Chapter 11
Home ice. Game two.
I can taste blood in the air before we even hit the rink.
The Bastards are out there, skating their warmup, green and silver like poison and steel, and our fans are already foaming at the mouth, screaming down from every tier. I like it. I want them loud. I want them fucking rabid. Because this isn’t the Wranglers or the Maulers—we’re past that now.
This is war.
The Bastards are built different. Bigger.
Dirtier. Their game tape looks like a UFC highlight reel with blades.
Every shift is a fight waiting to happen, and every time we touch the puck, they try to take our heads off first. We barely scraped a win in Game 1, and I don’t mean barely like a coach would say—I mean Elias was limping, Shane was seeing stars, Cole had a cut above his eye, and Mats had to be dragged off the Bastards’ bench before he murdered someone.
And now they’re back. Meaner. Hungrier.
Good. I hope they try something tonight.
Behind me, the tunnel hums with tension.
My team. My boys. Black and red, snarling and straining at the leash.
Shane’s bouncing on his skates. Cole is vibrating, stick spinning between his palms. Mats mutters in Spanish.
Viktor just stands still, chewing gum like it wronged his ancestors, eyes locked on the green jerseys.
And Elias—my fucking center—is pacing again, hair still damp from warmup, jersey hanging loose on his hips, laces triple-knotted like he’s planning to die on the ice before he lets anyone undo them, his mouth moving under his breath until I get close enough to hear it.
“Twenty-three. Eighty-four. Forty-nine. Seventy-one.” Numbers. The Bastards’ top line. He’s dreaming about them, mumbling jersey numbers like he’s carrying them in his sleep now.
I grab the back of his neck, drag him still, and make him look at me. “You ready, pup?”
His grin is all teeth and bloodlust. “I’ve never been more ready.”
Good.
Because the second the puck drops, the Bastards go for his throat. Their first line swarms him like they’ve studied him too—they know his pivot, his weight distribution, the angle he likes to start on. One tries to slash him off the draw. The ref doesn’t see it.
But Elias does. He wins the faceoff anyway, jerking the puck back so hard it skitters into our zone, spins off, and shoves the Bastard center in the chest like it’s personal. It is.
And then it’s on. Bodies crash, boards shake. Cole launches into their defenseman and gets flattened in return. Shane makes two impossible saves in the first minute. Mats hooks someone behind the net and gets away with it. The barn is screaming.
But I’m not watching the puck—I’m watching him, number 19, playing like the entire Cup is wired straight to his pulse, fast and brutal and terrifyingly precise as he dangles past two Bastards on a bad leg, flips a backhand pass that lands clean on Cole’s stick, and doesn’t even slow when they nail him into the boards, just bounces off the hit and keeps skating.
By the second period, the game collapses into chaos.
4–4.
Every shift is trench warfare, helmets ripped loose, sticks snapping. The refs vanish—useless, terrified, letting it burn because they know the whistle won’t save anyone. Not tonight.
The Bastards didn’t come to play clean. They came for blood and elbows. And my boys don’t back down.
Shane’s taken a skate to the ribs. Cole’s wearing a gash on his chin that’ll scar beautifully. Viktor’s smiling, all teeth and hunger.
And Elias—Jesus fucking Christ. He’s vibrating, foaming at the edges. A rabid animal on blades. He skates as if he’s hunting something invisible, muttering Bastard jersey numbers through clenched teeth, swinging his stick with intent. That mouthguard dangles from his lips, forgotten.
I’ve seen him hungry. I’ve seen him furious. But this—this is personal.
Center ice. Faceoff. The crowd roars around us, thunder in our veins. Across the line, the Bastards are already glaring, already measuring the grave.
“Rip his throat out, Cap,” Cole growls behind me.
I nod once because that's all they need.
The puck drops and Elias wins it so clean the Bastards’ center stumbles, and he doesn’t even hesitate as he spins and cuts up the ice, dangling past one, then two defensemen with footwork so filthy it makes the crowd forget how to breathe, curling tight around the crease with blades slicing and eyes locked before he rips it, wrister, top shelf, net, and the horn blares like an airstrike as glass rattles under pounding fists and the fans rise as one, throats already raw from screaming.
Elias turns hard on his heel, skates backward across the crease, and yells—actually yells, mouth wide open, curls flying like a halo of hell. “HEY, EIGHTY-FOUR! THAT ONE’S FOR YOUR MOM!”
Cole shrieks. Shane launches into the boards like he’s been possessed. Viktor slams his gloves together with thunderous force. Mats yells “?Puta madre!” loud enough to make the Bastards bench flinch.
