Chapter 7
Chapter seven
Breakaway - A player skates in alone on the goalie with no defenders between them.
Taranis
I'd barely made it through the doors of the training facility five days later—still shaking off the flight, still replaying the way Cinder had looked at me in the locker room like I was something broken he couldn't fix—when Coach Kinkaid intercepted me.
"Rees. My office. Now."
His voice was flat. Controlled. The kind of controlled that meant something was very, very wrong.
I followed without argument, my dragon stirring uneasily beneath my ribs.
Theron Kinkaid was the ultimate in controlled.
He moved like a man who'd seen centuries come and go, and when he closed the office door behind us, the weight of whatever was coming pressed against my chest like a physical thing.
"Sit," he said.
I sat.
He didn't. Instead, he turned his tablet toward me and slid it across the desk.
The headline hit me first.
HERO OR LIABILITY? Colorado Dragons' New Medical Staff Under Fire After Shocking Past Revealed
Below it, a photo of Cinder—kneeling on the ballroom floor, hands pressed to a stranger's chest, face tight with concentration. The image should have been heroic. Instead, it was framed like evidence.
I scrolled down, my stomach dropping with every line.
Cinder Adair, recently hired as a traveling medical assistant for the Colorado Dragons, was photographed performing CPR on a cardiac arrest victim at a Vancouver hotel this week. While the intervention was successful, sources have raised serious concerns about the organization's vetting process.
Adair was terminated from Denver General Hospital five months ago following a devastating incident in the pediatric emergency department.
A six-year-old girl died under circumstances that remain disputed, with Adair's then-boyfriend—journalist Gavin Mercer—publishing a detailed exposé that named Adair specifically as the nurse who had complained the attending doctor failed to escalate care in time.
"He told me everything," Mercer stated in a follow-up interview. "I thought the public deserved to know what happened. I never expected him to lose his job over it."
The article went on to question whether Adair could be trusted with sensitive team information.
"If he shared confidential patient details with a journalist once, what's stopping him from doing it again?
How can a top-tier organization trust Cinder Adair to keep his mouth shut about player injuries, medical conditions, or anything else that might make headlines? "
I stopped reading.
My hands had gone cold—actually cold, not just the ambient chill of the facility. The dragon in my chest coiled tight, protective instincts flaring so hard I had to grip the edge of the desk to keep from standing up and doing something stupid.
"This is bullshit," I said, my voice coming out rougher than I intended. "He didn't fail anyone. His boyfriend screwed him over. Cinder did everything right."
Kinkaid watched me with those ancient eyes, expression unreadable. "You know this how?"
"I looked it up." The admission felt like exposing something private, but I didn't care.
Kinkaid leaned back in his chair, fingers steepled. For a long moment, he didn't speak. Then, quietly: "You like him."
It wasn't a question.
"Yes," I said. There was no point lying. Not to another dragon. Not about this.
"And last week, in the locker room, when he tried to pull you from the game—"
"He was right." The words came out before I could stop them. "My temperature was dropping. It happens when I'm stressed. When my dragon thinks there's a threat. Cinder noticed. He tried to help. And everyone dismissed him like he was hysterical."
Kinkaid's jaw tightened. "I saw the footage. Heard the audio." He paused. "He wasn't wrong about the hypothermia. I've been watching your readings for the last few weeks. They concern me because this hasn't happened before."
Ice slid down my spine. "Coach—"
"We'll discuss that separately." His voice brooked no argument.
"Right now, I need to know what you want to do about this.
" He gestured at the tablet. "Because that article is everywhere.
And Cinder Adair is about to walk into this building with no idea what's waiting for him. I knew he’d been fired, obviously, and what happened, but Nancy vouched for him.
I convinced management to give him a chance.
" He huffed. “He’s way overqualified for this job and we're lucky to have him. He worked in a pediatric ICU and happened to be in the ER when the girl came in because they had a huge pile-up of about ten cars, so they called everyone in.”
My chest constricted so hard I couldn't breathe for a moment.
He probably didn't know. He was probably on his way here right now, still dealing with being dismissed and ignored and treated like his concerns didn't matter—and he was about to find out that his past had been dragged up again, weaponized again, used to paint him as untrustworthy and dangerous.
