Chapter 19
Chapter nineteen
Power Play – A man advantage caused by an opponent's penalty
Cole
I surfaced all at once and not at all, like clawing upward through warm water and finding only ice at the top. My skin itched. My head hurt. My throat felt scraped raw. Something beeped steadily by my ear, too calm for how fast my heart was punching against my ribs.
For a moment I couldn’t remember where I was.
Arena lights? Locker room ceiling? Phoenix’s warm smile over me?
No. None of it. His absence was like a wound scraped raw, even though the ceiling above me was white and perfectly smooth, not a tile or crack in sight.
The air smelled clean in a way hospitals didn’t—more money than medicine.
Too warm. Too still. Which made my heart rate increase even more because I knew.
I blinked, and my father came into focus beside the bed. Of course he did.
He sat in a cream leather chair like he owned the place—which he probably did—in a suit that had never felt the touch of wrinkles.
Hands steepled. Legs crossed just so. He looked at me the way he did at stock reports: mildly interested, mildly bored, never surprised.
“Good,” he said blandly. “You’re awake.”
My throat didn’t feel like it worked, but I forced out, “Where—”
“Private facility,” he interrupted smoothly. “Specialized. Safer.” His gaze flicked to my face, assessing. “How much do you remember?”
I tried. And everything came rushing back in bright, jagged pieces. The game. The Grizzlies. The puck on my stick. The roar of the crowd swelling in my veins. Going for the hat trick because Phoenix was watching. The two defensemen closing in. The hit.
A sickening, whirling, bone-deep impact. Then nothing. I swallowed, wincing. “I got hit.”
“You did,” he agreed. “Hard. They carted you off after you lost consciousness. The broadcast cut away for a while, thank goodness.” His voice went cool. “Very poor optics which for once helped rather than hindered.”
Something cold slithered down my spine. He sounded irritated, not worried. I lifted my hand but it didn't move. Restraints. "The hell?"
"For your safety."
But I knew they weren't. “Coach?” The words scraped coming out. But that wasn’t really what I wanted to ask. The name I wanted to say. I was just lucky my brain had somehow worked before my mouth.
My father’s expression didn’t flicker. “He’s not here.”
The room tilted slightly. A pulse of heat flared under my breastbone, then faded. “Why?” Surely the coach…
“Because,” he said, voice softening into something dangerous, “you lost control on the ice. Again.”
I stared at him. “No. I haven’t—I haven’t in years.” But I had. The ice had melted before. Barely days ago.
“That’s what we all hoped.” He reached for a folder on the small table beside him. Thick. Crisp. Too official-looking. “But what you think happened and what actually happened differ significantly.”
My hand clenched on the blanket. “You’re lying.”
“I’m not.” He opened the folder. “And I have documentation.”
My stomach twisted. “Father—”
“You need to understand the seriousness of what occurred,” he said, calm as ever, as though he didn’t know I could barely breathe. “Your temperature spiked during play. Dramatically. Enough that the ice in your vicinity began to soften.”
My heart missed a beat. No. I would have felt that. I would have—
“You’re concussed,” he said as if that bored him. “Your recollection isn’t reliable.”
He slipped a sheet from the folder and held it up.
INCIDENT REPORT — PLAYER INJURY At 19:42 of the second period, player #78 (rookie forward) encountered an unexpected destabilization of the ice surface due to localized thermal variance. Player lost edge control and collided with the boards at high speed.
My vision blinked in and out.
A rookie. Opposing team. Barely older than Phoenix.
“No,” I whispered. “No, that can’t be…” The ice was fine. I’d have remembered.
My father sighed. “Apparently, they’re understandably upset. The boy was unconscious for several seconds. They’re running scans to rule out spinal injury.”
My stomach lurched so hard I thought I might throw up.
“I didn’t—” My voice cracked. “I don’t even remember the play—”
“That is exactly why we’re doing this,” he said, steering the conversation with the precision of a surgeon. “You don’t remember because you were losing control. The heat was radiating off you moments before the hit. You were melting the ice beneath your skates, Cole.”
My fingers dug into the sheet. Melting the ice.
Like the nightmare from childhood. Like the crack of plaster and smoke. Like screams I still heard sometimes when I closed my eyes. He watched the panic bloom across my face.
My father never yelled. He didn’t need to. “We’re fortunate the damage wasn’t worse,” he continued. “You could have severely injured the other team. Your own teammates. Officials. Imagine the scandal if the world found out—”
“Stop.” My voice was barely there.