Next shift hits.
Me, Elias, Cole, Viktor and Mats, with Shane behind us tapping the post like a ritual, and the first twenty seconds are pure noise, skates and blades and contact and heat colliding as Elias darts through them at full tilt, speed and violence stitched together, while I trail wide left and wait, and Cole does what he does best, running his mouth and drawing blood with it, talking shit. “You skate like a dead grandma!”
“Your gloves smell like disappointment and regret!”
“You wish you were on my TikTok, you ugly fuck!” He’s glorious, loud and fast and cocky as hell, until the hit comes out of nowhere.
One of the Bastards—number 94, big fucker with no soul in his eyes—lines up Cole behind the play and destroys him.
No puck. No warning. The sound of it echoes across the barn and Cole flies.
Helmet off, skates in the air, he hits the ice like a ragdoll, and doesn’t get up.
Elias screams his name, Mats lets out a fuck so loud the whole crowd hears it, Shane starts banging his stick on the post.
Viktor moves without hesitation, launching across the ice and crashing into the Bastard who dropped Cole—not with a punch, but with his whole body.
He goes in hard, shoulders tucked, stick already discarded.
They hit the ice together, Viktor landing on top, and then he starts swinging—gloves gone, elbows sharp, every hit cold and precise, rage honed to something surgical.
The refs flood the ice, screaming. Half the Bastards bench vaults the boards. The crowd is losing its mind. Elias grabs Cole and pulls him back like he’s lifting a corpse off the battlefield, muttering “you’re okay, you’re okay, you’re okay” like a chant.
I watch Viktor break that man. He doesn’t stop until blood hits the ice.
Cole gets up, thank fuck. He’s staggering, sure—lip split, helmet gone, nose probably broken again—but he’s laughing. Blood in his teeth and madness in his eyes, giggling as Elias hauls him back toward the bench.
“I’M FINE,” Cole howls, waving one arm like a flag. “I’M GORGEOUS.”
But I barely register it. Because Viktor is still swinging.
He’s straddling the bastard who laid Cole out, one glove off, the other shoving down into his chest like he’s trying to punch the heartbeat out of the guy’s ribs.
The crowd’s roaring. The refs are panicking.
Elias is yelling something, but I don’t hear him.
I’m already moving. I launch off the bench and onto the ice, boots carving into blood-slicked surface, storming toward the dogpile.
And I don’t hesitate. I reach down, grab Viktor by the collar, and yank.
He resists for half a second, he fights me—body tight, knuckles still twitching, jaw clenched with silent rage—but then he hears me.
“Petrov,” I snarl in his ear. “I need you not to get suspended.”
He stops. Still crouched over the wreckage of number 94, chest heaving, mouth bleeding. Then, slowly, he turns his head and nods once.
I shove him back. “Bench,” I bark. “Now.”
He skates off without a word. A bomb with the pin halfway pulled.
The Bastard under him? He’s not getting up for a while.
I turn back to our bench just as Cole flops down beside Elias, grinning. “That was HOT,” he wheezes. “Do it again.”
I’m surrounded by maniacs.
The refs skate over like a firing squad—chests puffed, hands waving, radios crackling. “Bench warning!” one of them barks, jabbing a finger toward me like I personally summoned Satan. “Petrov’s this close to ejection. You pull him or we will.”
I don’t blink. “He got jumped.”
The ref glares. “He broke the guy’s visor with his fist.”
“He’s still breathing, isn’t he?” I growl.
Another ref sighs, pinching the bridge of his nose. “Damian, come on, pull him.”
Behind me, the team’s a disaster zone. Cole’s icing his jaw and chirping. Shane’s practically foaming in the crease. Mats is yelling in Spanish. And Viktor’s seething. Silent. Helmet off, fists clenched, teeth grinding hard enough I hear it from ten feet away.
I skate back to the bench, slam my stick against the boards once for silence. “Petrov.”
He doesn’t move.
“You’re off this game.”
Viktor turns to look at me, eyes like frozen steel, unreadable and sharp. “He hit Cole.”
“I know,” I say evenly, stepping closer. “And I need you for the next game. You get suspended, we lose our best defenseman. Is that what you want?”
He stays silent. No sound, no twitch, just a statue carved from fury. But after a second he nods.
Coach lights a cigarette right there in the tunnel. Illegal. Doesn’t give a single fuck. “I hate the Bastards,” he mutters through his teeth.
I smirk, mouth curling slow. “Get in line.”
The third period isn’t just brutal, it’s a bloodbath. Not a metaphor. Not an exaggeration. An actual goddamn war on ice.