CHAPTER SIXTY FIVE

CHAPTER 65

The sound of the ball hitting the hardwood seemed to vibrate through Caleb's very bones as the clock bled its final agonizing ticks. Five Oakwood jackals surrounded him in a tightening circle, seeing their last desperate chance to seize the throne.

In those final minutes, the Willow Creek executioner felt a deep, soulful calm. Caleb was no longer in the same terrestrial plane as the snarling warriors pursuing them futilely. No, he had ascended to a higher heavenly level reserved for demigods and icons who had finished their mythological conquest rituals.

The roar of the capacity throng had faded to a gentle buzz like the white noise of insignificance accepting an unavoidable reality. Caleb's laser focus zoomed in on the raised hoop, making it the entire cosmic scope through which his destiny would finally, legitimately, be realized.

In one eternally held breath, a silent supernova on a great inner scale, he climbed from a threadbare coil to ballistic apogee. As his trainers