~111: Skyskater’s Dirty Play

Ronan

The roar of the crowd rattles through the rink before I even step onto the ice. The boards tremble under their boots, the kind of thunder that seeps straight into your chest. I roll my shoulders once, then again, trying to shake the tension that’s been sitting there all damn morning. The locker room still smells like sweat and that sharp tang of disinfectant. Casen claps my back as we line up at the tunnel.

“Let’s make it clean,” he says, grinning the way he always does before a war.

“Clean doesn’t win against them,” I mutter, gripping my stick tighter. My palms are already sweating inside my gloves.

Skyskaters wait at the other end, helmets glinting under the floodlights. Brandy stands in the middle of them, jaw tight, eyes locked on us like he owns the ice. He probably thinks he does. The last time we played them, he took out Liam’s shoulder. No penalty. Not even a warning.

When the whistle blows, it’s chaos from the first second. Skates cut into the ice with sharp screech