“Okay, so first thing,” the driver said, leaning in through the open door. “You’re going to want to pair your phone with the—”
Something sharp pricked my neck.
I jerked away, my hand going to the spot, but my fingers felt clumsy and wrong. The driver’s face swam in my vision, his professional smile replaced by something cold and calculating.
“What—” My tongue was thick in my mouth. The word came out slurred.
“Sorry about this,” he said, but he didn’t sound sorry at all.
I tried to move, tried to get out of the truck, but my limbs weren’t responding properly. The world tilted sideways. Strong hands caught me before I could fall, and I realized there was someone else—a second man I hadn’t noticed, bigger than the first, wearing gloves.
“Got him,” the second man said.
No. No no no. I tried to fight, tried to remember the self-defense moves my brothers had taught me, but my body wouldn’t cooperate. Everything was going fuzzy around the edges, darkness creeping in from all sides.
Theron. I needed Theron. Needed to tell him—
But I couldn’t form the words. Couldn’t do anything except feel myself being moved, positioned, my consciousness slipping away like water through my fingers.
The last thing I heard before the darkness took me completely was the truck door closing and an engine starting.
Then nothing.
Chapter nineteen
Icing - When a player shoots the puck from their own side of the center line past the opponent's goal line without it being touched.
Theron
I wrapped up the meeting with the GM, my mind already half on Dante. We’d discussed line combinations for tomorrow’s game, injury reports, the challenge of closing out a series on the road if it went all the way. The benefit of having four games on home ice. Important stuff, but all I could think about was gettingback to him, maybe stealing a few minutes alone before we had to maintain professional distance again.
I headed down the corridor toward the locker room, checking my phone out of habit. One new message from an unknown number.
I opened it without thinking.
And my entire world stopped.
Dante. Unconscious in what looked like the back of a vehicle, his head lolling to one side, his face slack in a way that made my dragon roar with fury. Below the image, a message:
Keep quiet. Wait for instructions. If you want to see your boyfriend alive again, you’ll do exactly what we say. No police. No teammates. No heroics. We’ll be in touch.
The phone nearly shattered in my grip. My vision went copper-edged, my dragon surging forward with such force that I felt my bones start to shift before I could wrestle it back under control.
Someone had taken him. Someone had drugged him and taken him and sent me proof that they had him.
My hands were shaking as I pulled up my contacts, found Ignatius’s number, and texted with fumbling fingers:Emergency. Arena. Now. Dante’s been taken.
The response came back immediately:On my way. Don’t do anything until I get there.
I forced myself to move, to walk calmly down the corridor even though every instinct I had was screaming at me to shift, to tear apart whoever had done this. But I couldn’t. Not here, not in the arena where security cameras tracked every movement.
The locker room was empty. His stall was neat, his gear put away properly, no sign of struggle or distress. He’d left willingly, which meant whoever had taken him had lured him somehow.
I pulled out my phone and called his number. It went straight to voicemail.
My dragon was roaring. Every protective instinct I had was on fire, demanding I do something, fix this, get him back. But I couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t do anything except stand there in the empty locker room holding my phone and trying to remember how to breathe.
Twenty-five minutes. That was how long it took for Ignatius to arrive with Cole, Taz, and Max in tow. They found me in my office, still staring at that image on my phone, my hands clenched into fists to keep them from shifting.
