Not the trauma. Not the recovery. Not the years of therapy and kickboxing and facility stays and the specific, ongoing, daily work of rebuilding a mind that was disassembled by a person whose punishment was delayed but has now arrived.
But the impunity is over.
The freedom he operated within. The institutional invisibility that allowed his predation to continue. The specific, structural, systemic failure that permitted a man to assault a teenager and then enroll at the same university and then join an opposing team and then attack the teenager's Omega on live ice while cameras recorded and crowds watched and the evidence accumulated in real time into a case that no defense attorney can dismantle.
It is over.
But Sage is not here to see it.
My eyes leave Maxwell. Scan the ice. Find the spot where she fell, where the blood stain remains on the white surface like a wound the ice itself sustained. The medical team is no longer there. The stretcher is moving. Being carried through the arena's service exit by paramedics whose pace communicates urgency rather than caution, the specific, fast-walking, equipment-rattling transit speed that medical professionals deploy when the patient's condition requires hospital-level intervention that the arena's first-aid station cannot provide.
I pull free from my teammates' loosened hold.
My skates carry me off the ice with the desperate, uncoordinated, technique-abandoned urgency of a man whosebody is not skating toward an objective but fleeing toward a person. I hit the rubber matting. Yank the skates from my feet with the violent, lace-tearing, blade-discarding speed of a man who considers footwear an obstacle between himself and the stretcher that is disappearing through the corridor ahead.
I run.
In socks. On concrete. Through the service corridor that connects the arena to the ambulance bay, my bare feet slapping the cold floor with the percussive urgency of a man whose destination is the only thing preventing his nervous system from converting the last ten minutes of his life into a spiral that the breathing technique cannot contain.
The stretcher is being loaded.
The ambulance doors open. The paramedics lifting Sage's strapped, immobilized, oxygen-masked body into the vehicle's interior with the coordinated, practiced, weight-distributing technique that emergency medical training instills. She is still. Her green eyes closed. The jersey with HOLLOWAY 55 on the back stained with red that has traveled from the injury to the fabric and converted her uniform from an identity statement into an evidence exhibit.
"She's my Omega!"
The declaration exits my throat at a volume and a desperation that makes the nearest paramedic pause mid-lift and evaluate me with the rapid, threat-or-family assessment that emergency personnel perform when a civilian attempts to enter their operational space.
Whatever he sees in my face passes the evaluation.
He nods. Steps aside. Allows me into the ambulance's interior, the space narrow and bright and filled with the specific, sterile, equipment-dense environment that emergency vehicles maintain for the patients whose conditions require intervention during transit.
The doors close.
Sealing the exterior noise, the arena chaos, the arrest, the cameras, the blood on the ice, the echo of my confession that is probably already circulating through every phone in the building and every platform those phones can reach. Sealing all of it outside the metal walls of a vehicle that contains two paramedics, a stretcher, and a man who is taking his Omega's hand with the specific, full-grip, I-am-not-letting-go pressure of a person whose body has been trained to hold things that matter and whose hands are currently holding the thing that matters most.
Through the ambulance's rear window, I see the twins arrive at the bay. Running. Rowan's broad frame leading, Ronan's leaner silhouette matching his pace. They reach the closing doors a second too late, their palms hitting the metal as the vehicle begins to move.
They signal through the glass. A gesture that compresses an entire conversation into a single, shared motion:we are behind you, we will be at the hospital, go.
I nod.
Then turn to Sage.
She lies on the stretcher beneath the fluorescent lights that emergency vehicles use because flattering illumination is not a priority in a space designed for keeping people alive. The oxygen mask covers her nose and mouth, fogging with each exhale that confirms her breathing is present and functional. The paramedics are establishing IV access, their hands working with the trained, rapid, steady-despite-urgency mechanics of professionals who have performed this sequence enough times that their muscles execute it while their minds evaluate the patient.
I take her hand.
Her gloved fingers are limp inside mine. The specific, unresponsive, unconscious quality of a hand whose owner is not available to reciprocate the grip and whose muscles are operating on the automated settings that the body maintains when consciousness has been suspended by trauma.
But she is warm. And her pulse is present against my fingertips. And the peppermint-and-cherry-blossom scent that the stretcher's proximity provides is reaching my nose through the ambulance's sterile air and confirming, through the specific, biological, designation-level channel that no medical equipment can replicate, that the woman I am holding is alive.
I lean forward. My forehead nearly touching our interlocked hands. My voice dropped to the whisper that I reserve for moments between us that do not require an audience and that carry the specific, unperformed, raw honesty that her proximity consistently extracts from behind the mask I wear for the rest of the world.
"Please be okay."
The words vibrate against her knuckles.
"Please don't have injured anything that won't let you play anymore." The plea arriving from the specific, devastating, career-aware place in my brain that understands what hockey means to this woman and what losing it would cost her and how the loss would convert the fifteen years she spent fighting for ice time into a prologue for a story that never got to have its chapter. "Your dream is right there, Sage. Three organizations offered you deals before the game started. You were about to score the goal that clinched the standings. You were thirty feet from proving that every coach who rejected you and every scout who ignored you and every institution that told you an Omega doesn't belong on the ice was wrong."
