Chapter 12
Dante
The video room was dark, illuminated only by the flicker of the projector screen. It smelled of stale coffee and impending doom.
"Pause," Coach Vane barked.
The image froze.
"Look at your head, Moretti," Vane said, tapping the screen with a laser pointer. The red dot danced over my helmet. "Where are you looking?"
I stared at the image. My head was turned slightly to the left. Toward the stands. Toward the empty seats where Arabella usually sat during open practices.
"I was checking the winger," I lied. My voice sounded hollow in the acoustic tiling of the room.
"Bullshit," Vane snapped. "The winger was on your right. You were looking at the bleachers. You were distracted. And because you were looking at the bleachers, you missed the drop pass from Jax. Turnover. Counter-attack. Goal."
Vane hit play. The screen showed exactly that. I missed the pass. The B-squad center stripped the puck, skated past my frozen form, and buried it in the net.
Vane killed the projector. The lights flickered on, blindingly bright.
I sat in the front row, clutching a water bottle so hard the plastic crinkled loudly. My knee throbbed—a dull, relentless bass line to the headache splitting my skull.
"I spoke to Thomas Reed this morning," Vane said, leaning against his desk. He crossed his massive arms. As a Bear shifter, Vane wasn't just big; he was dense. His presence filled the room, suffocating.
My stomach dropped. "The Kraken scout."
"He's getting cold feet, Dante," Vane said bluntly. "He likes your size. He likes your stats. But he thinks your head is gone. He thinks the 'personal issues' are bleeding onto the ice."
"I don't have personal issues," I said through gritted teeth.
"You smashed your phone against the locker room wall yesterday," Vane pointed out. "Jax told me."
"It slipped."
"Don't treat me like a rookie," Vane growled. "You're stressed. You're hiding an injury—yes, I know about the knee, I'm not blind—and you're chasing the Liaison's daughter."
I stood up. I couldn't sit there anymore. The wolf was pacing, agitated by the accusation.
"I am not chasing anyone," I said. "I am handling it."
"It doesn't look handled," Vane countered.
"It looks like you're drowning. Listen to me, son.
You have three weeks until the Frozen Four.
You have two months until the Draft. This is the bottleneck.
This is the moment that decides if you play in the NHL or if you end up working construction in Spokane like your cousin. "
The threat hung in the air. Construction. Obscurity. The failure of the Moretti legacy.
"I won't fail," I whispered.
"Then prove it," Vane said. "Lock it down.
No more distractions. No more tutors. No more late nights.
You eat, you sleep, you skate. You become the machine I know you are.
Because if you blow this, Dante... there are no second chances for guys with your bloodline.
The world is waiting for you to snap. Don't give them the satisfaction. "
I walked out of the office without another word.
But the words followed me. The world is waiting for you to snap.
They didn't know the half of it. I wasn't just going to snap. I was going to explode.
I initiated Protocol: Machine.
It was a defense mechanism I had perfected in high school, right after my father died. When the emotions became too much—when the grief and the rage threatened to trigger the shift—I shut everything down.
I turned off the want. I turned off the hurt. I became a creature of pure function.
06:00: Gym. Leg press. Rehabilitation exercises for the knee. Pain is data. Ignore the data.
08:00: Classes. Sit in the back. Take notes. Speak to no one.
12:00: Nutrition. Chicken, rice, broccoli. Fuel, not food.
14:00: Practice. Skate until the ice turns to slush. Hit everything that moves.
18:00: Film study. Analyze every mistake.
I ghosted Arabella.
I didn't mean to be cruel. I meant to be efficient. I told myself it was for her protection. Her father was watching. The scouts were watching. If I stayed away, the heat would die down.
But mostly, I stayed away because she was the kryptonite to my Machine.
When I was with her, I wasn't a robot. I was a man. I felt things. I felt the warmth of her skin, the softness of her laugh, the terrifying pull of the bond. And feeling things made me weak. Feeling things made me look at the stands instead of the puck.
I ignored her texts.
Ara: Hey, haven't heard from you. Is your knee okay?
Ara: Did I do something wrong?
Ara: I'm at the library. Brought you gummy bears.
Ara: Dante, please just tell me you're alive.
I read them. I felt the sharp stab of guilt in my gut. And then I deleted them.
Focus, I told the wolf, who was currently scratching at the back of my mind, whining for his mate. Focus on the goal.
By Friday, I was a wreck.
My body was holding up—barely. The knee was stiff, but functional thanks to the brace. My stats in practice were back up. I was hitting harder, skating faster. Vane was happy.
