Page 177 of Slashed Bonds

A bass drop, the cue Killian built in, and I hear the whole line hear it, and twenty-two hands come up.

Masks off.

In unison. Lifted and tucked under the arm in one movement, the way we drilled it in the lounge at Viper House with Maddie filming, and the flashes go off like the building’s been shelled.

Because the three men around me have faces now.

Cassian’s, carved and blank, the jaw that’s been on a thousand phones this week. Killian’s, with the red tips of his hair falling over eyes he lets nobody see and is letting ten thousand people see. Nikolai’s, with the vitiligo across his cheek and jaw like a map of a country that doesn’t exist, his mismatched eyes finding the crowd and daring it.

The girls in the lower bowl lose their minds in a new key.

The polls. Maddie showed me one. Who’d you let bite you. The three of them took eighty percent and she’s been insufferable about it.

And then they see me.

I keep my face neutral. It’s a skill. I learned it in a boardroom at eighteen and perfected it in a facility and I can hold it through anything, through a crowd’s attention shifting, through the wave of recognition moving along the glass as people find the one face on this line that isn’t a man’s.

Some of them point.

Some of them look shocked, open-mouthed, the way you look at a thing you’d read about but hadn’t believed. An Omega. On a roster. With a number on her back and a stick in her hand and nothing on her neck but ink.

Some of them look disgusted.

I see that too. I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look for it, and it’s there, in the men in the corners and in a few of the women, the curl of lip, the lean to a neighbor’s ear. That’s the one. That’s the Halbrook girl. That’s what a slut who ruined four careers looks like in person.

Go on. Look. Get it out of your system before the puck drops, because after that you’ll be too busy watching me to hate me properly.

But there are others.

A few. More than a few. Scattered through the lower bowl and up into the cheap seats, and they’re not pointing and they’re not curling a lip. They’re beaming. Glowing like the masks, with a kind of excitement that’s too big for the moment, like they’ve been waiting for this longer than three days.

A girl at the glass with ink on her neck. A woman in the upper deck with her hand flat over her sternum. A kid, twelve maybe, in a jersey too big for her with CROWE written on the back in marker because the real ones don’t exist yet.

Like I matter. Like my existence on this line is a thing they needed to see. Like me coming back is a blessing somebody prayed for.

I don’t know what to do with that either.

I look at the kid. I give her the smallest nod a person can give, and she sees it, and I watch her scream without hearing it.

Warm-ups were twenty minutes ago and I’m still carrying them in my legs.

I’d taken the far end first. On purpose, before Ashford’s line came out, three laps along their boards with my blade dragging to feel what the ice was doing, and it was doing what Cassian’s tape said. Soft in the corner to Brandt’s left. A seam near the hash marks where the Zamboni had doubled back, a ridge you’d never see and would feel the second a puck skipped on it. By the third period that whole end will be slush, and a shot that leaves the stick early will skip on him and a shot that waits will die in the mush.

Early. Up. Every time.

Brandt had watched me do it. Standing in his crease with his mask up, chewing, a Beta with a Beta’s patience and no idea yet what he’s patient against. I’d put three on him in the line drills. Low glove, which he ate. Low blocker, which he ate. And one high, early, off the crossbar and in, and he’d turned to look at where it went like he was confirming the net was real.

Halvard had skated past me after that. Close. Shoulder near enough to brush, the way boys do when they want you to know they could.

“Pretty mask,” he’d said.

I hadn’t answered. I’d looked at his hands on his stick, white at the knuckles, the grip of a kid who’s going to hold it too tight all night and lose it on the first clean check, and I’d filed that beside everything else.

The announcer’s back.

Ashford’s lineup first, because it’s their building. Their captain, their D pairs, their sophomore who steps up too early, a winger named Halvard who gets a cheer that tells me he’s the local boy, and their goalie, Brandt, a Beta with a deep stance who’s skating slow circles in his crease at the far end where the ice is already going soft.

Shoot early on him. Top of the frame. He gives it to you if you don’t wait.