Page 71 of Slashed Bonds

I saw it. I had a half second to bail and I didn’t take it, because the puck was on my stick and Killian was arriving at the far post, and if I got through the hit, the pass would be there.

I got through the hit. The pass was there. Killian buried it in the top corner without so much as a change in expression.

I also got the lip ring driven into the inside of my mouth, and the taste of it, copper and cold, was the taste of the last five years, and I grinned at the defenseman with red in my teeth and skated to the bench.

He didn’t try it again.

And someone on the second line has a broken arm, which was not Nikolai, whatever the rumor mill decides by morning. That one was the captain.

Cassian Vane. Cash.

Third hour. A scrum in the corner during a puck-battle drill. Teller, the winger I’d put on his ass during the scrimmage, decided to get his own back by cross-checking me into the boards from behind while Roz was looking at her clipboard.

I felt him coming. I got a shoulder turned.

I never got the chance to do anything else, because then the captain of the “other team” arrived between us like a door slamming, and Teller’s arm ended up somewhere arms aren’t meant to go: the sound it made was a sound I’ll be hearing in the shower for a week.

Cash didn’t say a word. He didn’t look at Teller on the ice. He looked at me, once, a flat check of a look, and skated back to the drill.

Roz never looked up from the clipboard. I’m choosing to believe that was deliberate.

The committee liaison did look up.

A Beta in a gray suit at the end of the bench, laminate on a lanyard, a tablet he’d been typing into all night. He watched Teller go down. Observed Cash skate away. He typed something, and then he looked at me, a long, evaluating look I’ve gotten from clinicians, caseworkers, and one particularly memorable judge, and I looked back until he found something on his tablet more interesting.

Conduct review. That’s the word Roz used. They’re not here to see if we can play. They’re here to see if we can be controlled.

Good luck with that.

And Nikolai’s boyfriend is Killian.

Killian Graves. Number four. Defenseman, enforcer, and the man I elbowed in the face in the lobby, who has not mentioned it and doesn’t seem inclined to.

I want to call him Kill for short.

On the ice, he’s exactly that.

He doesn’t hit the way other enforcers hit. He doesn’t even hit much. He shows up in a lane a half second before you need it, and the lane stops existing, and you either turn back or you go into him, and going into him is a decision your body regrets before your mind has caught up.

I went into him twice tonight. On purpose. To see.

Wall. Legal team. Confirmed.

They all are, in their way.

I got the official introductions after the scrimmage, one at a time, Roz reading names off the sheet like she was calling roll for a prison. Position, number, one sentence each. Nothing you’d put on a program.

And I understand now.

Why none of them are on a normal team.

Why a roster this good has spent four years being buried by a committee that could have made money off it.

Because these are not men who survive in the real world.

Not the version of it that gives you a jersey and a sponsorship and a pleasant interview and asks you to smile. These are men with files. Men with suspensions and psych notes and something in their eyes that makes sponsors put on their coats.

We’re the truest definition of a team with real issues.