Chapter 7
Round two. Home ice. And every bone in my body already knows what’s coming.
The Maulers.
They’re not just here to play hockey. They’re here to claw their way into our bones, snap us in half, and bleed us dry if we so much as blink wrong.
Red and gold bastards with fists faster than their skates and a reputation for hits that land harder than their goals.
They talk shit like it’s their native language, and they know we’re the ones to beat this year.
Good.
I’m in the mood to ruin something.
The rink is vibrating before the puck even drops. Packed barn, rafters shaking, every fan in black and red howling for blood. The Reapers are loose in the tunnel, blades scraping concrete, shoulders tense, every man a fuse waiting to blow.
Elias is pacing like a caged animal, all lean muscle and jittery adrenaline, licking his mouthguard between his teeth, flipping his stick from hand to hand.
His curls are still damp from warmup, cheeks flushed, eyes fixed on the Maulers through the crack in the tunnel curtain.
The bruise on his knee hasn’t faded yet—yellow at the edges now, but I see how he shifts his weight, how he favors it slightly. He’s still hurting.
I told him to sit. He looked me dead in the eye and said, “Then bench your best chance at winning. I dare you.”
Goddamn brat.
I didn’t bench him. I’m not stupid. He’s the best center in the league right now.
Numbers don’t lie. He’s got the best faceoff stats, fastest pivot, tightest plus-minus in the playoffs.
Even Coach can’t argue anymore. Just muttered something about cursed knees and legacy runs and walked away to stress-smoke somewhere.
So Elias is where he belongs. Center line. Me on his left. Cole on his right. And the entire arena waiting for us to break something.
The Maulers skate out cocky, all swagger and sneers. Their captain—big, ugly and stupid enough to think he’s funny—glides past Elias with a smug grin and chirps, “Careful, rookie. That pretty little knee still holding up? Or you gonna cry for your boyfriend to kiss it better?”
Elias flashes a grin that makes my cock twitch and my fists curl. “Try me,” he taunts back, voice bright with murder. “I’ll bury you so deep in this ice your kids’ll be born shivering.”
Cole wheezes. The Mauler sneers.
The puck drops and we explode. Elias snatches it with no hesitation, no fumble, just pure reflex, stick slicing sideways.
He doesn’t just win the faceoff, he steals it, tears up the ice, spinning on that bad knee like it doesn’t exist, dragging two Maulers behind him.
I’m right behind him, teeth bared, left wing and locked in, skating like I want someone’s blood on my blade.
Cole flies up the right side screaming, “Suck my dick, Maulers!”
Jesus Christ.
Elias draws both defensemen straight to him—bait so perfect it belongs in a textbook—but he doesn’t slow, doesn’t even glance.
He flips a no-look pass across the crease like he knows it’ll land.
And it does. Cole slams it home, back of the net, horn screaming as he rams the boards with arms wide and chest heaving.
“That’s right, bitches!” he roars. “Tell your mom I said hi!”
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
He skates over to the Maulers bench, points at the goalie, and screams, “You look like my ex. Ugly, useless, and getting fucked in front of a crowd!” He’s always the loudest when he’s hurting.
Cole chirps to cover the bruises. Performs like laughter can keep the fists from landing.
But I see the wince when he skates off. The way his left glove trembles before he yanks it tighter.
I’m already moving to drag his ass back to the huddle, but I’m too late—one of the Maulers launches over the boards and tackles him, gloves dropping as hell detonates around us.
Viktor goes airborne, Mats screams something vicious in Spanish, and Shane’s cackling like a demon from the crease, mask tilted like he summoned this shit himself.
I grab the closest Mauler by the collar and slam him into the glass hard enough to shake his ancestors. The ref’s whistle might as well be a mosquito. It’s useless. Everyone’s swinging. Cole’s laughing through a face full of fists. Elias is yanking at jerseys, trying to drag him out.
One of the Maulers lands a clean fist to Cole’s jaw.
Viktor doesn’t even hesitate. He moves like death in skates, no windup, no warning, just six-foot-six of Russian obliteration charging across the ice and colliding with the guy mid-swing. The Mauler hits the ground like a sack of bricks. Viktor looms, dead-eyed, helmeted, a statue of consequences.
“PETROV! BOX!” the ref screams.
Viktor shrugs, turns and glides toward the penalty bench with eerie calm, like he didn’t just commit second-degree assault in front of a sold-out crowd. The Mauler’s dragged off the ice behind him, blinking.
