“Correct,” I snarl.
Viktor follows behind him, dragging Tyler by the collar. Shane wheels in after, one leg in a cast, his usual chaos muted. Even he looks serious tonight.
I let the silence stretch until even Cole stops bouncing. Until every single one of them is staring at me. I skate to the center. My stick echoes on the ice. “Don’t sit,” I snap. “Don’t speak. Just listen.”
They do.
I point at the banners. At the Cup years. At the names stitched in gold. “You see those? They don’t mean shit if we lose this series. You know what the world’s gonna remember? That we choked. That we let the Hawks sweep the finals because our goalie couldn’t stand still long enough to block a toddler.”
“Jesus,” Tyler mutters.
“Shut up,” I say, pointing my stick at him. “You’ve been playing scared for three games. I want blood, not nerves. Pick one.”
Cole smirks. “Can I pick blood?”
“You better,” I snarl. “Because we’ve got one shot left. One shot to turn this around. They win the next game? We’re done. Our Cup is gone. Damian is lying in a hospital bed with stitches in his chest, and we’re here losing to a team that’s been reading our playbook like it’s a bedtime story.”
Everyone’s quiet.
I skate back and forth in front of them, breathing hard. “No one else is coming to save us. Not Coach. Not Shane. Not even Damian. It’s just us now. So if you’ve got anything left—rage, pride, spite, teeth, I want it on this ice. We don’t go down nice. We don’t go down quiet. We go down swinging, and if that puck’s still moving at the last second, I will take it to the fucking net myself.”
Cole whistles again. Low this time. “I got chills.”
“Shut up, Hollywood,” I snap without even looking at Cole, my voice sharp enough to slice through the bullshit. I turn toward Shane, planting my stick into the ice. “Okay, goalie. Who do we got?”
Shane squints up at me from the bench, eyes glassy with pain and painkillers, like he’s trying to focus on the board but seeing ghosts instead. “You want honesty or hope?”
“Shane.”
He groans, dragging a hand down his face. “Mats is too nice. Cole’s too loud. Tyler’s a fawn on skates. Coach has arthritis.”
I glare, voice flat. “Anyone.”
Shane chews his lip for a long second, then slowly nods, like it costs him something. “Viktor.”
All heads turn. Viktor raises a single brow, completely unbothered, the stoic wall of death he always is. He doesn’t say a word.
“He’s not me,” Shane mutters, shifting in his chair, voice quieter now. “But he’s got instincts. He blocks out of spite.”
A spark of something sharp curls through my chest. Hope? Maybe. More likely vengeance. “Excellent,” I growl, already turning back toward the ice. “You’re in net tomorrow.”
Viktor snorts, low and amused. “You owe me a win.”
“You’ll get two,” I promise, dead serious.
I look around one last time, sweeping my gaze over the half-broken monsters still standing, still bleeding, still mine. “Now skate.”
And they do.
Every one of them drops onto the ice like they’ve been summoned by war and we don’t stop until the rink screams.
I’m propped up in this goddamn hospital bed, half-upright, wrapped in wires and bruises, stiff in all the wrong places. My ribs ache with every breath. My leg is immobile, braced and heavy, and I can still feel the ghost of tubes in my throat when I swallow. There’s a nurse stationed at my side, chatty and overeager, the kind who fills silence like it’s an emergency. She talks too fast, and asks questions I don’t care to answer, but I let her stay. Because she brought snacks. And because she put the game on without me even having to ask. That earns her a pass.
The second the broadcast cuts to the starting lineup, I spot it—the thing that makes my smirk curl slow and mean across my face. I shift slightly, wincing, every movement stitched with pain, and mutter, still hoarse from the intubation, the surgery, the near-death spiral of the last seventy-two hours. “Fucking hell.”
Viktor Petrov. Fully geared. Helmet tucked under his arm. Standing dead center in the crease, towering, terrifying as ever. In the goddamn net.
The nurse gasps beside me, one hand flying to her chest. “Isn’t he your defenseman?”
