Page 48 of Slashed Bonds

Slow. In stages. Shoulders first, then the hands, which have come up between them and now open against his chest protector instead of pushing. Then the spine. The whole structure of her softens by degrees, like watching ice give in a thaw, and I’m not ashamed to say it’s one of the more beautiful things I’ve seen a body do.

And I know what I’m looking at.

The outfit screams gothic lore. Black on black, leather over lace, hardware in every place a person can put hardware. It’s a costume, the way my headphones are a costume. A thing you wear so people look at the thing instead of the face.

But I read faces. That’s the whole gig.

Somebody hurt her.

No. That’s not the right size. One person doesn’t produce this. A bunch of them did. They pinned her to a board like a butterfly, and they took their time, and what’s standing in my lobby is what’s left after: torn wings, a body still deciding whether to die, and a stillness that isn’t peace.

It’s the stillness of something that has already been through the worst thing and has stopped bracing for it.

Except.

Behind the cold in those eyes, there’s a thing I don’t see often and never in an Omega.

Resilience.

Not the greeting-card kind. The kind the government writes white papers about. Because that’s the real fear, isn’t it? Not Alphas. Alphas are predictable, and predictable things can be managed. The thing they lie awake over is an Omega who stopped bending. Who went through the fire they built and came out the other side without submitting to a single fucking thing.

Once an Omega is unhinged, you can’t tame it. You can’t medicate it into compliance. You can’t seduce it back into the design.

You can only kill it, and they know that, and it keeps them up at night.

This woman has crossed that line. I’d put money on it. She’s crossed it and stayed under the radar, and no one with a clipboard has noticed yet.

Until now.

Which is either the best thing that’s happened to this program in three years, or a monopoly on trouble we can’t afford in a season where the committee is watching us through a magnifying glass, waiting for a reason.

And the most lethal part, the one I’m coming to realize while I stand here with my hands loose at my sides, watching my goalie kiss a stranger…

Somewhere in a place I don’t go, I want to protect this cunning bitch like my life depends on it.

A favorite new pet. Before a season of blood.

That’s not a plan. That’s a liability with a heartbeat.

The radio on my hip crackles for a third time.

“Vane. If you’ve killed the sponsor, I need to know before I fill out the incident form, because the committee liaison is sitting in my office with a coffee and a fucking clipboard.”

Naturally she is.

Two weeks since the invite landed. Four years of being quietly buried by a bracket that had no room for us, and now a committee that couldn’t spell our program name in April has offered us a qualifying berth with a list of conditions attached, and one of those conditions is a person with a clipboard who gets to sit in on tryouts.

Conduct review, they’re calling it.

Which means a feral goalie, a bleeding defenseman, and a captain who threw a man through a door ninety seconds ago are not the opening we wanted.

I clear my throat.

Because if I don’t, Niko will bypass introductions, bend her over the trophy case, and take her right here under the division banners, and I wouldn’t complain, and Roz has been on the radio twice asking where the fuck her captain is.

Niko breaks the kiss.

She’s breathless. Her lips are parted, the burgundy on them smeared toward one corner, and her eyes have the glassy, unfocused quality of somebody who walked into a building for one reason and got hit by an entirely different one.