Odin Clark.
OdinfuckingClark was sitting across from my mate—myplayer, I corrected savagely—in a restaurant that I came to regularly, looking at Dante with the kind of focused attention that made my vision sharpen and my hands curl into fists.
This was a date. The realization hit me with the force of a physical blow. Dante was on a date with the human-born dragon who’d shown up at the game with Dante’s family, who’dsomehow appeared in Denver, who was now apparently taking him out to dinner and making him smile in ways I hadn’t seen him smile since the trade.
My dragon surged forward with enough force that I felt my eyes heat, felt copper bleeding into my vision. The urge to cross that dining room, to make it extremely clear to Odin Clark that Dante was mine, was so overwhelming that I had to grip the host stand to keep myself rooted in place.
“Sir?” The host was back, holding a bag that presumably contained my order. “Your food is ready.”
I took the bag without looking at it, my eyes still locked on that table near the window. Odin said something that made Dante laugh—actually laugh, his head tipping back, his whole face transforming with genuine amusement. And the jealousy that went through me was so intense, so visceral, that I tasted metal in the back of my throat.
Mine, my dragon snarled.Mine mine mine.
He wasn’t mine. He was a player on my team I’d rejected three days ago because getting involved with him would put him in danger. Because mate bonds made you vulnerable. Because I’d already lost one mate to people who’d wanted leverage over me, and I would not—could not—do that again.
But watching Odin Clark lean forward slightly, watching the way his attention was focused entirely on Dante, watching my mate smile at someone who wasn’t me—it made every rational argument I’d constructed feel hollow and inadequate.
I should leave. Should walk out of this restaurant before either of them noticed me, before I did something I’d regret. Should go home to my empty house in the foothills and eat my Thai food alone and remind myself why distance was necessary.
Dante’s eyes shifted, scanning the restaurant the way people did when they were checking their surroundings. And they landed on me.
I watched the smile fade from his face. Watched something complicated flash across his expression—surprise, maybe guilt, or maybe just the same awkwardness that had been sitting between us since Sunday night. Odin must have noticed the change in him because he looked up too.
Odin’s eyes met mine across the dining room, and I saw recognition there. Not just the surface recognition of someone you’d met briefly at a hockey game. Something deeper. More knowing. The awareness that dragons had when they recognized their own kind, even through all the human presentation and careful control.
He knew what I was. And from the slight smile that curved his mouth, he knew exactly what seeing him with Dante was doing to me.
I turned and walked out before my dragon could make that choice for me. Got to my truck with the Thai food I suddenly had no appetite for, sat in the driver’s seat with my hands on the wheel, and tried to breathe through the rage.
And wondered what the actual fuck I was going to do.
Chapter fourteen
High-Sticking - Illegal contact made with a stick above shoulder height.
Dante
I watched Kincaid walk out of the restaurant, and my stomach dropped somewhere around my feet.
“Shit,” I muttered.
“Friend of yours?” Odin asked, following my gaze to where Kincaid had disappeared through the door.
“That’s my coach.” The words came out flat. “Theron Kincaid.”
“Ah.” Odin leaned back in his chair, and something in his expression shifted—not quite satisfaction, but close. “Of course, I should have recognized him from the game. He looked... intense.”
“He always looks like that.” I picked up my water glass just to have something to do with my hands. “It’s fine. He probably just came to pick up food.”
“Probably,” Odin agreed, but his tone suggested he thought it was something else entirely. “Must be strange, running into your coach outside of work.”
Strange didn’t begin to cover it. I’d spent the entire day trying not to think about this morning’s training session, about how professional Kincaid had been, how thoroughly he’d reinforced that there was nothing between us except hockey. And now he’d seen me having dinner with another man, and the expression on his face when our eyes met—
I didn’t know what that expression meant.
“You okay?” Odin asked, and when I looked at him, there was genuine concern in his eyes. “You went somewhere else for a minute there.”
“Yeah. Sorry. Just—it’s been a long day.”
