My phone buzzed once in my pocket.
Jay:
You standing up? Thought I felt it. ;)
I bit back a laugh and sent a quick reply:
Maybe. Play harder and I’ll scream.
Another buzz.
Jay:
God, please. Roan will check me into the glass.
My smile faded only slightly as I tucked the phone away and focused back on the game.
Because the other team came to play, too.
And this? This was just the beginning.
The second gamewas blood and blades.
If the first had been a show of dominance, the second was a straight-up brawl with a puck in the middle.
From the opening shift, I knew it was going to be ugly. The air in the arena was charged, the noise sharper, more frantic. Fans were louder, more rabid. Every slap of the puck, everyscrape of a blade on the ice sounded like a challenge. And the opposing team had clearly watched film and come in swinging.
They wanted to rattle us. They wanted to slow us down.
They wanted Roan.
I knew it the moment he took his first shift. He skated clean, precise, measured, but I didn’t miss the faint stiffness in his shoulder, the way his right arm didn’t extend quite as far when he checked another player. Most people wouldn’t notice. But I did.
Ifeltit.
And it made my pulse pound.
Roan didn’t show pain, not even in the locker room last night after the win. He let the team doc look at the hit he took in the third, kept it light, let Jay and Rhett rib him a little, even smirked when I arched an eyebrow at him. But I’d seen the way his jaw clenched. The way he rotated the shoulder when he thought no one was watching.
He could play through it.
But I hated that he had to.
Even now, watching from the owner’s suite again, surrounded by sponsors and execs and media handlers pretending not to sweat, I had to fight the urge to bolt downstairs, grab a stick, and start knocking heads myself. My skin buzzed under my blazer, nerves stretched taut and tuned to my guys on the ice below.
Marchand didn’t hover, but he lingered nearby. “They’re targeting him.”
“They’re trying to find a weak point,” I agreed, keeping my voice even. “They think if they get Roan off the ice, the rest will unravel.”
“They’d be wrong,” he said after a beat. “But notcompletely.”
No. They wouldn’t unravel. But Roan was more than our captain. He was gravity. Rhythm. Pulse. Without him… things would fracture.
Jay was working overtime to keep the plays flowing, and Rhett—my beautiful, reckless, wild thing—was putting on a show in the net. He’d already stolen three sure goals and earned a penalty for taunting a forward who tried to crowd his crease.
The doc had eyes on the bench, just off the tunnel. I caught his expression once through my binoculars — calm, focused, calculating. He’d check every player post-game, just like he had the night before. But if Roan couldn’t keep his range, I knew the choice might be taken out of his hands.
And I didn’t know what that would do to us. Or tome.
