6
Chapter 6 Chase
“Whoa,”I muttered as I fiddled with the pendant that remained around my neck no matter what I was doing. “This is wild.”
“Huh,” the guy next to me declared. “You can say that again.”
I turned to look at him, wondering who he was. He’d been standing at the bar before Drew and his father swept into the room, changing the atmosphere of the place completely. I’d decided to head to the bar myself because the tension was unnecessary and I needed a drink to take the edge off. Unfortunately, I wasn’t about to get one because the Bear King was here now, and we were all expected to focus on him, to see what he had to say.
“Chase.” I offered the guy a smile and my hand for him to shake.
“Oh, I’m Hatcher.” He grinned right back. “Good to meet you, Chase.”
Mobius, with Azariyah on his arm, swept past, silencing us. There was almost a gasp from the room as she stunned everyone with her beauty. Azariyah always had that effect on people, and not just because she was the king’s daughter—she really did have good looks going for her. I’d shared a few classes with her in college, but she’d hidden who she was there, dressing down and trying to blend in. But she couldn’t keep herself hidden for long because she was too beautiful. Guys adored her whether she wanted them to or not, and it was soon well known that she was the princess. As much as I could appreciate her good looks, though, she didn’t do it for me. I wasn’t attracted to her in the way I wanted to be with anyone I was pursuing. Anyone I wanted to be married to for the rest of my freaking life.
Attraction doesn’t matter.I could almost hear my mother hissing this in my ear, warning me not to screw things up. Think of the clan…
I’d had it drummed into me my entire life. The Bear King, Mobius, was a Virgo, and our clan was very proud that we were the ones with the power at the moment. No one wanted that to be taken away from us, which, of course, put horrible pressure on my shoulders to focus on wanting Azariyah even if I didn’t want to. That wasn’t helped by the entry positions of us Virgos. Cody was in twenty-sixth place, last place, and I was in twenty-first place, but because I was the alpha’s son, the pressure was on me. All the Virgos wanted me to be the future king, so that was my aim. No, not my aim. It was the aim put on my shoulders.
“Welcome, Astro Games players,” Bear King Mobius announced. “It is very good to see you all. This is a very exciting event for all of us…”
As the speech rolled on, I cocked my head to one side and examined Mobius, wondering how exciting this really was for him. Was he thrilled, or more concerned? Someone marrying his daughter put his place on the throne at risk. Was Mobius done with his reign of power and looking forward to someone else taking over? Did he hate being king? Was this all unnerving for him? I couldn’t picture myself in his position, which was probably because I didn’t really want it. If I was made Bear King, I was sure I would be looking forward to hanging up my robe and getting back to normal, however long it took. Not that I would ever share that with anyone else. I couldn’t even imagine how my mother and father would take it.
“So, thank you.” All of a sudden, I realized I’d barely listened to any of Mobius’s speech. I was too busy worrying about what the hell was going on in Mobius’s head. “I am so happy to have you all here with me, and that we can have such a wonderful night together. Please, take this time to get to know one another better before we get down to business. Soon enough, I will go over the rules of the game for you all, but for now let’s drink and be merry.”
Azariyah remained up on the stage, sitting on her throne, as Mobius descended the stage stairs to the cheers of his loyal subjects and headed over to where Drew was standing with his father. Excitement blossomed in the pit of my stomach as I wondered if this was it, the moment I was looking forward to ever since I saw Sly walk through those doors. Was the king about to kick him out? I had no idea how that would turn out, but I had to admit I was excited. Hatcher stiffened beside me, waiting just as expectantly as I was.
But nothing happened. Much to my crushing disappointment, the king seemed to engage Sly in a friendly conversation where they actually laughed together. What was he doing? No one else had their parents here. Why was Mobius allowing the anarchists to get away with whatever they wanted? That didn’t seem fair to me, and I was pretty sure I wasn’t the only person feeling that way. I turned around to the bartender and finally ordered myself a drink.
Before I could even press the glass to my lips, my bear began to stir. I looked off to the left without consciously thinking about it. Not that I minded. My instincts had gotten me this far in life, I certainly wasn’t about to start fighting them now. And rightfully so, because my gaze instinctively settled on the beautiful blonde I’d caught a glimpse of earlier when she was just about the only person brave enough to make her way to Sly. I didn’t pay much attention then because I didn’t get a chance to see her face, but now her sparkling blue eyes had captivated me, and I was awestruck. My heart practically skipped a beat at the sight of her. This wasn’t supposed to be happening. Virginia and I hadn’t been split up long enough for me to consider anyone else. But then, I’d never felt this lightning bolt with anyone before, not even with Virginia, so maybe that meant something…
“Oh my God.” Was that Ben? I knew Ben well; he was in the Virgo clan with me and we’d grown up together. I knew he did something in the media these days, but I hadn’t ever seen what he was up to. Did he work with this smoking hot blonde? My instincts were screaming at me to learn more about her, and Ben was my way in. “Ben, hey, Ben.”
