50 - Haven
HAVEN
The rink buzzed like it always did — skates carving ice, pucks snapping off sticks like the crack of a whip. Mercer barking from somewhere behind the latest play, as guys moved through drills, sharp and focused.
Everything clicked.
Everything worked.
And still—
Something felt off.
I leaned against the glass, arms folded, watching Grayson cut smoothly through the neutral zone like he’d been born there. Ares followed, all force and impact. Sebastian called out something from the crease, already reading the next play before it happened.
My eyes drifted. Not to the ice, but to the upper level. I didn’t mean to look there. Didn’t mean to find anything.
Only I did.
The man in the suit.
It was undeniably him. Same posture, same mannerisms, same presence that didn’t belong. He stood near the railing, one hand resting lightly against it. He wasn’t watching the play. Not really.
He was watching the flow. The structure.
The outcome.
Like a man tracking numbers instead of a game.
Something I could wholeheartedly identify with.
A staffer approached him and said something. The man didn’t react right away — just gave a small nod, like he already knew what was coming — and the staffer walked away faster than he’d come.
I pushed off the glass and crossed to Mercer, without taking my eyes off the man in the suit. When he turned toward me, I nodded upward.
“You know that guy?”
Mercer didn’t even look.
“Rourke,” he said immediately.
I blinked. I hadn’t expected that.
“What do you think of him?”
That earned me a look. I couldn’t tell if Mercer was scowling at me, or if those deep-set lines were just permanent features earned by years of squinting into bright ice.
“Why?”
“No reason.”
He grunted. “Everything’s got a reason.”
He had me there. I could’ve shrugged. I could’ve backtracked. Instead, I leaned in.
“Do you like him?”
“There’s not many people I like, Maxwell.”
His eyes searched mine, looking for answers, looking for reasons. I didn’t give him anything. I was too afraid.
Eventually he turned his attention back to the ice. I was about to walk away, when he grunted again.
“No.”
I blinked. “What?”
“The answer to your question,” Mercer said simply. “Is no.”
The boards exploded just then, with a resounding crack. Someone missed a crosscheck, crashed hard, then got right back up. I didn’t even see who. I was already looking back into the upper deck.
But the man in the suit had already walked away.
“Alright that’s enough!” Mercer snapped. “Off the ice!”
The guys peeled away, skating hard to the bench. Ares vaulted first.
“You see him?” I asked quietly.
“Yeah,” he said.
Grayson’s eyes said everything. Sebastian nodded once.
We all saw him. We all felt it.
Something bigger.
Something moving behind everything we’d just fixed.
“You’re off for the rest of the night,” Mercer told the team. “No workout. No practice.”
A cheer went up — halfway, at least. The coach squashed it with an icy look.
“Don’t get excited,” Mercer added, his voice cutting like a tile saw. “You didn’t earn a night off. You earned a few hours.”
The energy dropped immediately.
“Barrage was one thing,” he continued, pacing in front of the bench. “Sentinels are another. They’re already in town. They’re already preparing. And I guarantee you, they’re not taking the night off to celebrate anything.”
No one said a word after that.
Good.
“Two days,” Mercer went on. “That’s all you’ve got. Two days to prove this—” he jabbed a finger toward the ice — “isn’t a fluke.”
Ares rolled his shoulders, jaw tight. The rest of the team remained still.
“Enjoy your night,” Mercer said finally. “Blow off steam. Get your heads right.”
A beat. Then—
“But if you come back tomorrow looking like you forgot what’s at stake…”
The coach didn’t finish the sentence. He let the silence do it for him.
“Dismissed.”
The guys broke, not with cheers this time, but with something quieter and more focused. One by one they filed away, with Grayson casting a lingering glance toward the upper level before shuffling off.
I stayed where I was for a moment, letting the noise of the rink settle around me again. It was a place that never fully went quiet. A place I hadn’t realized how much I missed.
I powered my tablet off. The screen went black, and my reflection stared back at me for half a second — flushed with adrenaline, wound a little tighter than I wanted to admit.
Quebec Sentinels.
Already in town.
Already waiting.
I slid the tablet under my arm, my eyes drifting once more to the upper level. Empty now.
But it didn’t feel empty.
It felt… watched.
Behind me, the guys filtered off the ice in pieces — laughter here, muttered plans there, energy that hadn’t burned off so much as shifted direction.
Ares would want something physical.
Sebastian would want something loud.
And Grayson—
Grayson would want to steer it. Shape it. Keep it from tipping too far in any one direction.
I exhaled slowly.
As for me? I wanted answers.
About Sutherland.
About Rourke.
About the way everything that had just started going right suddenly felt like it had drawn attention.
Not from the league. Not from the crowd.
From somewhere… higher.
Two days. That’s all we had. Two days before the Sentinels.
Two days before we found out whether the run was real—
Or whether someone was going to try and take it away from us.
I turned and headed for the tunnel, falling into step with the rest of them.
Whatever came next?
We weren’t walking into it blind anymore.