“—that the league’s most valuable forward is a monster on the verge of a flare.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he said sharply. “You are precisely that. A killer that must be contained for the safety of everyone around you. Including yourself.”
Monster. Killer.
I shut my eyes. But the guilt on the report still burned against the back of my eyelids.
Rookie. Injury. My fault.
Cold sliced through me. The dragon inside me surged. A spark of bright, instinctive fury. For a second, the edges of my vision shimmered with heat.
My father stepped back, satisfied. “Yes,” he murmured. “There it is. That volatility. Exactly why we need to proceed.”
“Proceed with what?” My heartbeat thundered. “What did you do? Why am I here?”
Father exhaled, as if I were the one being unreasonable. “Your condition requires specialized handling. You are fortunate I arrived when I did.”
“You had me taken,” I said, breathless. “Without the team. Without—I didn’t consent.”
“You were unconscious. As your next of kin, I had every right.” He straightened his cuffs. “And now I have a responsibility to make sure you don't hurt anyone ever again.”
The room seemed to shrink. But he just continued. “To ensure you do not end your own career by accident,” he said. “Or kill someone a second time with carelessness.”
“I didn’t—”
“Read the report again.”
My hands shook against the restraints. “Father,” I whispered, “please. Just tell me what you want.”
“I want you safe,” he said simply. “Contained. Corrected.” He said it like a blessing. “Your binding is failing,” he went on. “You’re leaking heat in public environments. No one can protect you—” A cold laugh.
My throat closed.
He dropped his voice to a near-whisper. “Let me fix this, Cole. Let me make it all quiet again.”
Quiet. Like after the first binding. When the dragon went still as a grave.
“No,” I breathed. “I— I won’t go through that again.”
“You will.” He straightened. “Or you will never play again.”
My chest heaved. “You don’t have that power.”
He smiled without warmth. “I already filed a preliminary safety report with the league. Pending medical stabilization.” Medical stabilization. Suspension. Career ending.
“You can’t—”
“I can do anything necessary to protect our interests,” he said calmly.
The warmth in my chest twisted, frantic. The dragon’s tail lashed inside my ribs, demanding I run, fight, something.
A knock at the door broke the thick silence. My father looked toward it, serenity sliding back over him like a mask. “Right on time.”
The door opened.
A man stepped inside—tall, crisp white coat, gray beard trimmed with surgical precision. His eyes were the color of wet stone, and they flicked over me with academic interest. “Mr. Armstrong,” he said to my father. Then, “Cole.”
My skin crawled, and I remembered him immediately.
“This is Dr. Hartshorne,” my father said. “Our specialist.” Like I would forget. He'd aged, but not by that much.
Hartshorne stepped closer. His hands were clasped in front of him, and faint sigils shimmered along the insides of his wrists like scars dipped in starlight, and I did my best not to vomit.
“I’ve reviewed your previous binding from years ago,” he said in a low, unhurried voice.
“But degradation is evident. Stress cracks. Leakage. Quite dangerous if allowed to continue.”
I forced my lips to move. “I don’t want another binding.”
Hartshorne’s gaze didn’t waver. “Your physiology is unstable. The anomaly on the ice proves this.”
That word again. Anomaly. As if I weren’t a person. Was I a monster like Father had said? But Taranis, Keegan. They weren't. But then they'd never hurt anyone…
My father’s hand tightened briefly on the folder, then released. “Begin whenever you’re ready, Doctor.”
The dragon clawed at my chest. Heat flared behind my eyes.
Hartshorne opened a drawer beside the bed and removed a tray: Glass vials of shimmering fluid. A thin brush. Metal cuffs etched with runic lines. My breath hitched. “Very well,” he murmured, almost to himself. “Let’s begin.”
The lights hummed. The room shrank. The dragon roared, silent and furious beneath my skin. And I realized—I was alone. Truly, terrifyingly alone.
No Ignatius. No team. No Phoenix. Just me. A stranger preparing to cage the last piece of me that still belonged to myself.
Hartshorne didn’t ask if I was ready.
He just adjusted the angle of the bed so I was a little more upright, like we were about to have a civilized chat instead of a magical surgery that would carve out the best and worst part of me and lock it in a box.
“Let’s bring your heart rate down,” he said, glancing at the monitor. “You’re agitated.”
I barked a humorless laugh. “You don’t say.”
He didn’t respond. He reached for one of the vials on the tray instead, held it up to the light. The liquid inside caught the glow and shifted color, a slow bleed from silver to faint gold. My dragon went very still. “First, stabilization,” Hartshorne murmured. “To keep you conscious, but…pliable.”