Julian is still glowing from the goal, cheeks flushed, body radiating heat. He skates like he’s fucking the ice with every powerful stride—untouchable, invincible, already taking victory laps between the deaths he’s orchestrating. The crowd has bent their necks to him, and he knows it.
But Belladonna isn’t stupid. They send someone new.
Not one of their top-liners. Not a name anyone will remember. Just a body—broad, fast, ugly temper boiling under the surface. The kind of man who doesn’t skate to win. He skates to draw blood.
Julian flies down the right side, cutting between two defenders like they’re nothing more than shadows on the ice. His stick dangles loose—bait, deliberate and teasing—when the slash comes from behind. Low. Fast. Intentional. Blade straight to the ribcage.
His body jerks hard mid-stride, nearly sending him face-first into the ice. The sound he makes isn’t a scream; it’s a hiss—sharp, audible, slicing through the arena noise. Not pain. Not panic. Pure anger.
He stumbles into the boards, glove clamped tight against his side, breath snagged somewhere between his chest and his teeth. From the crease I see it all—the hit, theaftermath, the blood blooming fast and dark across his jersey where the blade caught skin. My heart slams once, hard. My hand is already halfway behind my back before the motion even registers. The gun is there. It always is. Safety off. Finger brushing the grip.
But I don’t draw. Not yet.
Because Julian doesn’t fall. He doesn’t even pause. He turns—fast, feral—grabs his stick in both hands, and swings. Hard.
He doesn’t aim for the puck. He doesn’t aim for a play. He brings the stick up like a goddamn baseball bat and unleashes it across the ice with the full force of someone exorcising a demon from his own bones. The stick snaps on impact. A crack like lightning splits the air. The shaft breaks clean in the middle, splinters exploding outward like shrapnel. It misses the guy by inches—doesn’t touch him—but that’s not the point.
That swing was never meant to land. It was meant to warn.
Julian stands there holding half a stick, breath heaving in ragged bursts, chest already stained a deep, spreading red beneath the jersey. His glove stays clamped tight against his ribs, blood seeping between his fingers. For one single heartbeat he stares down at the jagged, splintered end like it’s a weapon he forgot he knew how to forge.
Then he smiles. Slow. Twisted. His head tilts just slightly, sweat-soaked curls clinging to his jaw, and those wicked, impossible, bloodlit eyes drag upward from the broken stick to the man who slashed him—one deliberate inch at a time. No rush. No mercy. The guy freezes mid-motion, dead stop, mouth falling open with no sound escaping. His shoulders jerk back as if instinct finally caught up and screamed the truth too late: that wasn’t a slash. That was a fucking death sentence.
Julian doesn’t look ready to fight. He looks ready to stab.
And I move. My glove lifts, fingers curling back toward my spine. The gun waits there—cold, familiar, one inch of steel away from doing what Julian shouldn’t have to. Because I see it in him. I see it clear as the blood on his jersey. He’s two seconds from crossing a line that doesn’t let you walk back. From lunging. From driving that broken end into a man’s throat and skating away without so much as a blink.
I can’t let him do that.
Not because I give a damn about the Belladonna bastard bleeding out on the ice. But because if Julian kills someone tonight, he stops being mine. He becomes theirs—a story, a warning, a fucking myth carved into the syndicate’s memory.
And I’m not sharing him with anyone.
The team is already surging—Vlad stepping forward like a wall of taped fury, Luca baring his teeth in a grin that promises pain, Bishop screaming something incoherent about round two—but I don’t take my eyes off him. Julian.
Bleeding. Smiling. Holding half a broken stick like it’s a vow carved in carbon and spite. Staring at his next mistake with the kind of holy, unblinking intent that makes the air feel thinner. He hasn’t moved yet. Not a single stride. But if he does? I’ll shoot the fucker first, just to keep Julian’s hands clean. Just to keep him from crossing into territory he can’t come back from.
He turns his head then—just slightly—and locks eyes with me across the ice. For one suspended second he looks almost curious, like a child asking an impossible question. Would you stop me, Rafe? Or would you let me become the monster you made?
My hand tightens on the grip behind my back. Not yet, halo. Not tonight.
He’s still holding the broken stick, one hand wrapped tight around the splintered shaft, fingers curled just below where the carbon split in a jagged, toothlike tear. Blood drips steadily down his glove now—his own, dark and fresh from the gash across his ribs—but it doesn’t slow him. Doesn’t faze him. If anything, the pain has only honed him sharper, turned every nerve into a blade of focus. Like his body just received the clearest instruction of the night: you can kill him now if you want. And fuck, he wants to.
Julian starts skating toward the guy who slashed him with the kind of speed you save for when the outcome is already written in red—every stride deliberate, unhurried, closing the distance more than necessary. Closer than any sane person would allow on a rink without refs, with blood money riding on every touch of the puck. He’s not rushing to the kill. He’s savoring the walk to it.
Every muscle in my body locks tight, the roar of the crowd dropping away until it’s nothing but distant static. The team blurs at the edges of my vision, irrelevant. My hand moves behind me—slow, silent—fingers finding the familiar grip of the gun before my next breath even finishes. I don’t twitch. Don’t shift my weight. I just track him, every sense narrowed to the single point where Julian now stands.
He’s toe to toe with the Belladonna goon. Their skates bump, metal kissing metal, and the guy doesn’t move. Doesn’t blink. Doesn’t even seem to breathe anymore.
Julian stops so close their chests nearly brush. He looks up at the man from beneath the wet tangle of curls plastered to his forehead, blood smeared dark across the side of his jersey, ribs heaving with the raw mix of adrenaline, speed, and fury. Then he smiles. It isn’ta threat. It’s a challenge. It’s permission. Like he’s saying: Move. I dare you. Try to stop me.
The broken stick stays in his left hand, angled just enough to catch the overhead lights and flash every jagged, splintered edge—edges that would slide clean between ribs with almost no effort. My grip tightens on the gun, finger hovering over the trigger, every instinct screaming at me to intervene, to pull him back, to keep him clean, to keep him mine.
But then Julian releases the guy’s collar, reaches out, and takes the man’s unbroken stick and the guy lets him. Doesn’t resist. Doesn’t flinch. He stands there like the rest of us—frozen, waiting, breath held—watching as if this is the new way to die in front of five thousand criminals: not by being gutted, but by being allowed to live by the person who should have already ended you.
Julian now has both sticks—one whole and gleaming, the other ruined, jagged, and dripping with the promise of violence. Of fucking course he doesn’t drop the broken one.
He skates backward, slow and deliberate, dragging the new stick behind him like a trophy claimed in battle. His grin stretches wide, feral and unapologetic, while fresh blood continues to soak the side of his jersey, darkening the fabric in uneven patches. The entire rink is locked on him—no one moves, no one breathes, the air thick with the kind of silence that only comes right before something irreversible.
