Chapter 32 Ice
Friday afternoon ice session runs four to six and the rink is Wolves only, which means I have absolutely no reason to be in the arena viewing gallery.
Petra has three reasons I'm there.
"Observation," she says, settling into the gallery seat beside me with two cups of something hot from the campus café. "Purely academic. You're studying supernatural ability expression in high performance athletic contexts."
"That's not a real thing," I tell her.
"It could be," she replies, completely unbothered, and hands me the cup.
Below us the Wolves run drills, and the ice is a different world down there, faster than anything human, the supernatural edge to it visible in every movement. Wolves in their human form but with everything beneath the surface running hot, reflexes that belong to predators, the pack bond operating between them like a silent communication system, the plays developing faster than any coach's board could plan because half of it is instinct and packwork and the shared language of wolves who've run together long enough to think sideways into each other's movements.
Rhydan runs them hard.
He's different on the ice than anywhere else and I've been trying to understand why since the first game I watched, and sitting here now with my tamer awareness open I finally feel the answer.
On the ice, his dual nature runs in alignment.
Not fought. Not suppressed. The dragon's precision and the wolf's instinct working together rather than grinding against each other, channelled into the game in a way that makes him something beyond what any single nature would produce alone, and it's beautiful and slightly terrifying and explains exactly why he's been captain since he was seventeen.
And he doesn't know he does that.
That's the part that undoes me slightly.
He has spent years fighting his own nature off the ice and on the ice, it finds its own peace without him trying and he has never connected those two things.
Cassian takes a brutal check from a defenceman twice his size and bounces off the boards snarling, a flash of wolf in his eyes for half a second before he pulls it back, and Rhydan is there before Cassian fully straightens, one hand on his shoulder, pack alpha grounding a packmate, automatic and steady, and Cassian's eyes clear and he nods and the drill continues.
"That," Petra says quietly beside me. "That thing he just did with Cassian. That's alpha craft, yeah?"
"Pack settling," I confirm. "An alpha's presence stabilises packmates. Grounds their nature when it spikes." I watch Rhydan skate back to position. "He does it constantly and none of them notice because it's that natural."
"He's going to be an extraordinary alpha," Petra says.
"He already is."
Petra looks at me sideways.
"Academically speaking," I add.
"Sure," she says sweetly.
Below, the session shifts to a full run scrimmage, first line against second, and Rhydan moves through it like something inevitable, not fastest but always precisely right, always exactly where the play is going rather than where it is, and I'm watching him so intently I almost miss what's happening in the row below us.
Almost.
Two figures I don't recognise, sitting three rows down, not in Northveil colours, and they haven't looked at the ice once in the ten minutes since I noticed them.
They're looking at Rhydan.
Not the way fans look at someone impressive.
The way people look at something they're assessing.
I keep my eyes forward and my voice low. "Petra. Three rows down. Left side. Don't look directly."
She raises her cup and uses the motion to glance casually. "I see them."
"Not students."
"No," she agrees. "Too old. And the one on the right, his hands... Look at his hands when he thinks nobody's watching."
I look.
His fingers are moving slightly, a pattern against his thigh, slow and rhythmic, and I feel it the moment my tamer awareness touches it.
Not Binding Circle craft.
Something older. Something that doesn't have the cold precision of Vance family working. This is rougher. More aggressive. The supernatural signature of something built to compel rather than contain.
Compulsion craft!
My stomach drops.
"They're not here for the game."
"No," Petra says, her voice very steady.
"They're here for him."
On the ice below, Rhydan scores, clean and brutal, and the Wolves erupt around him, and he skates back to position already planning the next play, completely unaware that two floors above the ice someone is running compulsion craft with his name in it.
"Veyra," Petra says.
"I know," I reply, already pulling out my phone.
I open Rhydan's contact.
Type: Stop the session. Get off the ice. Now. Don't make it obvious.
Send.
Below, I watch him feel his phone vibrate in his practice jacket pocket. He doesn't stop skating. He finishes the play, calls something to Cassian that makes the line pull up naturally, and skates toward the bench with the unhurried authority of a captain making a tactical decision.
He glances up at the gallery once.
Finds me immediately.
Reads my expression.
Looks at the two figures three rows below me without appearing to.
His eyes come back to mine and something moves in them, cold and sharp and completely focused, the dragon and the wolf running in sudden sharp alignment in a way I feel all the way up in the gallery, a wave of presence that presses against the air.
The two figures below us go still.
They felt it too.
The one with the moving fingers stops his patterns immediately, the compulsion craft collapsing before it was finished, and he leans toward his companion and says something low and urgent.
They stand.
They move toward the gallery exit quickly, not quite running, and I'm already on my feet and Petra is right behind me and we push out into the corridor just as they turn the far corner.
Gone.
The corridor is empty.
Behind us the rink door opens and Rhydan comes through it still in full gear, helmet off, jaw set, Cassian two steps behind him.
"Who were they?" Cassian demands.
"I don't know," I say honestly. "But the craft they were running was compulsion. Old working. Not Vance family."
Rhydan's expression is very controlled and very cold. "Compulsion craft is illegal under supernatural council law."
"Yes," I say.
"Someone sent them," he says.
"Someone who isn't Elder Valecrest," I reply slowly. "Because your grandfather uses Sera and Binding Circle craft. This was different. Older. Something else entirely."
Rhydan looks at me and the cold focus in his eyes has an edge to it I haven't seen before.
"Someone else knows about the bond," he says quietly.
The corridor hums with the distant sound of the rink and the ordinary noise of the academy going about its Friday afternoon, completely oblivious.
"Someone else has been watching us," I reply. "Long enough to send people with compulsion craft built specifically for a dual natured supernatural."
Cassian says, low and serious, "That's not a threat you build overnight."
"No," Rhydan agrees. "It isn't."
He looks at me steadily.
"This isn't just my grandfather anymore," he says.
"No," I reply quietly. "It isn't."