I left the bar behind me and headed over to Ben with my pulse pounding in my ears. Nerves zig zagged through me with excitement. I wasn’t even really thinking about what I was doing, just that I absolutely needed to do this.
“Ben.” I rested my hand on his shoulder, and my friend turned to smile at me. “Buddy, it’s good to see you.”
“Oh my God, Chase.” He embraced me hard. “It’s great to see you too. I was so glad to see you on the roster. You’re gonna kick some ass at these games, right?”
I smiled coyly but didn’t give him much of a reply. “So, you’re the press, right? I thought you had gone on to become very successful, but this is cool.”
“I sure am. I guess my coworker and I will be interviewing you at some point.” Much to my delight, he reached out and grabbed her attention, allowing me to focus on the woman I’d really come to see. “Karly, this is Chase.”
The air left my lungs as our gazes locked. Holy shit, I thought she’d affected my bear when we were across the room from one another. Now she really had a vice grip on me. Even wilder, I could smell her, really smell the human in her. Her scent flooded my nostrils and made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. Every part of me twitched with the need to get closer to her. I needed her. My feet automatically moved a little bit closer to her before I forced myself to stop. Just because I had that instinct, didn’t mean I needed to follow through with it! Although I did sniff one more time, and this time the underlying scent caught me. The scent of sex. My cock stiffened as I imagined her getting railed by another man. I wasn’t jealous of him, whoever he was, I was only upset that I hadn’t been involved.
I bit down on my bottom lip as I imagined what she must taste like. I wished I could pull her panties down here and now and bury my tongue deep inside her…
“Hi, Chase.” There was something so deliberate about the way she said my name, I couldn’t help but wonder if her thoughts were as naughty as my own. “Good to meet you. How do you know Ben?”
I held on to her hand for a couple of seconds too long, before I finally forced myself to let her go. I didn’t want to, but I also didn’t want to be too much. “We have been friends for years. We went to high school together.”
“Hey, Chase,” Ben interjected. “Once this reception is over, the news team is going to the bar nearby, Pleasures. Have you heard of it?” I nodded. “You should come with us. We’re going to have some drinks and fun. It’s the first night of the tournament, which means it’ll be a great atmosphere.”
“Are you going?” I focused on Karly, just because she intrigued the living hell out of me. Now I was thinking about us dancing together on the dance floor, acting like the rest of the world didn’t exist. She was definitely having naughty thoughts as well, I could tell by the way her eyes hungrily roamed my body. If she was the vixen I thought she might be, this would be interesting.
“Sure,” she eventually rasped, intensifying the heat between us. “I don’t see why not.”
In the dark, under the lights, I was definitely going to get a taste of those lips of hers, and hopefully a whole lot more. Hell, if I was going to be coerced into a marriage with someone who just wasn’t for me, I needed to have all the fun I could while the chance was still there.
“Karly,” Ben hissed, and for one horrible moment I thought it was because he didn’t like the heat surging between us. I hoped he wasn’t about to cock block me. “The king. He’s back.”
Oh, right, this was work related. There was nothing I could do about that. I had to step back and let this happen. But that was okay, because there was some pleasure to be had tonight. Karly must have had that on her mind as well, because she didn’t seem quite ready to break eye contact with me. Her tongue even dragged along her bottom lip so seductively I thought I might explode at any given moment.
“Chase,” Cody called out, unfortunately pulling my eyes away from Karly, not that the sky blue of her eyes would ever leave my brain, or her delightful scent that was still in my nostrils. “Come on, we need to get under our banner.”
Oh yeah, right, this wasn’t just the little welcome speech, this was Bear King Mobius officially bringing us into the Astro Games with the rules laid out so none of us could screw up. I guess I was going to have to make my move to represent the Virgos as best I could. Especially since we had so much to prove.
The current rule was hanging over us, as was the fact that Cody and I hadn’t done too well in the qualifying rounds. We were the second largest clan and needed to make ourselves known. Whether I wanted it to or not, that all started now.