By the same people who were supposed to be his colleagues.
Travel time had coincided with down time and I hadn't seen him for three too long days, and before that only with other people.
“We can put a positive spin on this,” Kincaid said. “But if he doesn’t know, I don’t want him blindsided.” I lurched to my feet. “When you’re done, we need to talk about your temperature control.”
I knew that. I needed some advice, but I had no idea who to ask. Maybe Max would have some ideas. But I had to get to Cinder first.
I caught him in the parking lot.
His car was a disaster—rusted fender, broken windshield, the kind of vehicle that looked like it might not survive another Colorado winter. He was just stepping out, messenger bag slung over one shoulder, face drawn with the kind of exhaustion that came from not sleeping and pretending you had.
He saw me and stopped.
"Taranis?" His voice was careful. Guarded. Still professional despite everything. "Is something wrong? Did your temperature—"
"Cinder." I stopped a few feet away, close enough to see the shadows under his eyes, far enough that I wouldn't crowd him. "We need to talk. Before you go inside." I'd managed to avoid him for the rest of the road trip, and I knew he'd noticed.
Something flickered across his face—wariness, confusion, the beginning of that defensive wall I'd watched him build and rebuild since the day we met. "If this is about last week, I already know I overstepped. I'll apologize to Coach Kincaid and—"
"It's not about that." I swallowed hard, hating what I was about to do. Hating that I had to be the one to tell him. "There's an article. It came out this morning."
He went very still. "What kind of article?"
I pulled out my phone, already queued to the page, and held it out to him. "I'm sorry. I wanted you to see it before you walked in there."
His hand trembled slightly as he took the phone. I watched his face as he read—watched the color drain from his cheeks, watched his jaw tighten, watched something behind his eyes shatter into pieces so small I wasn't sure they could ever be put back together.
"No," he whispered. "No, no, no—"
"Cinder—"
"They used the photos," he whispered. "From the hotel. They used—" He scrolled down, and I saw the exact moment he hit the part about Gavin. About the exposé. About whether he could be trusted. "Oh God."
His knees wobbled.
I caught him before he hit the pavement, my hands closing around his arms, steadying him against the side of his rusted car. He was shaking—full-body tremors that had nothing to do with cold and everything to do with a wound being ripped open for the second time.
"I didn't—" He gasped for air, eyes wild. "I never told him anything to hurt anyone. I was grieving. I was falling apart. I thought he loved me, and I—" A sound escaped him, raw and broken. "They're calling me a liability. They're asking how anyone can trust me."
"They're wrong," I said firmly. "Every word of that article is designed to hurt you, not inform anyone. It's garbage journalism written by people who don't care about truth."
He looked up at me, and the devastation in his expression made my dragon roar with the need to protect, to destroy, to find whoever had written this and make them understand exactly what they'd done.
"Everyone's going to see this," he said, voice barely audible. "Everyone I work with. Everyone on the team. They're going to look at me and think—"
"They're going to think you saved a man's life," I interrupted. "That's what the photos show. That's what happened."
"But the rest of it—"
"The rest of it is your ex-boyfriend being a piece of shit and reporters being vultures." I tightened my grip on his arms, willing him to hear me. "You did nothing wrong. Not then. Not now. And anyone who reads that article and thinks otherwise isn't worth your time."
He stared at me, breath coming in ragged gasps. "Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?"
"Warning me. Being here. Being—" He gestured helplessly. "Kind. After I pushed you away. After I told you I couldn't—"
"Because you deserve kindness," I said simply. "Whether or not you want anything else from me. Whether or not you ever let me close enough to matter. You deserve to know that someone sees you. The real you. Not what they wrote."
His face crumpled, and before I could second-guess myself, I pulled him into my chest.
He didn't fight it.
He just collapsed against me, fists clutching my jacket. I held him in that parking lot, my dragon settling into something fierce and certain beneath my ribs. We both heard a door slam and looked up. Cinder took a step back, and I missed him already. “Are they going to fire me?”
It was Nancy, and she looked so fierce. “Of course not,” she snapped out. I smiled because Nancy was capable of going full-on mama bear. “Come on, let’s get a hot drink in you, and I want to go through the rookie medicals.”