Chapter 14 - Damian
Two days back in Ravensburg, and the walls already feel too clean.
Locker room smells like it always does—sweat, damp tape, the sharp sting of ammonia from the laundry bins.
Vets sprawled in their stalls, tying skates with the kind of slow ease only years in the league give you.
Rookies loud as hell, chirping each other like the world’s not about to end when I blow the whistle.
And Elias.
My rookie.
Perched in his stall like his whole body’s running on static.
Grinning too wide at Cole’s latest jab, throwing it back fast enough to keep anyone from seeing the twitch in his knee.
He still limps when he thinks no one’s looking.
He still shifts wrong, sore from the storm and the SUV and my hand in his curls. He thinks he hides it. He doesn’t.
They all saw. Two nights ago, outside the arena—Cole’s red convertible waiting, Elias halfway there, and my hand on the back of his neck pulling him clean into my SUV instead. Not a word spoken. Not a word needed. Everyone knew what it meant.
And no one’s said a damn thing since.
The vets aren’t stupid. They’ve seen me break men for less than what Elias gives me willingly. They know better than to poke.
So the air’s sharp with silence beneath the noise. Everyone feels it. They just don’t want to bleed for it.
Coach used to run this room. Back when I was twenty and mean, before the C burned its way into my chest. But the man’s a ghost now.
He still shows up with his clipboard and his growl, still smokes cigars like his lungs aren’t rotten, but everyone knows whose voice they’re listening for.
Whose drills break them down until they puke, whose orders they’ll crawl through glass to follow.
Mine.
Because I’m better at it. Because I don’t just train them—I carve them into weapons. And yeah, the boys call me a sadist for it. They’re right. I enjoy watching them break, watching them stagger and sweat and vomit into the bins. Because every time they do, they come back harder.
The vets already know. They don’t need me to scream at them. They skate until their lungs collapse without asking. So when I drill, I drill the ones who don’t know yet. The ones who need breaking.
Tyler. Insecure. Weak. Always puffing up like he’s got something to prove. I’ll rip that arrogance out of him before it gets him killed on ice.
And Elias. Reckless. Too much fire, not enough control. Cocky enough to poke the devil, obedient enough to kneel for me the second I tighten the leash.
So naturally, I skate him the hardest.
The whistle’s cold between my teeth. The sound cuts the room in half. Conversations die. Laces pause. Sticks still.
“On the ice.”
They know what it means. No drill sheet, no warm-up skate, no slow start. It’s me. It’s punishment disguised as training. It’s hell waiting to happen.
The rookies groan. But Elias—he’s already moving.
Helmet snapped down, mouthguard between his teeth, skates pounding on the floor as he follows me out first. Grin cocky, eyes too bright, pulse hammering under skin he thinks I can’t see through.
He wants it.
He hates it.
He wants it anyway.
I’m going to give it to him until his legs collapse.
The whistle cracks.
Skates cut across the fresh sheet, boys circling up mid-ice. Cole’s already groaning loud enough for the rafters to hear. Shane mutters something about death curses. Tyler looks like he’s going to piss himself. Elias grins.
“Suicides,” I bark.
The groan is collective, loud, broken. Helmets drop forward, sticks clatter against thighs, curses spill like blood.
I don’t repeat myself. I don’t need to.
Blue line. Red line. Far blue. End boards. Back again. Over and over until legs give out. Until lungs rip. Until every rookie remembers whose ice this is.
The vets pace themselves—controlled, steady, efficient.
Cole still chirps every time he hits the boards—“Mats, slow down, I’m fragile!
”—but his stride is clean. Viktor is a machine, expressionless, skating like he’s pulling the whole rink behind him.
Mats keeps his shoulders loose, his lungs even.
Shane’s twitching but he moves, like curses really will hold his legs together.
The rookies? They drown.
Tyler collapses on his third set, sprawling face-first across the circles. He claws back up, gasping like a landed fish, and I blow the whistle. He stumbles, but he keeps going. Good.
Elias doesn’t fall.
Not once.
He pushes like fire itself is eating his heels.
Curls plastered to his forehead under the helmet, mouthguard clenched between his teeth, chest heaving so hard I can see the ribs under his pads.
His strides are sloppy, his stops sudden enough to spray snow halfway across the rink, but he doesn’t stop.
Every time his knees threaten to buckle, he digs in harder. Every time his lungs hitch, he snaps his head up, grins like a devil, and pushes again. He’s breaking. I can see it—his legs trembling, sweat dripping, throat raw. He’s breaking and he doesn’t care.
Good.
Break for me.
