Chapter 3: blood oath

Sebastian's back hit the lockers first. Then Damian's. Then both of them, tangled together, the metal groaning under their combined weight.

Damian wasn't sure who had moved. Maybe Sebastian had pushed him. Maybe he had pulled Sebastian. Maybe they had simply collapsed into each other like two magnets that had been held apart for too long. All he knew was that his spine was pressed against the cold steel of the Rebels' locker room stalls, and Sebastian's body was pressed against his, and there was no space left for air or doubt or anything except the heat coming off the man who had been his enemy for three years.

Sebastian's hands were on Damian's hips, pinning him in place. Not roughly. Just firmly. The way you'd hold something fragile that you were terrified of dropping.

"You want to know about the bet," Sebastian said. His voice was low, rough, scraped raw by the night and the loss and everything that had happened since the final buzzer. "The real bet. Not the words I whispered in your ear three years ago. The meaning behind them."

Damian's heart was pounding so hard he could feel it in his teeth. "Then stop dancing around it and tell me."

Sebastian's jaw tightened. He looked away for a moment—at the empty stalls, the discarded tape on the floor, the flickering lights overhead. When he looked back, his eyes were wet.

"The night after the hazing," he began, "I couldn't sleep. I kept seeing your face. The way you stepped between me and those guys. The way you took that punch to the ribs and didn't even go down. I'd never had anyone protect me before. Not since my dad died."

Damian remembered that night. He had driven home with bruised ribs and a split lip, telling himself he had only intervened because it was the right thing to do. Not because the rookie with the dead father had looked at him like he was the first person who had ever seen him.

"I went to the cemetery," Sebastian continued. His voice dropped to barely a whisper. "I sat by my father's grave for hours. I talked to him. Told him about you. About how you made me feel like I wasn't invisible. Like I wasn't just the son of a guy who couldn't handle being ordinary."

Damian's throat tightened. He had read about Sebastian's father—the legend, the suicide, the way the hockey world had whispered about it for years. But he had never heard Sebastian talk about it. Not once.

"I made a vow that night," Sebastian said. His hands tightened on Damian's hips. "I swore on my father's grave that I would find you again. That I would make you mine. That I would spend every day until then becoming someone worthy of the guy who saved me."

"A vow," Damian repeated.

"A blood oath." Sebastian pulled back just enough to hold up his right hand. Across his palm, faded but still visible, was a thin white scar. "I cut my hand on the edge of the headstone. I let the blood drip onto the dirt. I said the words out loud, so my father could hear them."

Damian stared at the scar. At the proof of a seventeen-year-old boy bleeding on his dead father's grave because another boy had been kind to him once.

"One day I'll own you," Sebastian had whispered in the locker room that night. "And you'll thank me for it."

Damian had thought it was bravado. A scared rookie trying to save face after being rescued. He had laughed it off, told himself it didn't mean anything, and gone back to his hotel room to ice his ribs.

But it had meant everything.

"That was the bet," Damian said slowly. "Not a handshake. Not a contract. A blood oath on your father's grave."

"Yes."

"And you've been waiting three years to collect."

"Yes."

"Every hit. Every taunt. Every time you looked at me across the ice like you wanted to destroy me—that was you trying to earn the right to own me."

Sebastian's face twisted. "I know how it sounds."

"It sounds insane."

"It is insane." Sebastian's voice cracked. "I've been insane since I was seventeen years old. I've been in love with you for three years, and I didn't know how to tell you except to make you hate me. Because if you hated me, at least you were looking at me. At least you were feeling something."

Damian's chest ached. Not from the hit during the game. Not from the cold. From the weight of Sebastian's words. From the three years of violence and obsession that suddenly made a terrible kind of sense.

"You could have just talked to me," Damian said. "You could have come up to me after a game and said, 'Hey, remember that time you saved my ass? Want to get coffee?'"

Sebastian laughed—a broken, helpless sound. "Would you have said yes?"

Damian opened his mouth. Closed it.

No. He wouldn't have said yes. He would have panicked. He would have pushed Sebastian away and buried whatever he felt under layers of rivalry and denial. He would have done exactly what he did—pretended the moment meant nothing, pretended the rookie with the dead father was just another opponent, pretended his heart wasn't racing every time they faced off.

"That's what I thought," Sebastian said softly.

Damian's hands came up without his permission. They fisted in Sebastian's open jersey, pulling him closer instead of pushing him away.

"Tell me the terms," Damian said. "The bet. What do I owe you?"

Sebastian's eyes searched his face. "One night. No rules. No safe word. You do what I say, when I say it. And at the end, if you want to leave, you can."

"That's it?"

"That's it."

"And if I don't want to leave?"

Sebastian's breath hitched. "Then we figure out the rest together."

Damian stared at him. At the bruise on his cheek from Damian's elbow in the second period. At the scar on his chin from a fight two seasons ago. At the tears he was trying so hard not to shed. At the man who had spent three years constructing an elaborate trap just to get Damian alone in a locker room. The man who had made a blood oath on his father's grave because a seventeen-year-old boy had been kind to him once.

The man Damian had been in love with since the night he pulled him off the locker room floor.

"I threw the first game," Damian said.

Sebastian went still. Completely, utterly still. His hands on Damian's hips stopped moving. His chest stopped rising and falling.

"What did you say?"

"I threw the first game." Damian's voice was steady. He was done hiding. "Our first regular season match. Three years ago. I had an open net. I looked right at you. And I shot wide on purpose."

Sebastian's grip tightened. "Why?"

"Because you looked at me like I was the only person in the world." Damian's voice cracked. "And I wanted you to keep looking at me like that. So I gave you a reason to."

"You wanted me to win."

"I wanted you to remember me."

Sebastian's face crumpled. He pressed his forehead against Damian's, and his breath came in short, shaking gasps. "Three years. Three years I spent telling myself I had to earn you. That I had to prove myself. That I had to beat you so I'd deserve you. And all along—"

Damian looked at him. At the man who had spent three years pretending to hate him. At the man who had made a blood oath to own him. At the man who was looking at him like he was the only person in the world.

And in that moment, Damian realized something

he had been running from for three years.

I threw that first game on purpose.

And he wanted this.