From the opening shift, I knew it was going to be ugly. The air in the arena was charged, the noise sharper, more frantic. Fans were louder, more rabid. Every slap of the puck, every scrape of a blade on the ice sounded like a challenge. And the opposing team had clearly watched film and come in swinging.

  They wanted to rattle us. They wanted to slow us down.

  They wanted Roan.

  I knew it the moment he took his first shift. He skated clean, precise, measured, but I didn’t miss the faint stiffness in his shoulder, the way his right arm didn’t extend quite as far when he checked another player. Most people wouldn’t notice. But I did.

  I felt it.

  And it made my pulse pound.

  Roan didn’t show pain, not even in the locker room last night after the win. He let the team doc look at the hit he took in the third, kept it light, let Jay and Rhett rib him a little, even smirked when I arched an eyebrow at him. But I’d seen the way his jaw clenched. The way he rotated the shoulder when he thought no one was watching.

  He could play through it.

  But I hated that he had to.

  Even now, watching from the owner’s suite again, surrounded by sponsors and execs and media handlers pretending not to sweat, I had to fight the urge to bolt downstairs, grab a stick, and start knocking heads myself. My skin buzzed under my blazer, nerves stretched taut and tuned to my guys on the ice below.

  Marchand didn’t hover, but he lingered nearby. “They’re targeting him.”

  “They’re trying to find a weak point,” I agreed, keeping my voice even. “They think if they get Roan off the ice, the rest will unravel.”

  “They’d be wrong,” he said after a beat. “But not completely.”

  No. They wouldn’t unravel. But Roan was more than our captain. He was gravity. Rhythm. Pulse. Without him… things would fracture.

  Jay was working overtime to keep the plays flowing, and Rhett—my beautiful, reckless, wild thing—was putting on a show in the net. He’d already stolen three sure goals and earned a penalty for taunting a forward who tried to crowd his crease.

  The doc had eyes on the bench, just off the tunnel. I caught his expression once through my binoculars — calm, focused, calculating. He’d check every player post-game, just like he had the night before. But if Roan couldn’t keep his range, I knew the choice might be taken out of his hands.

  And I didn’t know what that would do to us. Or to me.

  Because I was running hot tonight.

  Overclocked. Wired.

  The tight bun I’d worn to keep things professional was already coming loose. My blazer had come off after the second period when the temperature in the suite climbed with the energy of the crowd. There was a crackle in my blood, like static, and every breath I took had to be slow and deliberate. I wasn’t in heat, not even close, but I wasn’t not feeling something.

  I caught one of the league execs watching me out of the corner of his eye.

  Not the time, buddy.

  A hard whistle pulled my focus back to the ice just in time to see Rhett stop a breakaway cold and kick the rebound to Jay, who swung it to Roan. He shot across the blue line like a missile. The goal was dirty — scrappy and wild, with two defenders on him and one clinging to his jersey — but it counted.

  2–1, Howlers.

  The crowd lost its mind.

  I didn’t cheer.

  I breathed.

  They were back on the ice less than a minute later.

  Still fighting. Still leading.

  And I couldn’t stop watching the way his shoulder moved.

  When the buzzer finally blared and the game ended with a narrow win, my heart was hammering. We had the victory — barely — and as the team moved toward the handshake line, I pulled out my phone.

  Texted one word to the group thread that had become a quiet lifeline:

  Status?

  Roan responded first.

  Roan:

  Functional. Mostly pissed.

  Jay:

  No dislocations. No new bruises. No sense of self-preservation. So, same.

  Rhett:

  Can confirm. Would still hit.

  My snort surprised the people near me.

  I smiled anyway. Let them wonder.

  Because my boys weren’t broken.

  Tomorrow, we’d fight again.

  I’d thought I knew what tension felt like.

  I’d walked through scandal, through the storm of Rylan’s bullshit, fielded reporters like landmines, turned press releases into weapons, and spun narratives with a smile. I’d held my own in boardrooms full of alphas and billionaires. I’d even walked into heat with three of the most powerful men I’d ever known and come out the other side still standing.

