Chapter 1: The Crash

Adrian POV

The bus hummed with the roar of a team that had just conquered the world. The New York Titans were loud. Hockey sticks rattled in the overhead storage while helmets rolled beneath the seats. Laughter bounced off the ceiling panels, and beer cans cracked open with rhythmic pops. My teammates joked about the championship finals, their voices thick with the confidence of men who believed nothing could touch them.

Our trophy sat strapped into an empty seat near the front, catching the overhead light every time the bus swayed. One of the rookies kept reaching over to touch it for luck. The others argued about where we'd celebrate after the finals. The coaches had stopped trying to control them an hour ago. Tonight belonged to the players.

I sat in the front row, watching the back of the driver's head, keeping my posture stiff and my face unreadable. I was the captain. Someone had to stay sober enough to think.

My travel bag rested against my boots, and its weight felt disproportionate to what it held, an encrypted drive carrying enough data to burn the league to the ground: bribery, illegal betting rings, and fixed outcomes.

Tomorrow at nine, I would walk into a federal office and hand it over.

Noah had texted an hour earlier.

Drive safe, Captain.

I smiled despite myself. I'd already planned to call him once we crossed the mountains.

Only Miller, Jax, and Soren knew about the drive. They sat near the back, sober, their eyes drifting to the windows more often than the celebration warranted. Miller glanced over his shoulder a second time before he stood and crossed the aisle, leaning close so no one else would hear.

"The black SUV is still behind us."

I turned toward the window. A pair of headlights trailed us through the snow, holding steady several car lengths back, too steady and careful.

"How long?"

"Since we left the arena."

Jax and Soren were both watching me now, waiting.

"Don't panic the others," I said.

Miller wasn't the type to imagine danger where there wasn't any. He nodded once and went back to his seat.

Outside, the mountains cut jagged silhouettes against the night sky, and the road narrowed into an icy ribbon carved along the cliffside. Far below, the river moved like a dark vein between the trees. The SUV followed us around another curve, and then its headlights vanished.

Something cold moved down my spine that had nothing to do with the winter air. My instincts, usually quiet under years of professional discipline, were screaming beneath my skin. I'd learned to trust that feeling long before I became captain. It had never once been wrong.

I rubbed my eyes and tried to talk myself out of it. The feeling only sharpened.

The driver caught my expression in the mirror.

"You okay, Captain?"

I nodded.

"Eyes on the road."

He turned back around.

Then everything changed.

***

The driver's foot hit the brake pedal and kept going, all the way to the floor, no resistance, no bite. The bus didn't slow. It surged forward as the grade steepened.

"The brakes are gone!" His voice cracked on the last word.

The laughter died mid-breath. Somewhere behind me, music played for two more seconds before someone cut it off, and in that silence I heard my own pulse.

The bus swerved, sliding sideways across black ice with no more control than a sled kicked down a hill. Players were thrown from their seats. Bags burst open, scattering gloves and sticks across the aisle. The trophy tore loose from its straps and slammed into the ceiling. Someone screamed. Someone else was praying, fast and quiet, the words running together. Somebody shouted my name like I could stop what was already happening.

"Hold on!"

The driver wrestled the wheel. Metal shrieked as we clipped the guardrail, and for one endless second the barrier bent, held, and then didn't.

We were flying.

My stomach dropped out from under me. I braced both hands against the seat in front of me and understood, with total clarity, that bracing wouldn't matter.

The bus hit the river.

The windshield exploded inward. Water didn't seep through the broken glass, it came in like a wall, black and total, and swallowed the bus in seconds. The lights died. The laughter, already gone, was replaced by the roar of the current and the crush of the deep closing over us.

***

Underwater, the cold felt like knives. My muscles seized, and still I fought to keep moving.

Protect the team.

The command rose out of somewhere past thought. I kicked against the wreckage pinning my leg, found the emergency exit, and shoved until the stuck metal groaned open. I got one hand on an unconscious teammate and hauled him toward the surface while the current dragged at both of us, trying to pull us back down into the sinking frame. By the time I broke the surface, my lungs were on fire and my vision had gone soft at the edges. I shoved him onto a floating piece of wreckage.

He coughed.

Alive.

I went back under.

I found another teammate trapped beneath a broken seat and tore at the frame until my fingers stopped registering pain at all. The metal gave. I pulled him free and dragged him up into the air, arms shaking so badly I could barely hold on to him.

Two alive. Others were still inside. I could see hands pressed against the shattered windows beneath the surface, going still one by one.

I took a breath to dive again and froze.

A scent reached me that didn't belong anywhere near this river: sea salt, winter air. Noah.

It made no sense. Noah was in Chicago, training with the Wolves. But the scent wrapped around my instincts like a chain pulling tight, and the bond between us ached in my chest with a fear that wasn't mine.

It was his.

"Come back alive," he'd told me, arms crossed, standing in the doorway of our apartment the last time I saw him.

"I always do," I'd said, and kissed his forehead like it was nothing.

***

The current slammed me into the twisted frame of the bus. Pain tore through my shoulder. I kicked to get free and felt metal close around my leg instead, refusing to give no matter how hard I pulled. The river dragged me deeper. The world went darker, colder, and smaller.

I wasn't thinking about the investigation anymore, or the drive, or the championship. I wasn't thinking about surviving.

I was thinking about Noah. The only person I had never learned how to leave behind.

If the people behind that drive had orchestrated this, they knew I'd found them. If they knew about me, they might already be moving toward him... toward everything we'd hidden.

Our bond.

All of it.

Every instinct in me fought the dark, not because I wanted to survive, but because he was still out there. As the last air left my lungs, I forced two words through the freezing water.

"Protect... Noah..."

The darkness closed around me.

Everything went black.