Cole’s still wheezing on the ice, clutching his jaw and grinning. “THANK YOU, DADDY!” he yells after Viktor.
Viktor doesn’t even turn. Just raises one gloved hand and flips him off without breaking stride.
The bench chokes on laughter. Coach mutters something about needing a daycare and goes back to chain-smoking in the corner.
We reset back to center. Elias is already waiting at the circle, crouched low like a predator who’s learned to grin before he bites.
He stares the Mauler across from him down, all teeth and mischief, a smirk playing on his lips.
“Hey,” He chirps, light and sweet as poison, right as the ref bends to drop the puck.
“Tell your backup goalie I’ll need dinner first if he wants to go down on me too. ”
But the Mauler across from Elias leans in close, venom curling under his breath just below the ref’s range. “Got first line ‘cause you suck dick that well, rookie?”
Elias gives him a wicked smile and purrs. “Oh, you have no idea how well.”
Click.
The puck drops and, of course, Elias wins faster than the Mauler can even register it, Elias has it gone—snapped off the draw, sliding it straight to me without hesitation.
I catch, drag it wide, bait their defense just enough to make them bite, then fire it over the ice toward Cole, who’s tearing up the wing like he’s running from the devil.
“Curls, bury it!” Cole yells, grinning.
Elias is there catching and twisting and scoring as the horn shrieks and the black-and-red crowd erupts to its feet, screaming, the whole arena losing its damn mind around him.
He skates into his turn, curls plastered to his forehead, mouth split in that feral grin he gets when the world is burning right and he’s the one holding the match, only to slam straight into a wall of red and gold.
Maulers.
They swarm before the goal light even finishes its spin.
But before a single stick lifts, before the first glove drops, Cole and I are already there.
I move in fast, hard, placing myself squarely between Elias and the Mauler who won’t keep his damn mouth shut.
My shoulder slams forward, solid and unmoving. “Try it,” I growl.
Beside me, Cole leans on his stick like it’s casual and jams it into the Mauler’s skate with the most syrup-sweet voice I’ve ever heard. “Oops,” he hums. “Didn’t see you there.”
The Mauler stumbles off balance, arms flailing, ass slamming down on the ice. And Elias just steps back, still smirking, still shining like a golden menace.
The crowd’s unhinged, noise exploding from every section, fans climbing over each other to scream their lungs out. I can feel the heat in my chest as I skate back into position. Because this—this chaos, this noise, this claiming—it’s ours now.
End of first: 4–1 for Reapers.
Elias scored twice, Cole once, Mats landed a slapshot so hard it shook the boards, and the Maulers? They’re fracturing. I see it in their eyes. In the way their line changes get sloppy. In the way their fists tighten before their sticks. They’re cracking.
Which is why second period doesn’t start with puck drop. It starts with blood.
I’m on the bench, helmet off, gear loosened just enough to breathe, watching as the Maulers hit the ice like wolves—snarling, desperate, the worst kind.
They’re behind and they know it, throwing weight like it’s a bar brawl, slashing calves, swinging elbows high, cross-checking like the rules don’t apply.
Whistles come late. Hits come dirty. And every play’s meaner than the last.
Thank fuck Viktor’s back out there.
Elias is bouncing on his blades at center, high on adrenaline, body singing with contact, cheeks flushed, curls stuck to his skin, and that grin—God, that grin—like he’s daring the universe to hit him just so he can hit back. He looks like a fucking wildfire in skates. Ready to burn it all.
And I’m not with him.
Coach tossed in a vet on my wing to rotate the lines. Said I needed to breathe before I started swinging fists. And maybe he’s right. My jaw aches from clenching and my hands are already fists. I can feel it crawling under my skin.
Because they’re targeting him. And I see it. The way their enforcer drifts a little too close. The center taking shots after every whistle. That defenseman who won’t shut the hell up. They’re all circling him. Closing in.
And of course Elias chirps back. “Keep looking at me like that and I’ll start charging rent,” He snaps as he glares at the Mauler shadowing him.
Then it happens—crack, a sharp low slash that bites before the ref can even think to whistle, and by the time the sound finally cuts through the noise there’s already blood on the ice, bright and obscene against the white, not Elias’s but some poor bastard’s who thought he could get away with slashing Elias’s calf without Viktor noticing, which is the kind of rookie mistake you only make once, because Viktor levels him without a shred of hesitation, all Russian fury and cold vengeance detonating in a Reapers jersey as bodies crash and the message lands hard and final.