Not enough.
Nothing would be enough.
Roan skated back into position. Rhett didn’t move, not even when the ref waved him back into the crease. He just stood there, shaking with restrained violence, like the net itself was the only thing keeping him from tearing someone apart.
The game resumed, but it wasn’t a game anymore. No, it was a reckoning, and they’d united the whole team in wanting to take them down.
If the league didn’t do something after this, I’d burn the whole damn system down myself.
Chapter
Thirty-Three
ROAN
The final buzzer didn’t sound so much as it cracked through the tension like a hammer on ice.
We won the game, even though it didn't feel like it.
I didn’t skate the handshake line. Neither did Rhett. We left that to the rest of the guys while we headed straight for the tunnel, our gear still on, helmets in hand, every muscle tight enough to snap.
Jay should’ve been here.
That hit had been dirty as sin. The player aimed high, adjusted his timing and went specifically for Jay. The kind of move that was supposed to have been outlawed a decade ago. I’d watched it play out in real time and Istillcouldn’t wrap my head around the angle. Jay hadn’t even seen the bastard coming.
I had.
Too late.
My jaw hurt from clenching. My gloves had blood in the lining. It wasn’t Jay’s, thankfully, but mine, from punching the wall of the locker room tunnel when they’d taken him off the ice.
The moment I stepped into the medical wing, I found him in the exam room, hooked up to the monitors, his eyes open nowbut glassy. Pupils still sluggish. Doc was with him. One of the trainers. The lights were dimmed.
"You're fine," I muttered under my breath, a prayer to the universe as much as a report to myself. "You're gonna be fine."
“You here to babysit me?” Jay’s voice was hoarse, but there was a thread of life in it.
I moved to the side of the bed, planting one hand on the rail. “No. I'm here to break both your kneecaps if you try to put skates back on too soon.”
Jay grinned. It didn’t last long. The wince that followed twisted something in my gut.
“He's lucky,” the doc said, stepping back. “Concussion, yes. But it could’ve been a lot worse. He’s already more alert. We’ll keep him monitored for the next twelve, twenty-four hours. But he’s off the ice until I clear him.”
“No arguments,” I said.
Jay raised a hand in surrender. “I'm concussed, not stupid.”
I was going to kill someone for this.
“Coach is in the locker room.” Rhett's voice came from the hallway. “Livid.”
“He mad about the hit?” I asked.
Rhett snorted. “He’s mad I nearly threw hands in the middle of the third period. Gave me the whole ‘play smarter, not hotter’ speech.”
I stepped out into the hall and found the other alpha, shirt off with a bag of ice pressed against his jaw. His knuckles were raw, still smeared with the evidence of his restraint.
“He thinks I cost us momentum,” Rhett said, tone sharp enough to cut. “Even though we won. Even though they tried to fuckingmurderJay out there?—”
