Chapter 9 Julian #2
He’s already in the crease. Mask off, pads locked, black tape wound tight around his wrists.
The net behind him looks like a fucking altar.
And he’s the monster guarding it—quiet, still, inhuman.
That jaw clenched. That scar over his brow pale under the lights.
He’s not looking at the other team. He’s looking at me.
And I know, suddenly, with bone-deep certainty—I don’t need a fix. I’ve already got one. So I smirk, slow and cocky and probably just a little suicidal, and shake my head without taking my eyes off Rafe.
“Ask me again after,” I say to Kai. “If I survive.”
Kai makes a quiet sound—half laugh, half scoff—and skates off without another word, not even looking back. He knows I’m lying. He knows I’m shaking under the smirk. But he lets it go.
Rafe doesn’t.
We stare at each other from across the ice, me in the circle and him in the net. There’s nothing romantic about it, nothing soft. It feels like a promise carved straight into bone: don’t vanish, don’t break, don’t die before I wreck you myself.
Then a gunshot cracks through the air and the puck drops.
Game fucking on.
The first “period”—if you can even call it that when there are no whistles, no refs, no rules—is chaos without climax.
A storm building pressure. Everyone circling each other like sharks who haven’t decided who’s bleeding yet.
The ice feels smaller because there are no boards, no walls to ricochet off, nothing to absorb momentum except bodies.
It turns every pass into a dare, every stride into a challenge.
I wait for the puck like it’s oxygen. And when it comes I fucking take it.
I don’t mean I catch a lucky pass. I mean I steal it off every single bastard who tries to carry it past center.
The first guy’s sloppy—telegraphing his stick like someone taught him hockey from YouTube.
I strip it with a flick of my blade. He blinks, shocked.
The second guy hesitates with it near neutral zone, and that’s all I need—blade under blade, quick drag, puck gone. I don’t even look at him. I just keep skating.
By the third theft, the crowd isn’t silent anymore. They’re snarling, cheering. Money is being thrown around. Drinks spill. Someone screams my name in Russian. Someone else in Italian. They’re betting on when I die, not if.
I’m faster than all of them. It feels good—too good—to slip through them like a ghost made of blades. Every time I take the puck off someone, rage grows behind me like a hungry creature.
And it snaps.
One of them breaks formation—the captain of the other syndicate, stocky fucker with shoulders like a bull and eyes that promise a slow death. I don’t see him until he’s already committed to the line, cutting across my blindside.
He hits me. Hard. Not a clean check—there are no boards to pin me into—so he just throws himself into my ribs with the force of someone who’s decided I don’t deserve lungs.
My skates lose purchase, ice rushes up, and I hit flat on my back hard enough to see stars.
The crowd roars. A few people laugh like they just watched someone get shot.
My chest explodes in pain. For a second, all I register is cold and the metallic taste of adrenaline climbing my throat. But then—I get back up like nothing happened.
He wasn’t expecting that.
Neither is the crowd.
The puck’s still loose near my skate. I hook it before the bastard even finishes grinning down at me. I whip around him, cut a sharp edge, and snap the puck straight to Luca streaking down the weak side.
Luca catches it like he was born to. He dangles once, twice, slips right between two defenders who didn’t even see him move and then he scores. A laser straight past their goalie’s shoulder.
The crowd detonates—half in fury, half in awe.
Luca screams, “SUCK MY DICK!” at the stands and does a spin that would get him ejected in any civilized league.
I skate past the bastard who leveled me. I don’t bump him. I don’t talk. I don’t give him anything except a slow, deliberate middle finger as I glide by—two fingers if you count the look.
He freezes. Then turns his head toward me.
The look he gives me? It’s not anger. It’s not annoyance. It’s promise. He looks at me like he’s already picking out the flowers for my funeral. Planning where to bury the body. What knife to use. Who gets my skates.
I smirk at him. Blood on my teeth, breath sharp in my lungs. Come and fucking try.
Because now I’m awake. Now I’m alive. Now I’m burning.
And behind me, in the crease, I can feel Rafe watching—like a wolf tracking which throat to bite first.
There’s no break between periods. No buzzer.
No benches. Just blood melting into the ice and more bodies shuffling into place like nothing happened.
Nobody resets. Nobody rehydrates. No one wipes the blood off their mouth.