The whistle keeps cutting. Blue line. Red. Blue. Boards. Again. Again. Again.
Tyler pukes first. Collapses against the glass, helmet tilted, heaving until he’s spitting yellow bile onto the ice. The vets don’t even look. They’ve all done it. Hazing doesn’t come from pranks—it comes from skating until you’re sick and still dragging your body back onto the line.
I don’t stop blowing the whistle.
Elias’s legs are gone by the fifteenth set. I see it when his stride falters, when his stick drags. But he doesn’t fall. He doesn’t puke. He doesn’t even slow down.
I watch him crawl through it, eyes wild through the cage of his helmet. He hits the boards, pushes off, legs trembling like they’re bone on bone. Every stride a miracle. Every gasp a fight. And still—he goes.
The team sees it. They’re slowing, panting, breaking down into steady collapse. Elias isn’t steady. He’s chaos, reckless, half-dead. But he won’t quit.
And that—
That makes me smile.
It’s cruel, quick. The kind of smile that freezes the whole bench. Cole sees it first, his mocking dying mid-sentence. Shane shuts up. Mats raises his brows like he knows exactly what it means. Even Viktor flicks his gaze toward me, grunts low under his breath.
Because they all know what it means when I smile.
It means someone’s been claimed.
The whistle cuts one last time. The sound echoes final. Everyone collapses where they stand—helmets hitting knees, gloves dropping to ice, curses spilling ragged. And Elias—
He’s bent double at the red line, lungs shredded. His hands shake where they clutch his knees. His whole body trembles like it’s one twitch from falling.
But he’s still grinning.
Green eyes bright. Wild. Locked straight on me.
He doesn’t say it. He doesn’t need to.
Was that good enough, sir?
I let the silence hang. Let the sound of them fill the rafters, let the weight of my smile sink into every one of them.
Then I nod. Just once.
“Mercer. Last one standing.”
And the whole rink knows it.
The room reeks of sweat, rust, and half-dead rookies. Gear clatters, tape peels, the steady hiss of the showers in the back. Bodies slump heavy against stalls, lungs still fighting for air after I dragged them across hell and back.
Cole’s sprawled with his pads half-off, head tipped back against the wood, gasping like he just survived a war. His grin’s sharp even through the wreckage.
“Jesus Christ, Cap,” he wheezes, dragging a towel over his face. “Do you fuck as mean as you coach?”
The room cracks with low laughter, weak but alive. Even Mats smirks into his water bottle. Tyler groans. Shane mutters something about curses in the bedroom.
And then—
“Yes.”
Elias’s voice. Raw. Hoarse. Loud enough to cut the room in half.
Everything stops.
Every single pair of eyes swings toward him.
He’s slumped in his stall. The second the word leaves his mouth, his eyes go wide, glassy and wrecked. His hand flies up, slapping over his own lips like he could shove the sound back inside. Like he could erase it.
The vets stare, mouths twitching. Cole’s grin dies into shock, then flickers back again like he doesn’t know if he should chirp or run for his life.
Mats leans forward, brows high, grin curling slow.
Shane blinks like he just witnessed a summoning.
Tyler looks two seconds from fainting. Viktor?
He just exhales, low, quiet, like he already knew.
I don’t say a damn word.
I peel the tape slow from my knuckles, every rip sharp in the silence. Let it curl to the floor. Let them watch me smirk. Just once. Just enough.
Because Elias Mercer just confessed for the whole room to hear—
And I don’t need to confirm it.
I already own him.
Elias jerks his hand off his mouth, coughs once. His laugh comes cracked, too high to be real.
“Yeah…nope.”
And then he’s gone.
Bolts upright so fast his pads nearly topple, skates clattering, curls sticking to his temple as he stumbles for the back. The showers hiss, steam curling out the door, swallowing him whole.
The room stays silent.
Not a breath. Not even Cole.
I peel the last strip of tape from my knuckles, slow, deliberate, and drop it on the floor. My smile cuts across the scar, eyes fixed as stone.
And then I follow.
The hiss of water swallows the noise of the room the second I step inside. Steam clings to the tiles, damp heat coating my skin. Elias is braced against the wall under a spray, jersey stripped, pads half-peeled. His breath comes too sharp, too fast. He doesn’t even hear me at first.
Until I’m there.
My shadow swallows him. My hand fists his hair, jerking his head back until his throat arches, water running down the line of it. His gasp cracks off the tile.
“Running, pup?” My voice is low, rough, rumbling through the steam. “That how you answer me?”
His hands slap against the tile, useless, his ribs sawing under the spray. “Cap—I—fuck, I didn’t—”