  But this?

  This was different.

  This was war.

  From the moment puck dropped in the third game, the ice was a battlefield. Not a game. Not a match. A grudge. Our lead in the series had the other team frothing, and the strategy was clear: hit hard, hit fast, hit dirty.

  Roan knew it. He read it in the first thirty seconds and adjusted accordingly, but there was only so much a captain could do. Jay played smart. He was fast, fluid, always one step ahead. And Rhett, god help him, was the chaos we needed when the tempo threatened to stall. But the danger was pulsing under the surface, waiting.

  From the box, I could feel it coming. The way the crowd leaned forward. The shift in the rhythm of the plays. The brutal hit Roan took in the corner that didn’t even draw a whistle.

  The look on Jay’s face when he snapped something low to one of the refs under his breath, and the way the ref didn’t respond.

  Something was off.

  And then… it happened.

  Jay had the puck on the rush, slicing through neutral ice like he was born there. Roan was wide, ready. And even from across the rink, I could feel Rhett’s focus in the crease, locked on the play like he was already bracing for fallout. The play was fluid, beautiful—until it wasn’t.

  From the blind side, a defender launched.

  Full body. High elbow.

  Time slowed.

  I couldn’t even scream. The sound caught in my throat as Jay’s head snapped back, his body went limp mid-air, and he crashed to the ice like a broken marionette.

  The crowd sucked in a breath.

  Then silence.

  Then chaos.

  Rhett was out of the crease and on the guy who hit him before the whistle even blew. Roan was there a second later, fists clenched, fury barely contained. The other player was dragged back by two teammates and a ref, but Rhett wasn’t backing off — not until Roan shoved him hard and pointed to Jay.

  Jay.

  He hadn’t moved.

  I didn’t remember standing. Didn’t remember the way I must’ve shoved past someone in the box—a sponsor, maybe one of the owners—didn’t hear Marchand bark my name. All I knew was that I had to get down there. My body was moving before my brain caught up.

  But the med team was already on the ice.

  One checking Jay’s vitals. Another stabilizing his neck.

  I stopped just short of the glass, my palm flat against the cold as they lifted him onto the stretcher. The whole arena was a vacuum. Thirty thousand people and not one of them made a sound.

  Except for Rhett.

  He stood frozen in the crease, chest heaving, like the net was the only thing keeping him from going feral all over again.

  Roan stood near the bench, his knuckles white where they curled over the top of the boards.

  Jay disappeared down the tunnel taking what felt like half of my lungs with him. When I finally turned back, Marchand had stepped beside me. His mouth was tight, his jaw clenched, and for once, the CEO mask had cracked.

  “Medical team’s on it,” he said. “We’ll get you updates the second they know.”

  I nodded, even if the motion didn’t feel real. I was aware of too many things at once — the hush in the box behind me, the murmur of the crowd, the buzz of my phone in my coat pocket.

  The referee skated to center ice. Five-minute major for the hit. Ejection.

  Not enough.

  Nothing would be enough.

  Roan skated back into position. Rhett didn’t move, not even when the ref waved him back into the crease. He just stood there, shaking with restrained violence, like the net itself was the only thing keeping him from tearing someone apart.

  The game resumed, but it wasn’t a game anymore. No, it was a reckoning, and they’d united the whole team in wanting to take them down.

  If the league didn’t do something after this, I’d burn the whole damn system down myself.

  Chapter

  Thirty-Three

  ROAN

  The final buzzer didn’t sound so much as it cracked through the tension like a hammer on ice.

  We won the game, even though it didn't feel like it.

  I didn’t skate the handshake line. Neither did Rhett. We left that to the rest of the guys while we headed straight for the tunnel, our gear still on, helmets in hand, every muscle tight enough to snap.

  Jay should’ve been here.

