Chapter 79 CHAPTER 79

Chapter 79 CHAPTER 79
Julian’s Pov

The blood didn't trickle; it pulsed.

Every hit of my heart brought a hot, heavy surge that spilled over the jagged edge of the cut on my cheekbone, running past the corner of my mouth, dripping off my jaw line, and leaving a steady pat-pat-pat of bright crimson drops on the dark gray rubber matting of the bench.

"Hold still, Thorne! Christ, just hold still!" Doc Evans gasped, his breath smelling of wintergreen lozenges and warm coffee as he shoved a white gauze pad hard against my left cheek.

I didn't hold still. I shoved his wrists away with my right glove, my fingers leaving a long, red smear across his crisp white medical jacket.

"Get your hands off me, Doc," I growled, my voice thick, wet, and heavy with the metallic taste of my own blood sloshing against my back teeth.

"You need six stitches and a concussion check right now, Julian," he pleaded, his old eyes wide, terrified as he looked past my shoulder toward the dark locker room tunnel. "The glass shattered straight into the cheekbone! You've got clear plastic shards sticking out of the soft tissue! If I don't flush that cut in the back room…"

"I am not going to the back room," I spat, catching his coat lapel with my gloved hand and yanking him two inches from my face.

My blue eyes were wide, unblinking, and burning with a cold, terrifying white heat under the blinding halogen floods.

"Give me the towel," I commanded, my jaw set so hard the cut opened wider, sending another stream of red down my throat to stain the yellowed zinc tape around my neck. "Give me the medical towel, give me the butterfly strips, and give me the liquid skin."

"Julian, the board protocol,"

"The board protocol can go to hell!" I snarled into his face.

I reached straight into his black nylon kit bag sitting on the wooden bench, grabbed the small plastic bottle of topical surgical adhesive, and ripped the cap off with my teeth. I snatched a rolled white towel, pressed it hard against the gash to soak up the fresh surge of crimson, and wiped my jaw clean with the back of my sleeve.

Jax was sitting two inches away from me on the wood, his chest heaving like a broken bellows, his broad shoulder pads touching mine. His right hand,his split knuckles covered in dark red smears from the fight that had just cost Central State's defenseman a five-minute major,was resting flat on my knee.

He didn't tell me to go to the back room. He didn't tell me to let the doctor check my head.

He reached over with his bare fingers, caught my jawline with a firm, steady heat that held my face straight, and looked down into my eyes through the dark shadow of his brow.

"You good, Jules?" he growled, the gravel in his throat thick and heavy as river mud.

"I'm staying on this sheet, Jaxom," I whispered, my thumb pressing the butterfly strips flat across the cut, sealing the torn skin together with a sharp, burning sting of adhesive that made my teeth grind. "I'm not leaving you out here."

Jax looked at the blood running down my neck, looked at the jagged, shattered stub of my plastic visor still attached to my helmet, and let out a short, terrifying growl of approval.

"Good," he muttered, his thumb wiping a stray drop of red off my chin. "Because we're taking their sheet."

When I stood up on the bench,bare-faced, the broken visor unclipped and thrown into the gray slush on the floorboards, a thick line of dry, dark blood running down my bare cheek like war paint,the entire Northwood bench went completely feral.

They didn't see the polite, aristocratic "Ice King" from the morning program sheets anymore. They saw a captain who had taken a wooden stick to the face, sealed his own flesh with surgical glue on a cold wooden bench, and refused to step off the ice.

"LOOK AT HIM!" Liam screamed, his six-foot-three frame shaking with an unholy, barbaric fury as he slammed his Sherwood stick against the wooden boards until the acrylic glass rattled in its iron frame. "LOOK AT THE CAPTAIN!"

The energy on our bench didn't just rise; it mutated. It turned into a dark, vicious, and unstoppable force that swept through all four lines like a forest fire catching dry pine.

When we stepped over the boards for the power play, the ice became a living hell for Central State.

Liam and the third line didn't just skate; they hunted. Every time a yellow visor touched the puck inside our blue line, Liam threw his two-hundred-and-twenty-pound frame into them like an unpaved logging truck, slamming their wingers into the dasher boards until the glass bowed three inches outward.

They formed a literal human shield around my left side.

When Central State’s remaining defensemen tried to cross the red line to target my bruised ribs, Harrington didn't wait for them to set up a play,he stepped straight into their path, stepping on their blades, driving his elbows into their ribs, and clearing the lane before they could even get within ten feet of my helmet.

"Nobody touches twelve!" Harrington roared into their center's face, shoving him backwards into the referee's boots after the whistle. "You touch twelve, you go through four of us!"

