Chapter 7 #2
Bodies rise from their seats. The air goes electric. And I’m already halfway over the boards, murder in my bones, before Coach clamps a hand around my arm. “Wait.”
My head snaps to him, eyes slicing like blades.
“Let the kid handle it.”
I freeze. On the ice, Elias wipes sweat from his brow, tosses a glance over his shoulder at the blood, and smirks.
“Oops,” he chirps, tongue in cheek. “Should’ve kept your stick up.”
And the game continues. Blood on the ice. A brat loose at center. And the creeping certainty inside me that if one more of these red-and-gold fucks comes near Elias, I’m going to end someone before the third.
A Mauler—cocky, dumb, tired of being outplayed—throws his glove. Throws it. Right at Elias’s feet like he’s calling him out on the schoolyard.
Gasps ripple through the crowd. The refs start shouting.
I stand so fast I nearly vault the boards, my helmet in one hand, knuckles clenched white around the cage. I don’t hear Coach. Don’t hear the team. All I see is that Mauler posturing in front of Elias.
Elias laughs. “Oh,” all grin and teeth and goddamn chaos. “You wanna go, princess?”
The Mauler swings and misses, and Elias erupts in the same breath, launching off the ice and slamming him into the boards with enough force to rattle the entire bench, plastic shaking and glass groaning as every Reaper surges to their feet in one violent, collective motion.
“THAT’S MY FUCKING PUP!” I bellow, voice like thunder cracking across the barn. “FUCK HIM UP, MERCER!”
The Mauler folds like wet laundry. Elias doesn’t blink.
Viktor scoops up the loose puck with all the casual grace of a man who’s seen this shit before, skates right through the chaos, and slaps the puck top shelf past the Mauler goalie so hard I think the net shifts.
5–1.
I roar from the bench. Elias turns toward me, grinning, panting, blood streaking down his jersey, none of it his. He points to the Mauler writhing on the ice and winks.
Five-minute major and Elias grins the whole way to the box. He skates past the ref like he owns the league. “Was that not a clean hit?”
The ref glares, tight-lipped. “Benched. Five.”
Elias winks. “Fair. I needed a water break anyway.”
Cole’s howling, losing his mind on the ice. Mats tries to high-five Elias mid-escort. Shane’s in the crease, beating the glass with his glove like it’s a drum solo and we’re the headline act.
I’m grinding my teeth so hard I might crack one. I don’t want to bench him. Not when he’s fire incarnate. But five minutes is five minutes and we need a fucking center.
I turn to the bench. All eyes are already on me. “Brooks,” I growl. Tyler’s face goes pale. “Get in there. Take the faceoff.”
He blinks. “Me?”
“No, the ghost of Wayne Gretzky. Yes, you. Get your ass in.”
He scrambles, helmet askew, mouthguard dangling, stick half-taped like he just got drafted five minutes ago. I shove him over the boards before I can regret it. The poor bastard lines up across from a Mauler twice his size, hands shaking.
I lean over the bench. “Win it, or I bench your ass for life.”
He nods, a little too fast, like he might cry.
Elias is lounging in the box, slouched like it’s a VIP lounge, sipping bright blue Gatorade, legs wide, mouth running.
“Hey,” he calls across the ice to the Mauler goalie, all sweet menace.
“I liked it better when you cried after I scored. You okay, sweetheart?” He knows what he looks like.
Blood on his lip, jersey clinging to sweat, legs sprawled like a fucking prize.
And he knows I’m watching. That this isn’t punishment. It’s foreplay.
The goalie flips him off.
Elias winks.
God help me, I’m hard and homicidal.
The puck drops and somehow—by divine spite or sheer dumb fucking luck—Tyler wins it. Barely. Scrapes it back with the heel of his stick. Mats scoops it and hauls ass out of the zone.
The bench erupts. Cole’s laughing so hard he nearly topples over the boards. Shane’s pounding the glass like he’s got front row tickets to the apocalypse. Even Viktor raises a brow from across the ice.
Elias shoots upright in the penalty. “DID TYLER JUST WIN A FACEOFF?!”
Tyler turns, grinning like a golden retriever on crack. “I DID IT!”
“DON’T TALK TO THE OTHER TEAM,” Elias yells. “YOU’LL JINX IT!”
I bury my face in my gloves, trying not to laugh. Because yeah, somehow, the fucking rookie won a draw, and now he looks like he just earned a Medal of Honor.
I glance at the clock. Four and a half minutes until I get my center back just as the Maulers score.
Motherfucker.
Shane slams his blocker into the post so hard the whole net rocks. His mouthguard hits the ice and his stick almost joins it.
And in the penalty box Elias growls, low and feral, chest tight, fingers white-knuckled on the Plexiglas. I look over. He’s seething. “Put me back in,” he mutters through gritted teeth, like the glass between us can hear him. “Put me the fuck back in, I swear to God—”
I lift a brow from the bench. He points at the scoreboard with one hand and pounds his chest with the other. “They scored on Shane, Captain! You’re just gonna let that happen?!”
I smirk. Because that—that is my fucking pup. And when that clock ticks down to zero on his penalty he’s going to burn them alive.
Clock hits zero and Tyler bolts off the ice like someone lit his skates on fire, barely makes it to the bench before Elias is already on, ripping across the zone. He doesn’t look at me. Because he’s hunting.
Shane hasn’t said a word since that last goal.
He just crouches in his crease, shoulders tight, white-knuckled on his stick like he’s two seconds away from dropping it and fist-fighting the sun itself.
He’s vibrating with the rage only a goalie can feel, one part pride, one part fury, all of it barely contained. But Elias… Elias makes it right.