We’re already halfway through a war, and the only way out is either score or kill something.
The crowd hasn’t stopped screaming since the first goal.
The betting is out of control—fistfuls of cash changing hands, people screaming over each other in three different languages, arguments breaking out behind the makeshift VIP rows, a gunshot fired into the air at one point just to shut someone up.
No one even flinched. This place runs on a different kind of gravity.
La Fiamma Nera’s up three goals.
The first—Luca’s slick little fuck-you from my pass. The next two? Mine.
Both scored like I had something to prove. Which I fucking do.
The first, I stole again—clean, surgical—and cut past two defenders like they were standing still.
I didn’t even think, just ripped it top shelf while skating full-speed.
The second I crashed through a scrum near the crease and somehow—somehow—managed to poke the puck under the goalie’s pad while half-on my stomach, screaming through gritted teeth.
I barely heard the crowd that time. I just heard Rafe. Saw him in the net.
Bishop’s already punched two guys. Not during plays.
Just… whenever he felt like it. One of them skated too close and muttered something in Spanish, and Bish just decked him mid-glide.
The guy didn’t get up for thirty seconds.
The second one tried to throw hands, but Bishop laughed while his nose shattered.
He didn’t even drop his stick. He just passed it off to Misha like a babysitter and kept swinging.
Luca’s gone feral. He’s currently wrapped around some poor bastard’s head like a psychotic barnacle, legs locked around the guy’s waist, cackling like a goddamn villain while gouging at his helmet with both hands.
No idea what the fight’s even about anymore.
It started with a trip. Then a shove. Then Luca jumped him like a demon on meth.
Finn’s yelling, “GET HIS EYES, BABY GIRL!” from the blue line while swinging his own stick like a sword.
I should be laughing. But I’m watching the guy from earlier.
The one who checked me. The one who promised my funeral with his eyes.
He’s skating slow now, calm—dangerously calm—but I see it.
The way his right sleeve bulges just a little.
The way his hand never leaves that side. He’s got something on him.
It’s a knife.
It has to be.
And he’s coming straight for me. Not with the puck.
Not with intention to play. Not even looking at the game anymore.
Just me. The crowd roars again as he picks up speed.
I start skating backwards, fast, stick up, pretending I’m preparing for defense, but my heart’s already punching a rhythm against my ribs because I know that look.
He’s not here to check me, he’s here to end me. He crouches a little lower, cutting across center like he’s gonna shoulder me again, and I see the blade start to slip from his sleeve—just a glint, fast as lightning. Fuck. Fuckfuckfuck.
I don’t wait. I twist my grip on the stick and swing it like a fucking baseball bat.
The shaft connects with his face so hard I feel the impact vibrate up through my arms, the crack echoing across the rink like wood meeting bone.
His head snaps sideways, his helmet flying off as blood instantly sprays from his nose—or maybe his mouth. I don’t fucking care.
I expect him to go down.
He doesn’t.
He staggers instead, then lifts his head and looks straight at me. And he smiles. Actually fucking smiles. Blood fills his teeth, one eye already swelling shut, and the knife is still in his hand.
He doesn’t say a word. He just skates faster.
Jesus Christ.
He’s still coming, full speed, blood running from his nose, the blade now fully visible in his grip and gleaming under the overhead floodlights like a promise soaked in rust. He isn’t skating like a player anymore.
There are no dekes, no shifts of weight, no tactical movement—just velocity and intent.
And that intent is me.
I bolt. Fuck it—call me a coward, call me smart, call me whatever you want.
I don’t care. I whip around hard and push off the ice with everything I’ve got, blades cutting deep, lungs burning.
I hear him gaining behind me. I hear the crowd shriek.
Someone’s shouting something in Russian again.
Finn’s cackling in the distance. Luca’s still attached to someone’s shoulders like a demon backpack, laughing like he just saw God naked.
But none of it matters because the guy is on me.
He’s faster than I expected—bigger, but still quick—and I know if he catches me, if he gets close enough to grab my jersey, it’s not going to be a hit or a slash. It’s going to be a fucking stab. Center mass. Or ribs. Or throat. Wherever he can stick the blade and make it stick.
So I sprint across the ice, no strategy, no plan—just survival. And I slam straight into Rafe. I hit him like a brick wall I didn’t know was there.
He’s not in the net anymore.
What the fuck—?