Chapter 3
ALOIS
PRESENT DAY
My pulse hadn’t come down yet.
It sat heavy in my chest, slow and deliberate, still deciding whether the fight was over. My hands ached in time with it, knuckles throbbing under tape, shoulder tight where I’d taken the last hit. Adrenaline always left behind a kind of quiet—sharp, hollow, and familiar.
Around me, the room started to exhale in pieces.
A stick clattered to the floor and stayed there a second too long. A laugh restarted, thinner than before, like it had to push past something on the way out. Tape ripped somewhere down the row, the sound too loud in the space it cut through.
The storm had broken.
What it left behind was worse.
I stood there a moment longer, letting the energy drain out of my muscles, out of my hands, out of the part of me that still wanted to push back just to prove I could. There was nowhere for it to go now. No hit to take. No body to absorb it.
So it settled where it always did.
Behind my ribs. Quiet. Waiting.
Then I walked to my stall.
MüLLER.
Clean block letters.
Not a name.
A label. A warning. A brand.
I stripped off my gear in automatic motions. Gloves. Elbow pads. Jersey peeling off damp skin stretched taught over aching muscle. Cold air hit my chest, harsh enough to make me shiver.
Across from me, Jonah Kapur untied his skates with the calm focus of a surgeon, no wasted movement, no rush. He glanced up, eyes steady and kind.
“Good fight,” Jonah offered quietly. He had a way of speaking like he didn’t expect anything from you, which made it harder to disappoint him.
I grunted a response that might’ve been agreement. Jonah accepted it like it was conversation.
Zachary “Zee” Hendrix—rookie sensation, loudmouth, too much enthusiasm—hovered two stalls down, peeking at me like I was a live animal. He finally cleared his throat. “Uh. Thanks.”
I looked up.
Zee’s ears went red. He tried to square his shoulders and failed. He was built like speed and optimism, the kind of player marketing teams loved. The kind the league protected.
The kind I protected, even if I never admitted it.
I nodded once.
Zee’s relief was immediate. He scurried away like he’d survived something.
Ty dropped into his stall to the right of mine to mine, flopping down with theatrical exhaustion. “Captain’s gonna give himself an ulcer,” he muttered.
Oliver, now half-dressed and scrolling through his phone, didn’t look up. “Cam’s under pressure.”
Ty snorted. “So are we. Doesn’t mean we have to be—” He searched for the right word, landed on a gesture at Cam’s back. “—that.”
Oliver finally glanced up. “Watch it.”
Ty’s mouth twitched. “Yes, Dad.”
Oliver’s phone buzzed again. He read something, and his expression flattened.
“What,” Ty demanded. “What is it?”
Oliver held the screen out.
I didn’t need to see it to know.
But I did anyway.
A photo—blurry, taken from too far away, mid-fight. My face caught in the split second before impact, eyes narrowed, mouth hard. The angle made me look bigger, darker, more vicious.
A caption underneath from some account with a blue check:
MüLLER LOSES IT AGAIN.
FROSTHAWKS “ENFORCER” CAN’T CONTROL HIMSELF.
Comments already piling up.
Trade him.
Trash.
Love him.
He could break me in half.
I volunteer as tribute!
Ty leaned over my shoulder, reading. “Oh my God. They’re obsessed with you. Like—clinically.”
Oliver’s gaze went to my hands. “You good?”
I flexed my fingers again. The pain grounded me. Kept me from thinking too hard about the part that hurt more: how quickly the world decided what you were.
“I’m fine,” I repeated, and Ty made a face.
Jonah’s voice drifted over. “Want ice for that?”
I shook my head. “Trainer will handle it.”
Ben Holliday—head trainer, perpetually tired, perpetually unimpressed—appeared at the end of the row like he’d been summoned by my stubbornness alone. He took one look at my hands, then at my face.
“You bleed on my floor again,” Ben warned, “and I’m charging you.”
“Send the invoice to Rawlings,” I deadpanned.
Ben’s mouth twitched. That was as close as he got to smiling.
He wrapped my knuckles with practiced efficiency, cold pack pressed into my palm. The chill bit deep, and it felt good. Like punishment melting into relief.
Across the room, Cam laughed at something someone said. The sound was easy, natural. Like the earlier tension hadn’t happened. Like I hadn’t been carved down to a single sharp truth.
I didn’t watch him. Watching would make it real.
Instead, I stood and headed for the showers.
Hot water pounded my skin, washing away sweat and tape residue and the faint metallic tang that always clung after a fight. I scrubbed harder than necessary. My shoulder protested. My hands throbbed.
I kept scrubbing anyway.
When I came back out, towel around my waist, the room had shifted into postgame decompression. Guys joked. Music got louder. Someone threw a wad of tape at Ty and missed.
A staffer in a suit hovered near the media door, looking harried.
PR.
They always looked harried around me.
Char Anderson stood at the front of the group—Director of PR, sharp eyes, sharper posture. Next to her, Sarah Yu’s expression was controlled in the way only brilliant people got when they were annoyed. Two interns flanked them, clutching clipboards like shields.
They watched me.
Liability.
I met Char’s gaze briefly. Her jaw tightened. Not fear—calculation.
I pretended not to notice and kept moving.
That was the lie I told myself: that I didn’t care.
In the media corridor, the lights were even worse—too bright, too sterile, designed to expose. The air smelled like cologne and old coffee and the faint chemical tang of cleaning solution.