  That hit had been dirty as sin. The player aimed high, adjusted his timing and went specifically for Jay. The kind of move that was supposed to have been outlawed a decade ago. I’d watched it play out in real time and I still couldn’t wrap my head around the angle. Jay hadn’t even seen the bastard coming.

  I had.

  Too late.

  My jaw hurt from clenching. My gloves had blood in the lining. It wasn’t Jay’s, thankfully, but mine, from punching the wall of the locker room tunnel when they’d taken him off the ice.

  The moment I stepped into the medical wing, I found him in the exam room, hooked up to the monitors, his eyes open now but glassy. Pupils still sluggish. Doc was with him. One of the trainers. The lights were dimmed.

  "You're fine," I muttered under my breath, a prayer to the universe as much as a report to myself. "You're gonna be fine."

  “You here to babysit me?” Jay’s voice was hoarse, but there was a thread of life in it.

  I moved to the side of the bed, planting one hand on the rail. “No. I'm here to break both your kneecaps if you try to put skates back on too soon.”

  Jay grinned. It didn’t last long. The wince that followed twisted something in my gut.

  “He's lucky,” the doc said, stepping back. “Concussion, yes. But it could’ve been a lot worse. He’s already more alert. We’ll keep him monitored for the next twelve, twenty-four hours. But he’s off the ice until I clear him.”

  “No arguments,” I said.

  Jay raised a hand in surrender. “I'm concussed, not stupid.”

  I was going to kill someone for this.

  “Coach is in the locker room.” Rhett's voice came from the hallway. “Livid.”

  “He mad about the hit?” I asked.

  Rhett snorted. “He’s mad I nearly threw hands in the middle of the third period. Gave me the whole ‘play smarter, not hotter’ speech.”

  I stepped out into the hall and found the other alpha, shirt off with a bag of ice pressed against his jaw. His knuckles were raw, still smeared with the evidence of his restraint.

  “He thinks I cost us momentum,” Rhett said, tone sharp enough to cut. “Even though we won. Even though they tried to fucking murder Jay out there⁠—”

  “Hey.” I stepped in front of him, blocking the nearest bench he looked one second away from launching across. “We don’t waste energy chewing glass. You want to kill someone, wait until the league review drops.”

  Rhett’s nostrils flared, his jaw ticking.

  Then—a very decisive click of heels.

  She was there.

  Wren.

  Hair pulled back, coat still on — and a look in her eyes like she’d just walked through fire and hadn’t noticed. The moment her gaze hit Rhett, he stilled. That wildness in him pulled back like the tide retreating from the shore.

  When she shifted that look on me, it was all I could do not to wrap her in my arms and bury my face in her neck.

  “You okay?” she asked. It wasn’t just her words, but how her voice was low, soft, and checking on me, even as she held herself under the firm grip of control.

  I nodded. “You?”

  She didn’t answer. Just moved past me and into the medical room, crouching next to Jay’s bed like she belonged there.

  Jay blinked at her. “Hey, boss lady.”

  She smiled. Then curled her hand around his, brushing her thumb gently over his knuckles.

  I stepped back, gave her space. Rhett did too, watching the quiet scene from the hallway.

  It hit me then what just happened. Not the win or the rage bubbling beneath my ribs or the violence of what happened and needed to be repaid in kind. It was Wren. The three of us and her.

  The way she’d come in and calmed Rhett with a look. The way Jay lit up when he saw her. The way my heartbeat evened out knowing she was with us now.

  She had become our gravity.

  Despite everything I promised her about not using her heat to bind her to us, every damn one of us was already caught in her orbit. I couldn’t be mad about it. It was her.

  Jay's eyelids fluttered again, half-lidded and heavy. He was fighting the fog, but not well.

  “His pupils are better, but I don’t like the way he’s still drifting,” Doc said with a frown that didn’t ease even as he pulled back from the bed. “I’d prefer he get a CT and full evaluation. I want to transport him to the hospital, rule out anything more serious before I even think about letting him out of my sight.”

  Jay groaned. “Doc…”

  Wren didn't flinch.

