My chest seizes, not from pain this time, but fury. Wrists screaming, ribs aching, I slam my stick against the ice hard enough to echo. The Phantoms bench howls, Shaw sneering across the sheet, raising his bloody mouthguard at me like it’s a trophy.
But I’m not looking at him.
I’m looking at Damian.
He’s gliding toward the bench, shoulders heavy, eyes cutting across the ice, straight to me. Not angry. Not surprised. Just that calm, terrifying weight.
The kind that saysI told you they’d come for you.
The kind that saysget up, Mercer. You’re not done.
And even with my wrists on fire, I want nothing more than to obey.
I slam onto the bench, breath ragged, wrists still burning like someone poured fire straight into my veins. I’m shaking, not from fear, not from the pain—though Christ, it hurts—but because the rage is too loud to sit still.
Before I can even rip the glove off myself, he’s there.
Damian.
He crouches in front of me, huge frame folding like it’s nothing, and takes my wrist in his hands. He peels the glove off slow, deliberate, ignoring the way I hiss when the air hits raw skin. His fingers are steady, warm even through the chill, brushing tape and sweat as if my whole body isn’t about to combust from the contact.
And then he pulls the roll of tape from the kit.
White strips tearing in the silence, the crowd’s roar muffled under the roof. He winds it around my wrist, firm, perfect, not too tight, not too loose. Every wrap is precise, his knuckles brushing the inside of my arm like he’s branding me. I can’t stop staring—at his hands, at the scar on his lip, at the calm in his eyes.
Like he isn’t just patching me up.
Like he’sclaimingme.
When he finishes, he presses his palm heavy against the tape, one last squeeze. And then his eyes lift to mine.
“Go make them bleed for touching you.”
My lungs collapse. My vision whites out. Every sound—Cole chirping, Mats smirking, the refs screaming, the crowd howling—it all falls away.
All I can hear is that order.
All I can feel is his hand on me.
“Yes, sir,” I rasp.
Because if my captain tells me to bleed them—
I’ll burn Haverton to the ground doing it.
The next whistle blows, and I’m back on the ice.
Damian’s words are ringing through me.
I know exactly who I’m hunting.
The Phantom defenseman who slashed me is circling near their blue line, cocky, waiting for a breakout pass. He doesn’t even glance my way—rookie, he’s thinking, just a kid I already broke. Easy pickings.
He’s wrong.
The puck drops, play whirls, Haverton tries to drive it up ice—but I’m already moving. Legs pumping, stick down, a snarl caught in my throat. I angle in, faster, closer, and then—slam.
My shoulder barrels into him full-force, every ounce of my rage poured into the hit. His body snaps against the boards, glass rattling so hard the whole arena feels it. He crumples to the ice, stick flying, helmet askew, breath knocked clean out of him.
