Break This! (A 300 Moons Book) Read Online Free PDF Page B

out of another, sweatier guy.
    Though, come to think of it, Thea may have stumbled upon exactly the perfect mood for watching two people try to maim one another.
    A smile turned up one corner of her mouth as she walked inside, thinking about what Jade’s boyfriend would do to that slimy photographer if he knew what she was up to.

7
    C hance stood in the stark , echoing, concrete hallway, listening to the screams of the fans out in the arena. Out there he would be all glamour, silk robe shining in the lights.
    But back here he was just one more nervous fighter in a string of men and women who had stood in this dank hallway - hoping to beat the odds and avoid injury and the wrong kind of scandal, hoping to become a champion.
    Alexei slapped him on the back like he was a pony at a child’s birthday party, encouraging him to get going.
    “He’s in,” the guy at the end of the hallway said into his earpiece.
    Instantly the bass thumped in the arena, and Chance walked into the back of the crowd just as the blistering lead-guitar riff of Strength of the Pack kicked in.
    His brother’s song always got him pumped up. Their shifter animals might be diverse, but their foster family was a pack nonetheless. And Johnny’s song hit Chance just right, making him want to do Harkness Farms proud. Too bad he couldn’t do that tonight.
    The crowd spotted him and started to cheer as he made his way to the cage. Some of them sang and howled along with his entrance music, getting almost as pumped as he was.
    It was an otherworldly feeling to be the recipient of the waves of admiration, jealousy and lust his bear scented in the air. The first few times the bear had cowered and Chance had entered the arena almost alone, without the shadowy presence of his other self.
    Now the bear seemed to enjoy the raucousness of the crowd.
    Chance reached out to high-five excited fans along the way. They were all shouting to him, things he couldn’t understand. He shook a woman’s hand and she said, “Thank you,” with tears in her eyes, though Chance couldn’t imagine what she could be thanking him for.
    Crazy, they’re all crazy , Jade liked to say about the fans.
    But Chance wasn’t sure that was right. Sure, they were amped up, just like he was. But mostly they were yearning, just like Chance was, like Jade was - hoping to reach beyond the ordinary and have something remarkable happen. And if they couldn’t do it for themselves, they were looking to Chance to do it for them. Because they had discovered him, and related to him. Because they wanted to own some piece of his victory, and wallow in some share of his defeat.
    And Chance thought that was pretty fucking awesome.
    “I love you, Chance,” a teenaged girl shouted to him from behind three rows of reaching hands. Her face was a mess of braces and acne, and lit from within by an earnest sweetness.
    “I love you too, kid,” he shouted back to her.
    The crowd went nuts.
    The betting odds on tonight’s match-up were close, but he was definitely the fan favorite.
    Van Blanco, who was already waiting in the cage, was much better at trash-talking than Chance. In the run up to the fight, Blanco had said a lot of things to build up the hype. But it also served to put the fans behind Chance.
    Chance had actually met Van in person a few times before the match was announced. He was a pretty nice guy, but he was really good at acting bad, and the fans ate that shit up.
    So as the fight approached, Van built up his persona as the trash-talking, tattooed bad boy, and Chance played up his image of the clean-cut, all-American boy-next-door, who was going to shut him up.
    The execs in the ACL couldn’t be happier. This was one of the most anticipated non-title fights in the history of the organization. In fact, they had bumped it up to the main event after the great fan response started to take off.
    Chance entered the cage, ignoring Van, who was showboating for the crowd. He scanned the audience as