Page 137 of Slashed Bonds

That’s what an alliance looks like on ice. It’s not five men protecting one. It’s five positions that make the puck go where they want it to go.

Tomorrow’s lines are on a whiteboard in his room. I saw it when he carried me past. My name on the left side, in his handwriting, next to a note that says backhand draws, D-zone and under it, circled, she reads the outlet before Dubois does. Trust it.

He trusts it. On a whiteboard. In marker.

The last people who wrote my name on a whiteboard wrote it next to a draw I was supposed to lose on purpose, so Theo could look better for a scout. I did it. I lost the draw. The scout signed Theo and nobody told me until the paperwork was done.

Different whiteboard. Different marker. I’m aware I’m doing the thing where I compare, and I’m aware it’s not fair to him, and I’m doing it anyway because fair is a thing I stopped being able to afford.

“You can save yourself,” he says. “You’ve got every tool you need to do that.”

Like it isn’t a riddle. Like it’s a line on a whiteboard.

“But what you need is an alliance.”

“An…alliance,” I whisper.

“You need the pillars that stand around you and make sure nobody gets past. You need the walls that shield you from the tactics of people who want to watch you burn.”

He pauses. Looks straight into my eyes.

“You don’t want to be saved, Malice. You want permission. To ruin the people who thought they could get away with ruining you.”

And he smiles.

Fuck.

The butterflies, the ones I thought were dead, the ones that came back screaming in a lobby a week ago, go off in the pit of my empty stomach like a flock lifting off a wire.

“So I’m that permission.”

I reach out.

I don’t decide to. My hand’s out of the water and around his neck, over the scar, and it’s tight, so tight I know my nails are in his skin, and I know it hurts.

He doesn’t move.

Doesn’t flinch. Doesn’t put a hand on my wrist. He keeps his eyes on mine while I hold his throat, and the amber in his scent doesn’t waver.

“You’re giving me permission to use you,” I whisper.

Like it’s a curse. Like it’s a thing a person shouldn’t say out loud.

The smile that comes this time is different.

It softens him. Those dark eyes, which I’ve watched read a room and read a faceoff and read me, go soft at the edges with something I can only call conviction, and I know, before he says it, that he means every word.

“Use me, Malice. I’m in your domain.”

Not a drop of a lie in it.

Not a single betrayal waiting in the back of it to bite me in the neck. I’ve been looking for the tell since the frost, and there isn’t one, and for the first time in five years I’m looking into the eyes of an Alpha who’s telling me the truth, and nothing but the truth.

My hand opens.

Slowly. The nails come out of his skin, and there are four crescents on the side of his throat, red, next to the scar, and he doesn’t touch them. He doesn’t look at them. He keeps his eyes where they’ve been since the frost.

And I say the only thing I’ve got that’s worth anything, because an alliance is a trade, and I don’t take without paying.