Reporters clustered behind a rope line, badges swinging, phones already up. Vultures with credentials.
As soon as I appeared, the noise rose.
“Müller!”
“Alois!”
“Over here—”
“Was that planned?”
“Are you worried about supplemental discipline?”
“Do you regret it?”
Regret was their favorite word. Regret meant remorse. Remorse meant you’d accept their narrative. It meant you’d perform.
I didn’t perform.
I stepped up to the mic stand and planted my feet, shoulder-width, hands loose at my sides. The stance looked calm. It wasn’t. It was containment.
A reporter in a Frosthawks tie leaned forward, eyes gleaming like he’d already written the headline.
“Alois, that was your fourth fight this season,” he pressed. “Do you think you’re setting the right example for the younger players?”
I could feel Char’s stare from the side, sharp enough to cut.
Behind the rope, cameras clicked. A shutter sound like insect wings.
I breathed in slowly. The air tasted like metal.
“I protected my teammate,” I returned. My voice came out low, flat. “That’s the example.”
The reporter blinked. “So you don’t regret it?”
“I regret that it was necessary.”
A few murmurs. Pens scribbling.
Another voice—female, crisp. “There are people calling you reckless. Volatile. Do you have anything to say to fans who think you’re a problem for this organization?”
I looked toward the sound.
The woman had styled, long dark hair and a practiced smile that didn’t reach her eyes—polished in a way that felt intentional rather than effortless.
I didn’t recognize her, which meant she was either new to this room or new to this level of access.
Not nervous. Not green. Just new enough to think pushing harder would get her somewhere.
Early twenties, if I had to guess. Hungry in a way that sharpened everything—her posture, her timing, the precision of the question itself. Not the kind of reporter looking to understand. The kind looking to take something.
I didn’t know her name, but I noted her anyway, filing her alongside the kind of problems that didn’t announce themselves until they were already in your way.
There was no hesitation in her, no instinct to soften the edge of what she was asking.
Not local media habits. Not cautious. Not careful. Something else. A bigger appetite.
She wanted blood. Not my fists—my confession.
I let my gaze settle on her, steady.
“I can’t control what people think,” I answered. “I can control how I play.”
“And tonight?”
“Tonight,” I returned, “we won.”
The woman’s smile tightened, the kind that came from resistance, not retreat. She tried again. “Do you understand why the league might look at that and see someone who can’t manage his temper?”
A flash of heat rose in my chest.
Temper. Like I was a child.
I kept my face blank. Let the silence stretch just long enough to make her uncomfortable.
“My temper didn’t win that game,” I replied. “My team did.”
Somewhere beside me, Char inhaled sharply through her nose. It wasn’t approval. It was resignation.
I stepped back from the mic. The questions surged, louder, more frantic.
“Alois—”
“One more—”
“Any comment on Captain Dunne’s—”
I didn’t stop.
As I walked away, I felt it—the moment a camera caught my face at the wrong angle, the split second my mouth tightened, my eyes narrowed. The glare they loved. The one that made me look like a threat instead of a man with sore hands and a tired shoulder and too many years behind him.
Someone would post it before I made it to my stall.
Back in my corner of the locker room, I sat and stared at my hands. Ben had cleaned the blood off, wrapped the knuckles, taped them tight. The skin still looked angry underneath, bruises blooming like storm clouds. I flexed my fingers carefully.
In the mirror across from me, my face stared back—jaw rough with scruff, hair damp, eyes pale and flat from fatigue. A man built like a warning sign.
I didn’t think I was a monster. But I knew how easy it was to look like one.
My phone buzzed in my locker. I pulled it out.
A notification. Just the same photo Oliver had shown me—already circulating, already dissected.
MüLLER LOSES IT AGAIN.
I stared at it for a second longer than I should have.
The angle. The timing. The version of me people preferred.
I locked the screen and set the phone on the bench.
The locker room noise blurred at the edges. Guys moving around, laughing, showering, planning dinner. Life continuing like it always did, fast and loud and easy for people who didn’t have to think about where they fit inside it.
I sat there in the middle of it, wrapped hands resting on my thighs, and let the quiet settle behind my ribs. The rebuild pressure hung over us like frost you couldn’t scrape off. The team wanted a new identity. A clean slate. A future that didn’t look anything like the last few seasons.
And I was the part that didn’t fit clean into that.
Too old for the reset.
Too visible to ignore.
Too easy to blame when something tipped the wrong way.
The headline waiting to happen.
I exhaled slowly through my nose.
Across the room, Oliver caught my eye. He didn’t look away. Just held it for a second, steady, like he was making sure I was still here. Still in it.
Ty yelled something stupid across the room. Jonah laughed. Cam’s voice cut through the noise, lighter now, like nothing had happened.
I dropped my gaze back to my hands.
Wrapped. Controlled. Functional.
That was the job.
That was always the job.
The world saw the hit. The fight. The moment.
They didn’t see the line before it. The decision. The reason.
By morning, my name would be trending again for all the wrong reasons. I’d tell myself I didn’t care. Then I’d get up before dawn. Make real coffee. Move my body like it still belonged to me. Do the work.
Because if I didn’t—if I stopped, even for a second—if I let the quiet underneath it all get too loud—I’m running out of time—I didn’t know what would be left.