Chapter 5
Chapter five
Power Play - A team has a man advantage due to an opponent’s penalty.
Taranis
I watched the last photographer retreat through the ballroom doors, my jaw still tight with barely contained anger. The urge to follow them—to make absolutely certain they understood what would happen if those photos appeared anywhere—burned hot under my ribs.
But Cinder needed...
I turned back toward where he'd been standing, already forming words I didn't quite have yet, something about being okay, about the cameras being gone now, about—
He was walking away.
Not running. Not panicking. Just moving with that same careful professionalism he'd always shown, shoulders squared, face blank, like saving someone's life was just another item checked off his list for the evening.
"Cinder," I called, taking a step after him.
He didn't stop. Didn't even slow down.
I caught up anyway, close enough that I could see the tremor in his hands he was trying to hide. "Hey. Are you—"
"I'm fine." The words came out clipped, automatic. He still wasn't looking at me.
"You just performed CPR for—"
"I know what I did." He finally stopped, turning just enough that I could see his profile. The muscle jumping in his jaw. The way his breathing was too controlled, too measured. "I'm fine, Taranis. Thank you for... for the cameras. But I need to go."
"Go where?"
"My room." He said it like it was obvious. Like retreating alone after something like that made any kind of sense.
"Let me walk with you," I said, keeping my voice gentle. "Or we could—"
"No." Sharp now. Final. He met my eyes for the first time since I'd chased the photographers out, and what I saw there made my chest ache.
Not anger. Exhaustion. The bone-deep kind that came from holding yourself together when every instinct screamed to break.
"I appreciate what you did. Really. But I need to be alone right now. "
I wanted to argue. Wanted to tell him that being alone was the last thing anyone needed after that kind of adrenaline crash. Wanted to say a dozen things I had no right to say because he'd made it perfectly clear at the club that whatever I'd hoped might exist between us was never going to happen.
So instead, I just nodded. "Okay."
Something flickered across his face—surprise, maybe, or relief—and then he was moving again, disappearing into the crowd of staff and players who were still processing what had just happened.
I stood there like an idiot, watching him go, until Max appeared at my elbow.
"You good?" he asked.
"Yeah." The lie tasted wrong on my tongue. "I'm fine."
Max studied me for a long moment, his expression shifting from concern to something sharper. "Taz."
"What?"
"You're cold."
I blinked at him. "What?"
"You're cold," he repeated, an edge creeping into his voice now. He reached out and pressed the back of his hand against my forehead, then pulled it back like he'd touched ice. "Fuck. When did this start?"
I opened my mouth to answer and realized I didn't know. The adrenaline from the cameras and Cinder's rejection had masked everything else, but now that Max was looking at me like that, I felt it.
The cold.
It had crept in so gradually I hadn't noticed—the same way it had during the game. That slow, insidious chill wrapping around my bones, my dragon coiling tight in my chest, trying to contain something that was spreading anyway, and deep down, it terrified me.
"I don't know," I admitted, and heard my own voice come out too steady. Too calm. The way it always did when my body was doing things it shouldn't.
Max's eyes widened. "Your knee?"
"No." I flexed it automatically. Still fine. Still healed. "Nothing's injured."
"Then why—" He stopped, understanding dawning across his face. "The cameras. The stress."
I wanted to argue, but he was right. My dragon didn't just respond to physical injury—it responded to threat. And those photographers closing in, invading Cinder's space when he was vulnerable, had felt like a threat in a way that made something primal inside me react.
"Taz." Max's voice had gone softer now, worried in a way that made my chest tighten. "You need to get somewhere warm. Now."
"I'm fine—"
"You're not." He grabbed my elbow, steadying me when I swayed slightly. When had I started swaying? "Come on. Let's get you upstairs."
I wanted to argue. Wanted to insist I could handle this the way I'd handled it during the game.
But the truth was, I'd barely handled it then.
I'd needed Cinder's steady hands and calm voice to anchor me, needed his competence to cut through the cold long enough for my body to remember how to function.
And now Cinder was gone, and the cold was spreading, and Max was looking at me like I might collapse at any second.
"Okay," I said quietly and noticed my breath fog. Shit.
I rushed upstairs as quickly as I could, with Max staying close.
The elevator doors slid shut, sealing us into that tiny metal box, and I leaned against the wall harder than I meant to.
