Fear doesn’t.
And what I feel when I think about Adrian—what I feel when I picture him calling her, texting her, watching her—isn’t anger first.
It’s fear.
I’ve never been the jealous one.Never been the one to react first and think later—that’s Atlas’s territory.Never been the one to panic, to spiral—that’s Finn, even when he hides it behind smiles.I’m the one who sees the full map.
But Wren changes the terrain.
Because the idea of someone hurting her makes something cold bloom under my ribs.Something that feels old, like memory.Something like helplessness.
I hate helplessness.
I dig my blade into the ice and stop short, chest heaving.The silence presses back at me.
I don’t know when I started caring about her like this.
Maybe when she first walked in with that too-small smile.Maybe during the night I found her in the training room with her hands shaking while she wrapped her own wrist because she refused to ask for help.Maybe the moment she told us she wasn’t afraid of Atlas and he looked like he’d been handed something holy.
Or maybe it happened slowly, then all at once the moment she said his name.
Adrian.
I want to find him.
Not to hurt him.Not out of violence.
Out of strategy.
I want to know what he looks like.
What he wants.
What he did to her.
What he’ll try next.
I want to know him the way I know an opposing team’s playbook.
Because you can only defend what you understand.
I skate to center ice, stop on the logo, and let myself breathe through the thoughts curling in my head.
Finn said she has a safety word.Two, actually.Hydrate and Zamboni.He said it like it was normal, like she’s had to build entire scaffolds to survive someone who turned her life into a chokehold.
Finn knows things I don’t.And Atlas...Atlas knows enough to be dangerous.He’s trying so hard to hold himself back that I can practically feel the strain vibrating off him.
If Adrian shows up?
Atlas won’t stay contained.
Finn will break open.
And I—
I’ll have to decide how far I’m willing to go.
The truth is simple.
