Cold Impact

Chapter 1: Cold Impact

Cody Brenna

"Clear the lane, Brennan!"

I heard it and I was already gone, blades biting hard into the ice, the sound sharp and clean under the roar bleeding through my helmet. The puck skittered onto my stick like it belonged there. It always did. I cut left, then right, weaving past a defenseman who lunged and missed by a full stride.

"Brennan's flying tonight!" Marcus shouted from the bench, half a laugh in it.

"Feed me!" Jax called from the far wing, stick already up.

"Not yet," I muttered, grinning behind my mouthguard. I had room. I always found room. The crowd was a wall of noise pressing in from every side, and underneath my pads my heart hammered clean and fast, the good kind of fast, the kind that made me feel like I could do this forever.

I dropped a shoulder, faked the pass, and surged toward the blue line. Nobody touched me. Nobody ever touched me when I was like this.

"That's it, golden boy!" someone jeered from the opposing bench.

I didn't even look. I was already three strides past center, the ice opening up in front of me like it had been carved just for me.

I never saw Dom Reyes coming.

It hit from the blind side, low and mean, no attempt at the puck at all — just mass and speed aimed straight at my ribs. The impact folded me in half. I heard the crunch of my own pads before I felt anything, a hard plastic crack that seemed to come from somewhere outside my body. Then the glass. My shoulder found it a half second later, and the whole panel shuddered with a splintering groan that the crowd answered with a single collective gasp.

My neck snapped sideways. Something in my shoulder gave with a wet, ugly pop.

I hit the ice flat on my back. The air left me in one violent exhale, like a fist had reached into my chest and yanked it out. I tried to breathe and couldn't. Tried again. Nothing.

White light. Too bright. Ceiling spinning slow.

My hands scraped at the ice, fingers clawing for purchase that wasn't there. Copper flooded my mouth, sharp under the clean cold smell of the rink. Someone was yelling my name. I couldn't turn my head to find who.

*Get up.* My body didn't answer. *Get up, get up—*

The whistle screamed somewhere far away. Skates cut circles around me, too close, too loud. I blinked and the lights smeared into long white streaks, arena rafters bleeding into a haze that didn't look like a rink anymore.

Then the ceiling changed.

Fluorescent panels, flat and humming. Not the arena. A tile ceiling with a water stain in the corner shaped like nothing.

My ribs throbbed in time with something rhythmic and electronic, a steady beep that didn't belong to a rink. My collarbone screamed when I tried to shift my weight, so I stopped trying. Everything below my neck felt wrapped, weighted, wrong. I couldn't tell where my own arms ended.

A plastic tube bit at the crook of my wrist. I stared at it a long moment before my brain supplied the word: *IV.* My throat was sandpaper. Cold air crawled against my skin where the hospital gown had slipped off one shoulder, and I couldn't lift a hand far enough to fix it.

I tried to breathe deep and my ribs shut the attempt down hard, forcing my lungs into shallow, careful pulls. Antiseptic burned faint in the back of my nose, chemical and sharp, nothing like ice.

Static filled my ears, low and heavy, like I was underwater in a pool that had gone still. I turned my head — just my head, an inch, that was all my body would give me — and the room swam before settling.

I was flat on my back. Immobile. A brace held my neck rigid, and every breath came shallow and careful, rationed like it might run out.

This isn't the bench. This isn't a break between periods.

The realization landed heavier than the hit had.

A shift in the shadows by the door pulled my eyes sideways.

I wasn't alone.

Two shapes filled the doorway, blotting out the hallway light behind them so they stood as solid dark outlines before my eyes adjusted enough to place them. Hunter came into focus first — raw-knuckled, jaw tight, a coiled stillness to him that felt worse than if he'd been pacing. His eyes, when they found mine, burned with something close to feral.

Atlas stood a half step behind him, taller, unmoving, stone in human form. His face gave away nothing. That was the part that made my stomach drop — Atlas never looked calm unless something underneath was very much not.

Neither of them said anything at first. The monitors kept beeping. The static in my ears thickened.

Hunter's hands were curled into fists at his sides, knuckles pale.

I tried to speak and managed only a rasp. It was enough to make both of them move at once, closing the distance to the bed like they'd been waiting for permission.

Hunter leaned down first, close enough that I could see the exact shade of fury banked behind his grey eyes.

"Did you really think," he said, low and rough, "we'd let anyone else stay in this room with you?"