Because with thirty-seven seconds left in the period, he snatches the puck at center, splits two Maulers, dangles around their defenseman with a fluid, effortless grace that looks more like dancing than skating, and rips the shot glove-side past their goalie without so much as a blink.
Net. Red light. Crowd screaming itself hoarse.
And Elias doesn’t celebrate. He doesn’t raise his arms, doesn’t grin, doesn’t even spare the bench a look. He stares down the Mauler who chirped him earlier then skates past their crease and gives a single, razor-sharp nod. Nothing more.
A spite goal. Clean and deadly.
Second period ends: Reapers 6, Maulers 2.
When Elias skates to the bench, sweat running down his temple, he finally looks at me. Those green eyes blaze—bright and hungry—and his voice breaks on a pant. “I want my reward later, sir.”
I smirk, heat coiling low in my stomach. “You’ll get it.”
The third period drops into madness. The Maulers switch their lines and send out the vets—heavy fuckers, real bruisers, men built not to play the game but to end it. They’re not skating to win now. They’re skating to hurt. And they go straight for my boy.
One slashes him at center ice. Another nails him with a late check, long after the whistle, and the ref doesn’t see it, or chooses not to.
Elias yelps. That sound—sharp, pained, involuntary—cuts through me like a blade.
I’m already vaulting over the boards before the bench even reacts, snarl ripping out of my chest, stick clenched in my fist and ready to break skulls.
But Elias moves first. He bolts. He skates faster than I’ve ever seen him move, rage on blades, curls flying, jersey flapping behind him like wings. He rips the puck out from under one of the Mauler bastards and screams my name across the ice.
The shout cracks across the ice—“CAP!”—and a heartbeat later the puck rockets toward me, hard and fast, a perfect missile straight to my tape.
It hits like thunder, vibrating up my stick, but I don’t hesitate for even a second.
Instinct takes over. I catch, drop, and fire.
A one-timer so clean it sings through the air.
Top shelf, no mercy. The net ripples, the horn wails, and the crowd detonates into noise, a tidal roar swallowing the rink whole.
7–2. I turn, because Elias is down behind the play.
Not flat, not sprawled, but crouched and wincing, clutching that same goddamn knee that’s been haunting me all playoffs.
And the Mauler vet who hit him is still circling nearby, slow and deliberate, like he’s looking for seconds.
My vision goes white. My stick drops from my hand. I’m already skating, blades carving fury into the ice as I lock onto the bastard who dared touch him. The Mauler looks up just in time to see me coming for blood, only for another voice to slice through the red haze. “Cap, no!”
That voice. That crack in it—wrecked and unmistakably his—cuts straight through the roar in my ears. I turn on instinct. Elias is up. Limping, pale, hand gripping his knee, but he’s up. Watching me with fire still burning behind his eyes.
The Mauler bolts the moment he sees my attention shift, skating off like a coward with a target stamped across his spine. Good. He can run all he wants. Next shift, he’s mine.
But right now I’m already reaching Elias, hand wrapping around his wrist, dragging him close as if the entire arena has fallen away and it’s just the two of us on cracked, bloody ice.
“You good, pup?” I growl, eyes raking down his gear, searching for swelling, blood, anything that says he’s not fine.
Elias breathes hard, chest heaving once before he gives the smallest nod. “I’m fine,” he pants. “It just bent weird.”
My jaw locks so tight it feels like it might crack.
Every instinct tells me to bench him, wrap him in bubble wrap, barbed wire, fucking steel plating, anything to keep another stick from touching him.
But the look he gives me, sharp and burning, says don’t you dare.
So I swallow it and nod once. Keep my hand on him for one more beat.
And then we skate back side by side, breath syncing, ready for war.
Elias lines up, still favoring that leg.
Opposite him, a new Mauler—leaner, younger, but watching Elias.
My pup rolls his neck, flashes a grin sharp enough to cut, and taunts, “Hope you got dental.” The ref barely bends before the puck drops and my fucking center snatches the win again, clean and fast, like he owns every inch of this ice. The Maulers lose their minds.
After that last faceoff, they flood our zone, circling Shane like wolves scenting blood. Four on one. Five on one. Crashing the crease, jabbing at his pads, slashing at his ankles, desperate to punch something past him. They don’t care about the scoreboard anymore. They just want to break him.
And Shane? Shane hits his limit.
The moment one of them slashes at his blocker a second too long after the whistle, something snaps.
He roars—full-throated, unhinged, fed-up goalie rage—spins, rips the puck from under his own skate, and slams it with the fury of every goalie who’s ever been chirped, slashed, screened, or targeted in the history of the sport.
CRACK. The puck doesn’t slide, it flies. A straight missile across the ice. Past the refs, over sticks and helmets, cutting a clean line through chaos before it buries itself in the Maulers’ net so hard their goalie lets out a yelp and flails backward.
Shane—God bless the feral little bastard—throws both arms in the air. “MOTHERFUCKER!!” he screams, spinning in his crease with both fists raised like he’s about to lead a revolution.
Every Reaper hits the ice at once. Mats gets there first, tackling Shane. Cole launches over the bench rail, screeching like a banshee. Tyler jumps on Shane’s back. Even Viktor skates over and gives a single, slow, devastatingly approving fist-bump.
I hang back a beat, grinning like a proud, violent dad, and finally skate in. I ruffle Shane’s curls through his mask like he’s my favorite troublemaker. “Hell of a shot, goalie.”
Shane blinks up at me, panting, eyes huge. “Did I just score?” He lives for this. Not just the chaos, but the validation. The proof that when the game tips into madness, he’s the one who flips it back.
“You might’ve started a war,” I tell him.
He beams.
Scoreboard flashes: 8–2. Reapers.
The horn blares again and the barn loses its goddamn mind.