But Ryan is, conveniently, nowhere to be found.
The team helps me to my feet, and a sharp pain in my side almost takes me down again. I stumble as I adjust to limited oxygen, unable to take a full breath.
We’ve won the conference final, but there’s still a chance for North Point to make it to the Frozen Four if they’re selected for an at-large bid by the committee. Something tells me they will be. And when we meet again, I’m taking one of Ryan’s pretty teeth.
35
Luke
Ace goes down, and I die a thousand deaths. Fuck, his head. From this high up, I can’t tell how badly he hit the ice. He’s wearing a helmet, which protects his skull, but you don’t need to crack your skull open to get a concussion. If your brain rattles enough, that’s all it takes.
From where I am up in the bleachers, I can’t tell. And Ryan isn’t done. Something’s snapped, and I don’t think it has anything to do with Ace, but Ace is there.
It takes three refs to pull Ryan away from him. They drag him off the ice as the medics swarm my man, sliding across rivers of his blood.
Ace’s Dad goes gray beside me. “Grace,” he rasps. “His head.”
The same thing had happened to Ace’s mom—a concussion she never woke up from.
Instinct takes over. I catapult over Shae and East and rush toward Ace. I’ll carry him off the ice myself if I have to.
Security outside the locker room recognizes me, letting me by.
“I’m fine,” a voice I recognize says from behind a curtain. “Let me back out there.”
I rip the curtain open.
Ace sits on a bed, still in his gear, jersey off. His face is beat to shit, someone’s holding his—likely broken—nose to stop the blood coming out. It drips down his chin. His eyes are already darkening as bruises form around them.
All the boiling rage fermenting inside me explodes. I become something else. Something inhuman. The same monstrous creature I am in the ring.
A storm wearing skin.
“McKinnon—” the medic starts.
“Out,” I say, my voice quiet but with enough edge to cut through the room.
“But he needs?—”
“This is my brother, he’s a specialized medic,” Tate says. I’m sure I’ll be touched by that later, right now I want every fucking person in this room gone. Even him. I can’t handle anyone touching what’s mine, not when there isn’t a good reason. McKinnon’s beat to shit, he could still have a concussion, but he’s conscious, and well enough to complain. That means I can take over.
Everyone files out, and I pinch the soft part below the bridge of his definitely broken nose.
Ace doesn’t dare rush me or demand to be let back onto the ice for celebrations. He knows better. He’s not going anywhere until I’m sure he’s okay. Maybe not even if he is. My fingers stain with his blood as I hold tightly, applying enough pressure to choke off the bleeding. I pin him in place with my eyes. It doesn’t matter that this isn’t his fault, not when I’m like this.
The silence thickens, and my heartbeat grows loud in the absence of sound. Ace licks his dry lips, swallowing carefully as if he’s trying not to move too suddenly. Trigger my baser instincts.Perceptive. That’s where I am. The soft Daddy who spoils him rotten isn’t here. The other side of me, the one even I’m afraid of, took over sometime around when he went down. Ace can’t control him, and neither can I.
This hellhound, this fucking creature of instinct bound to me forever, is always fighting to get out. I restrain him, keep him on a leash, let him out enough to claim Ace when I need to.
But the leash is broken. Snapped. And I don’t know that I want to recapture him. Because we’re not two entities. I’m him. The beast is me. This is the side of me that’s best for protecting him, and this is what’s gonna come out every time something like this happens. Ace is gonna have to decide if that’s a dealbreaker.
I get the bleeding to stop and release him. “Stay.”
He flinches but doesn’t move. I fish out the supplies I asked Tate to bring for me—my own McKinnon repair kit. His eyes widen.
“You really stashed one here too?” he says with a little upward quirk of his lips.
A growl leaves my chest. I’m not capable of words right now. I won’t be until I have him patched up. Running my thumb lightly alongside the bridge, I assess the break, testing for tenderness and deviation. It’s swollen, but not visibly crooked. Probably a clean break.