Central State was completely broken.

The clean, mathematical system that had carried them through a twenty-win season dissolved into absolute panic. They couldn't make two consecutive passes; their defensemen were flinching every time they heard leather skates scraping against the ice behind them, dumping the puck blindly down the ice just to avoid taking another bone-crushing hit from our bottom line.

The crowd in the stadium,twenty thousand people who had started the night screaming insults at my family name,sat in total, spellbound silence. They weren't cheering for Central State anymore, and they weren't chanting. They were leaning over the iron rails of the upper bowl, their eyes wide, watching fifteen bloodied, bruised, and relentless boys in frayed blue jerseys tear the top-seeded team in the nation to pieces with their bare hands.

The third period wasn't hockey; it was an execution by inches.

Every single minute on the wall clock felt like an hour spent under a steam hammer. The score traded back and forth in a wild, chaotic frenzy,Central State scoring on a fast, desperate breakaway goal to make it 3–2, followed five minutes later by Harrington slamming home a greasy, dirty rebound off my stick to tie it back up at 3–3.

By the time the clock ticked down to the two-minute mark, physical exhaustion had set in like iron frost.

My body was completely spent. Every single muscle in my legs burned with a dull, lactating ache that made my knees wobble every time I tried to plant my skates for a sharp turn. The white zinc tape around my torso was soaked through with sweat and blood, the adhesive slipping against my raw skin, allowing my third floating rib to slide an eighth of an inch with every deep, agonizing breath I took.

My face was a numb, throbbing mass of pain. The surgical glue held the cut closed, but the dark, purple swelling beneath my eye had expanded, narrowing my field of vision on the left side until the red line looked like a blurry, broken smear.

Beside me on the ice, Jax was operating on pure, mechanical instinct.

His dark hair was plastered to his forehead in thick, wet mats, his gray undershirt torn at the collar, his broad shoulders rising and falling in deep, ragged gulps of cold ozone air. His split knuckles were swollen to twice their normal size inside his heavy leather glove, but he still held his Sherwood stick with an iron, unbreakable grip that kept the entire center lane locked down tight.

BUZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ!

The long, deafening horn echoed through the stadium, signaling the end of the third period.

NORTHWOOD: 3 | CENTRAL STATE: 3

Neither team celebrated. The ten players on the sheet didn't skate back to their benches,they dragged their boots through the gray slush, their heads hanging low, their sticks trailing behind them like wooden plows as they collapsed onto the narrow pine seats.

Sixty minutes of violent, relentless war, and nothing had been settled.

The visiting locker room was completely silent for the five-minute intermission.

Nobody spoke. Nobody called out tactical adjustments. Coach Clain stood near the door, her leather clipboard resting against her hip, her dark eyes looking at us with a quiet, fierce pride that required zero words.

We sat on the wooden benches, listening to the high-pitched whine of the resurfacing machine outside as it laid down the final, deadly skin of smooth water across the center ice.

Next goal wins the National Championship. Next goal ends the season.

I sat in stall twelve, my hands resting flat on my knees, my head down, listening to the heavy, synchronized sound of my own heart beating against my damaged ribs: thud... thud... thud...

Jax stood up from his spot by the door.

He didn't put his helmet back on yet. He walked three slow, heavy steps across the wet rubber matting, stopped right in front of my knees, and extended his bare, swollen right hand.

I looked up.

His dark eyes were burning with a pure, unadulterated, and terrifying steel,a raw, indestructible fire that completely erased the twenty thousand fans, the corporate draft wire, the ruined trust funds, and the four miles of dirt road behind us.

"Five minutes, Jules," he growled softly, his voice cutting through the dead room like an iron saw. "One play. One shift. We take the sheet, or we go down on it together."

I reached up, my long, bloody fingers locking around his hand, gripping his palm with every ounce of strength left in my broken body.

"One shift, Jaxom," I whispered back.

When the wooden door swung open and we marched back out into the blinding halogen glare of the stadium for overtime, the posture of our entire team was set in iron. We weren't skating for a university, we weren't skating for a brand, and we weren't skating for the men sitting in charcoal coats behind the glass.

We were skating for the fight.

The referee stepped into the center circle, the black vulcanized rubber disc held between his gloved fingers. Vance, the Central State captain, lined up opposite me at the dot, his face pale, his eyes wide and terrified as he looked at the dark blood smeared across my cheek.

I dropped low into my stance, ignoring the screaming agony in my side, my dark blue eyes locked onto the black rubber.

Jax set his broad boots onto the blue line behind me, his stick blade resting flat on the clean ice, ready for the drop.

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A/N: What do we think of this one? What are our expectations? 

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