Another ref sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Damian, come on, pull him.”
Behind me, the team’s a disaster zone. Cole’s icing his jaw and chirping. Shane’s practically foaming in the crease. Mats is yelling in Spanish. And Viktor’s seething. Silent. Helmet off, fists clenched, teeth grinding hard enough I hear it from ten feet away.
I skate back to the bench, slam my stick against the boards once for silence. “Petrov.”
He doesn’t move.
“You’re off this game.”
Viktor turns to look at me, eyes like frozen steel, unreadable and sharp. “He hit Cole.”
“I know,” I say evenly, stepping closer. “And I need you for the next game. You get suspended, we lose our best defenseman. Is that what you want?”
He stays silent. No sound, no twitch, just a statue carved from fury. But after a second he nods.
Coach lights a cigarette right there in the tunnel. Illegal. Doesn’t give a single fuck. “I hate the Bastards,” he mutters through his teeth.
I smirk, mouth curling slow. “Get in line.”
The third period isn’t just brutal, it’s a bloodbath. Not a metaphor. Not an exaggeration. An actual goddamn war on ice.
It starts with a Bastard slashing Elias across the back of the calves. No call. Then another one crashes into Shane in the crease, full-speed, shoulder-first, aiming to break something. Cole takes a high stick to the mouth and laughs through the blood. Mats hammers a guy into the boards hard enough to knock a glove loose, and the bastard still gets up chirping.
I’m hitting bodies like I want them broken. Over and over, boards rattling, ribs cracking. I stop counting the score. Stop checking the clock. The only reason I know we’re still tied is because the horn hasn’t blown, and I haven’t put anyone in the hospital yet.
Elias yelps once—twice—three times. Sharp, clipped little sounds that white out my vision every single time. But he keeps going. Doesn’t slow. Doesn’t stop. He scores once—clean, brutal, surgical—and skates back to center like something’s eating him alive from the inside.
The Bastards answer. Cole fires back. I slice through traffic and sink one so hard it rips net, and our bench explodes, but they come back again fast and calculated. And now there’s thirty seconds left on the clock. Tied.Again.
They tear down the ice with all the fury they’ve been hoarding, like this last shift was always the one they meant to end us. It’s too clean, too fast. I see it unfolding before it happens. One winger slips past Mats, cuts in sharp, slips right past Shane. One flash of a stick. One perfect shot. The buzzer screams, the goal light blares red, and the entire barn goes still, hollow and silent.
Viktor punches the bench. Not a slam. A full punch. The wood cracks, splinters like bone, and water bottles scatter. Coach bellows something obscene, voice shredded, snapping another cigarette between his teeth as if the smoke might exorcise the loss.
Elias stands mid-ice, frozen. Staring up at the scoreboard like it’s lying to him. Like maybe, if he blinks hard enough, the numbers will change. But they don’t.
Bastards: 6.Reapers: 5.
Our first loss of playoffs.
I skate toward him slowly. The crowd is roaring now, green and silver fans screaming. But all I see is Elias. Frozen. Mouth slightly open. Face unreadable.
I touch his arm. He doesn’t flinch. Just whispers, “I scored.”
“I know,” I say.
“We lost.”
“I know.”
And then, finally, he turns to look at me. And those eyes? They’re on fire.
Cole skates up behind us, slower than usual. His lip is still bleeding, one glove off, face smeared with red and sweat and mascara-level smudges from whatever the fuck face paint he wore for luck. His helmet’s gone, hair a mess, but his voice is soft. “Curls… come on, babe,” he says, not joking for once. “We’ll get them in the next one.”
Elias doesn’t move. He keeps staring at the scoreboard like it betrayed him. His chest is rising too fast. Too shallow. I know that look. I know what it means when his pupils start to blow wide like that—panic. Rage. Collapse waiting to happen. He’s not breathing right. Not thinking right. Not in his body anymore.
“This is my fault,” he says.
“It’s not,” I growl instantly.
