Page 20 of Slashed Bonds

He leans in as he skates past, and his scent turns rank with it, all hot metal and spoiled cedar, and he says something about what he’d do to fix me.

I don’t respond.

I don’t need to. I have a long memory and no particular deadline.

By the time I’ve got my skates off, my hands are shaking again — the meds, the crash, the adrenaline leaving all at once — and my right calf is starting its slow electric complaint about the last two hours.

Knox comes out from under the bench and puts his chin on my thigh.

“I know,” I tell him. “I’m going to feel that tomorrow.”

“You’ll feel it for a week.”

I look up.

A woman is standing at the end of the bench in a black wool coat with the collar turned up, hands in her pockets, watching me like I’m a problem she’s already solved and is checking her work on.

Fifties. Broad through the shoulders. Beta, from the flat neutrality of her scent, which after two hours of Alphas is a relief so profound I nearly say thank you.

Knox lifts his head. He doesn’t growl.

That’s interesting.

“Rink’s closed,” I say.

“Sully let me in.” She nods at the ice. “Second period. The draw you lost.”

I pause with my skate half in my bag. “I lost a lot of draws.”

“You lost one.” Her mouth moves, not quite a smile. “You gave that one away to get his winger moving early. Then you took the puck off him and went the other way. Nobody in this building noticed except me and, I’d guess, you.”

Well.

“You’re a long way from anywhere,” I say. “Who are you?”

She takes a card out of her coat pocket and holds it out between two fingers.

I don’t take it right away.

Five years of nobody knowing my name has made me sentimental about the arrangement, and every good thing that’s ever been handed to me arrived on paper.

Then I take it.

Heavy stock. Matte black. The lettering picked out in violet and electric teal, and stamped in the corner, sharp and minimal and about as friendly as a scalpel, a viper.

BLACKRIDGE UNIVERSITY.

My heart does something complicated.

Blackridge. The Vipers. Top three in the country. National playoffs.

The same playoffs Hellsing Ross has been chasing for five years and never once reached.

“Rosalind Ibarra.” She lets that sit. “Assistant coach. I’ve been watching you skate in barns for eleven weeks.”

“Eleven weeks.”

“Somebody told me where to look.”