The cold had settled deep now, wrapping around my ribs, making each breath feel like I was pulling it through frost.
Max stood beside me, arms crossed, watching me with the kind of attention that made it impossible to hide anything.
"I'm okay," I said, before he could ask again.
He snorted. "You look like death."
"Thanks."
"Taz." He shifted his weight, expression torn between worry and frustration. "You need to tell me what's actually happening. Because this isn't normal, even for you."
I closed my eyes, letting my head rest against the cool metal. The vibration of the elevator moving helped somehow, grounding me when everything else felt like it was slipping sideways.
"My dragon reacts to stress," I said finally. "Physical injury, emotional threat—it doesn't distinguish. It just... protects."
"By freezing you?"
"By containing the damage." I opened my eyes and met his gaze. "It's not trying to hurt me, Max. It's trying to keep me functional." I was lying. Could he hear the panic in my voice?
He didn't look convinced. "And how's that working out?"
I almost laughed. Almost. "I'll be fine once I warm up. It just takes time."
The elevator chimed, announcing the eighth floor. Max followed me down the corridor, hovering like he expected me to collapse at any second. Maybe he wasn't wrong to worry. My legs felt distant, disconnected, like they belonged to someone else and I was just borrowing them temporarily.
I stopped at my door, fumbling with the key card. It took three tries to get it to work, my fingers too numb to grip properly.
Max reached over and took it from me, swiping it cleanly. The lock clicked green.
"I'm coming in," he said.
"I’m fine, Max. I’m going to grab a shower.” I pasted a smile on my face and laughed as if his reaction was a joke. He relaxed and nodded.
“Text me when you’re out of the shower.”
“Yes, Mom,” I teased. Kept the pretense up until he left. Even turned on the shower, but before I could actually get in, the memory I’d been forcing away since I’d hurt my knee came rushing back.
I was eight when my father lost control.
It happened as I was walking home from school. I was on the ground, knees pulled in, arms over my head while one of the boys kicked at my side and another yelled, "Ya wee runt." Not hard enough to do anything but bruise. Just enough to hurt.
“Get up,” someone said.
Then my father’s voice cut through everything.
“Get away from him.”
The boys froze. My father jogged toward us, his face tight with fury, eyes locked on me. I’d never seen him angry like that—not loud, not shouting, just… contained. Like something straining to break loose.
“What do you think you’re doing?” he snapped.
One of them shoved me again, like he couldn’t help himself.
My father took a step forward.
And the world went cold.
My breath turned white. The air burned my lungs. Ice raced across the pavement, up the fence, snapping like it was alive. Someone screamed. Someone slipped and didn’t get back up.
“Da,” I said.
I tried to stand, tried to crawl toward him, but the cold pressed me flat, heavy and suffocating. I could feel it in my chest, like something answering something else. Like the ice knew me.
The boys froze where they stood.
Three of them never moved again.
My father dropped to his knees, hands shaking, frost crawling up his neck. He looked at me then—not angry, not even afraid.
Horrified.
Ma never forgave me. “This is your fault,” she said after the doctors had let us both go because the freak weather they blamed it on hadn’t affected either of us. Her fingers dug into my arm. “You made him lose control.”
“I didn’t—”
“You always do this,” she said, her voice breaking. “You ruin everything.” She’d always disliked me, and I never knew why. Not then, anyway.
We fled Scotland anyway. New names. Canada. Cold that didn’t ask questions. The council erased our lives.
My father was never the same after the deaths. A year later, he walked into the snow and didn’t come back.
I stood in the bathroom, staring at my reflection in the mirror as steam filled the space. My hands gripped the edge of the sink so hard my knuckles went white.
The memory wouldn't stop.
A year after Dad disappeared, I'd woken up burning, but ice-cold. Not fever. Not illness. Something ancient and furious clawing its way out from under my ribs.
I'd stumbled out of bed, gasping, my skin too tight, my bones aching like they wanted to reshape themselves. The room spun. The walls pressed in. And then—
Wings.
They'd burst from my shoulders without warning, tearing through skin and pajamas, spreading wide enough to knock over my dresser. My hands weren't hands anymore—they were talons, silver-white and gleaming. My spine elongated, tail whipping out and shattering my bedroom window.