  “That’s fine,” she said, already rising from the chair beside him. “I’ll follow you. As soon as I handle the press, I’ll meet you there.”

  Jay shifted, brow furrowing. “You don’t have to⁠—”

  “Yes, I do,” she said simply, smoothing her hand down his arm. “So try not to fight me about it. You’re staying with me tonight once we get the all clear.”

  There was no anger in her words. No push. Just certainty and it worked.

  Jay blinked up at her again, like she’d hung the moon. “Okay.”

  My shoulders loosened a fraction. That right there—that’s what he needed. Not orders. Not pressure. Just her, steady as hell, making it all make sense.

  “I’ll ride with him,” Rhett said, stepping up beside the bed, and I knew without him saying it—he was making sure I didn’t have to go. He was covering Jay. And leaving me to cover Wren.

  I caught his eye and gave him the smallest nod. Got it.

  Doc still didn’t look thrilled. “You’re not family,” he pointed out, directing that at Wren.

  She gave him a cool smile. “According to team documentation, I’m listed on every one of their emergency contact forms. Including Jay’s.”

  Jay hummed, clearly trying not to grin. “She made me do it.”

  “That may be.” Doc crossed his arms. “Still doesn’t make it protocol.”

  “I’ll sign whatever release you want,” Wren replied. “You’re taking him to St. Luke’s?”

  Doc hesitated, then nodded. “I’ll allow it. But I’ll be the one clearing him for release. Not hospital staff.”

  “Understood.” She was already reaching for her phone.

  Jay glanced at Rhett. “You okay driving?”

  “I’m better than you,” Rhett said dryly. “And I don’t have a head injury.”

  Doc muttered something about alphas being terrible patients as he turned to prep for transport.

  “Not an alpha, Doc,” Jay mumbled, but that didn’t seem to help his case. It was my turn to hide a smile.

  I stayed where I was, still braced in the doorway, watching as the pieces clicked into place around her. Wren didn’t raise her voice, didn’t bark commands, didn’t posture. Yet everything shifted as soon as she took control. Rhett backed her play. Jay relaxed. Even Doc fell in line.

  Then the door opened again.

  Marchand.

  Of course.

  He didn’t speak right away, but I didn’t miss the way his gaze cut from Wren to Jay to Rhett before landing on me. Assessing. Calculating. He didn’t miss much, but I knew that look. He wasn’t thrilled with what he’d heard.

  Still, to his credit, he didn’t interrupt the medical decisions being made. Not until Doc and Rhett wheeled Jay out ahead of them, headed for the back entrance and the waiting transport van.

  Only then did Marchand speak.

  “You’ve got the press wrangled?” he asked Wren, voice low and careful.

  She didn’t turn around. “I will. Give me ten minutes. Then I’ll be at the podium.”

  “You’re really taking him home?” There was a sharpness to the question, one he tried to temper but didn’t quite manage.

  Turning slowly, Wren arched one eyebrow. “Do you have an issue with your head of PR ensuring a key player gets medical clearance and support in a stable environment?”

  “I have an issue with optics.” Marchand exhaled slowly. “And unnecessary exposure.”

  I stepped forward. “He’s already exposed. The hit was in front of a stadium full of fans. You think the press aren’t already all over it?”

  His jaw tightened.

  Wren, cool as ever, didn’t take the bait. “I’ve already drafted the statement. We’re controlling the narrative. But I won’t pretend that Jay’s going to be sitting home alone with a bell to ring if he needs help. That’s not who we are.”

  Marchand’s gaze slid between us again. Measuring. Finally, he just gave a clipped nod. “Handle it.”

  “Always do,” Already tucking her phone into her blazer, she just gave him a return nod.

  I watched him go, jaw tight. Distrust swarmed through me. I had no idea what he was up to, but I wanted to be ready to intercept.

  “You okay?” I asked once we were alone again.

  She turned to look at me, that calm exterior finally cracking just enough to show the wear underneath.