's the fear a prey feels when he meets a terrible predator.
Ivan is hunting. Ivan is coming for him.
He doesn't run, which is to his credit. David is the arguably best attacker my school has seen for generations. He comes from a long line of elite hockey players. Even at a glance, he looks like he was built in a lab, bolstered by freak genetics, to play hockey. Wide, thick-set shoulders, legs the size of trunks, a tough looking face that has seen broken noses aplenty. David is the kind of person you don't want to piss off. He's destroyed more people on the rink than I can even count.
Ivan is his opposite. No one here knows that Ivan is the most dangerous person in all the packs, all the worlds perhaps. If David is a gun — loud, arrogant, and sloppy — Ivan is a dagger. A creature of death.
I see it happen before it actually plays out. The whole game, Ivan kept his terrible speed. He could have scored if he wanted, but every time he got the puck, he let it slip out of his hands. He's reached the other goalie several times since the game began, but he never took the shot. His eyes are still closed. He's taunting them. He's taunting David.
I can win if I want to, he seems to be saying. It's the biggest insult he can give them.
David makes the worst mistake in his entire life. My father always says that anger is the death of every fool, and in David's case, he's right. David bites the bait. He goes for Ivan, pushing his way to my bodyguard with the terrible inevitability of a boulder.
Ivan's eyes snap open. My heart almost tears out of my ribcage.
The two of them collide. The sound is sickening. Ivan's helmet drives into David's chin. I think I hear bone crack. Ivan is not done with his punishment. He buries his fist in David's gut, cracks his hockey stick against David's knee, and trips him.
David passes out before he even reaches the floor. Blood oozes out of his nose. He looks like he's dead, but his chest rises and falls. He's just unconscious.
Ivan peels off his helmet and tosses it on the floor. His eyes find me across the rink. I feel his anger. I feel his rage.
Ivan takes one look at me then at David.
Then he walks off the rink.