But my soul felt like it had been scraped out with a rusted spoon.
I was in the Hive’s basement gym late Friday night. It was midnight. The house was quiet for once, most of the guys out at a bar or sleeping.
I was on the bench press. Three hundred pounds.
Down. Up. Down. Up.
My pectorals burned. My triceps shook. The rhythm was hypnotic. It drowned out the thoughts.
You miss her.
Shut up.
She thinks you hate her.
It’s better this way.
You’re a coward.
"You're going to drop that on your neck," a voice said.
My concentration shattered.
The bar wavered. My left arm buckled. Three hundred pounds of iron plummeted toward my throat.
I caught it. Just barely. I locked my elbows, straining, the bar hovering two inches from my Adam's apple.
I grunted, heaving it back onto the rack with a metallic clang that echoed like a gunshot.
I sat up, gasping for air, sweat dripping from my nose.
Arabella was standing at the foot of the bench.
She didn't look like the shy librarian tonight. She looked furious.
She was wearing a raincoat—it was pouring outside—and her hair was plastered to her cheeks. Her hands were shoved into her pockets. Her violet eyes were storm clouds.
"Are you trying to kill yourself?" she asked, her voice trembling with suppressed rage. "Or are you just trying to see how much weight you can lift before you snap?"
"How did you get in here?" I rasped, wiping my face with a towel. I avoided her eyes. I couldn't look at her. If I looked at her, the Machine would break.
"Jax let me in," she said. "Because unlike you, Jax answers his phone. He said you've been living in the gym for three days. He said you look like a zombie."
"Jax needs to mind his own business," I muttered, standing up. I walked over to the water cooler, turning my back on her.
"Don't you dare turn your back on me, Dante Moretti," she snapped.
I froze.
"I texted you," she said, her voice rising. "I called you. I waited at the library for three nights in a row. And you just... vanished. Without a word."
I drank the water slowly, buying time. I needed to be cold. I needed to drive her away.
"I've been busy," I said flatly.
"Busy?" She laughed, a harsh, incredulous sound. "We slept together, Dante. We—" She lowered her voice, glancing at the door. "We bonded. You don't just ghost someone after that because you're 'busy'."
I turned around. I let my face settle into the stony, impassive mask of the Captain.
"It's the playoffs, Arabella," I said. "It's the draft. This is my career. I told you—I have to focus."
"And I'm what?" she asked, stepping closer. "A distraction?"
"Yes," I said.
The word hung in the air between us, cruel and sharp.
She flinched as if I’d slapped her. Her eyes filled with sudden tears, but she didn't let them fall. She stood her ground.
"I'm a distraction," she repeated. "Is that what you call it when someone holds you while you're in pain? Is that what you call it when someone believes in you when you hate yourself?"
"You don't understand," I growled, the wolf waking up, snarling at me for hurting her. "You don't understand the pressure. Your father threatened me, Arabella. The scouts are watching. If I slip up—if I am seen with you, if I lose focus for one second—I lose everything."
"You're going to lose me," she whispered.
"Maybe that's for the best," I said. My heart was breaking, shattering into dust in my chest, but I forced the words out. "You're the Liaison's daughter. I'm the monster. It was never going to work. We were just... playing house."
She stared at me. Her face went pale.
"Playing house," she echoed. "Is that what the knot was? Just playing?"
"It was biology," I lied. "Instinct. It happens."
She looked at me for a long, agonizing moment. She was searching for the lie. She was searching for the Dante who had kissed her palm in the greenhouse.
But I didn't let her find him. I kept the wall up.
"Okay," she whispered. Her voice broke. "Okay. If that's what you want. If the game matters more than... than us."
"It has to," I said. "It's all I have."
"That's the saddest thing I've ever heard," she said.
She turned around and walked out.
I watched her go. I watched the yellow raincoat disappear up the stairs.
The door clicked shut.
I was alone.
I turned back to the bench press. I added two more forty-five-pound plates.
Focus, I told myself. You did the right thing. She's safe. You're focused.
I lay down. I lifted the bar.
One.
A tear leaked out of the corner of my eye and rolled into my ear.
Two.
The wolf howled in the darkness of my mind, a sound of pure mourning.
Three.
I was the perfect machine. And I was completely empty.
The crash came two days later.
It wasn't physical. It was mental.
I was in my room at the Hive. It was Sunday night. I was supposed to be studying the defensive strategies of the Denver Pioneers, our next opponent.
But the words on the tablet were blurring.
The headache was back. Blinding. Crippling. It felt like someone was driving a railroad spike through my temple.