What she couldn't unsee

"Sophie, dear. You should have run when you had the chance."

The voice from the darkness wasn't Detective Cross anymore. It was softer now. Almost gentle. The voice of a woman who'd spent eleven years being beaten by her husband and had finally learned to hit back.

I stumbled backward into the parking lot, snow blurring my vision. The motel room was a black hole behind me. I couldn't see her, but I could feel her—a presence in the dark, patient and waiting. Jace's mother. The woman in the hidden photograph. The one who was supposed to be gone, safe, far away from the monster she married.

"Why are you doing this?" My voice came out steadier than I felt. "Jace thinks you're—"

"Dead? Gone? Hiding?" A soft laugh. "I know what my son thinks. I let him think it. It was easier than explaining the truth."

"What truth?"

The snow crunched behind me. I spun around, but there was nothing except the empty parking lot and the flickering neon sign. When I turned back, a figure had emerged from the motel room. Tall. Dark coat. Badge still clipped to her belt. But her eyes—her eyes were the same blue as Jace's, and they held the same storm.

"The truth about what his father really is," she said. "And what Jace will become if I don't stop it."

My phone buzzed in my pocket. I didn't dare look at it. The woman—Jace's mother—took a step toward me, and I took one back. The snow was falling harder now, thick flakes catching in her dark hair.

"You're supposed to be the victim," I said. "Eleven years of abuse. The photograph he keeps in his drawer. He thinks you're the only good thing that ever happened to him."

"I am the victim." Her voice hardened. "But I'm also the only person who knows what Gregory really wants. It's not the draft pick. It's not the money. It's the thing inside Jace—the thing Gregory's been trying to unlock since Jace was six years old."

"What thing?"

"You've seen it. Don't pretend you haven't." She tilted her head, studying me. "The way he moves on the ice. The way he catches pucks he shouldn't see coming. The way the air changes when he gets angry. You've noticed. You've just been too scared to admit it."

I opened my mouth to deny it. But the words wouldn't come. Because she was right. I had noticed. The flicker of amber in his eyes at the tutoring center. The impossible catch at the arena. The way the lamp flickered when his voice dropped too low. I'd blamed it all on bad lighting and cheap wiring and my own exhausted imagination. But the doubt had been there, buried under every excuse.

"What is he?" I whispered.

His mother smiled. It wasn't warm. "That's the question, isn't it? Gregory thinks Jace is a weapon. Something to be controlled and pointed at enemies. But I think Jace is something else entirely. Something that could burn the whole world down if he ever stopped being afraid of himself."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the only one you're going to get. Now." She pulled out her phone, and I saw the screen light up with a map. A blinking red dot. "Gregory's car wasn't abandoned. He parked it and walked. He's heading toward the arena, and Jace is following him. If you want to save my son, you'll get there before I do."

"Why would you help me?"

"Because Jace won't listen to me. He thinks I abandoned him. He doesn't know I've been protecting him from a distance for fifteen years." Her expression flickered, and for just a moment, I saw the mother underneath the detective's mask. The woman who'd hidden a photograph in her son's drawer and disappeared to keep him safe. "He'll listen to you. He already has."

"How do you know that?"

"Because you're still alive." She turned and walked back into the dark motel room. "Gregory kills everyone who gets close to Jace. Tutors. Teammates. Girlfriends. You're the first one he hasn't been able to touch. That means my son is fighting back. And that means there's still hope."

She disappeared into the shadows. The motel door clicked shut. I was alone in the parking lot with the snow and the sirens and the impossible truth settling into my bones like ice.

I ran.

Not away from the motel—toward the arena. The campus was a ghost town at this hour, the sidewalks buried under fresh snow, the streetlights casting long shadows across the quad. My lungs burned. My legs screamed. But I didn't stop. Jace was out there somewhere, tracking a father who wanted to turn him into a weapon, and I was the only one who might reach him before it was too late.

The arena loomed ahead, dark except for a single light burning in the lobby. I shoved through the side door—the one the players kept propped open with a broken hockey stick—and stumbled into the freezing dark. The ice stretched out like a wound. The stands were empty. The emergency lights cast everything in pale blue shadows.

And in the center of the rink, surrounded by a circle of shattered glass, was Jace.

He was on his knees. His hands were braced against the ice, and his whole body was shaking. Gregory stood ten feet away, a tire iron clutched in one hand, his lip split and bleeding. The air in the arena felt wrong—heavy, charged, like the moment before a thunderstorm.

"You think you can threaten me?" Gregory's voice echoed off the empty seats. "You think you can expose me? I made you. Everything you are is because of me. Including that thing inside you."

"I'm nothing like you." Jace's voice was strained, cracking at the edges. "I'll die before I become you."

"Then die."

Gregory raised the tire iron. And something inside Jace snapped.

I didn't see the transformation clearly—it happened too fast, too blurred by the snow blowing in through the broken door. But I felt it. The air pressure dropped. The lights flickered and buzzed. And Jace's head snapped up, his eyes burning gold. Not amber. Not a trick of the fluorescent bulbs. Gold, like liquid fire, cutting through the darkness.

Gregory stumbled backward, his weapon clattering to the ice. "That's it. That's what I've been trying to unlock. Do it. Show her what you really are."

Jace turned toward me. His eyes met mine, and I saw recognition flash through the gold. Fear. Shame. Desperation.

"Sophie... run."

I didn't run. I stepped onto the ice.

"Get away from him." My voice echoed through the empty arena, steadier than I had any right to be. Gregory turned to face me, and his grin was a wound in his face.

"The little tutor. You just don't know when to quit, do you?"

"I know exactly when to quit. This isn't it."

I walked toward Jace, my sneakers slipping on the frozen surface. He was still shaking, still fighting whatever was rising inside him. His eyes flickered between gold and blue, gold and blue, like a war being fought in real time. When I reached him, I knelt down and put my hand on his cheek. His skin was burning hot.

"You need to leave," he choked out. "I can't control it. I've never been able to control it."

"Yes, you can." I made him look at me. "You've been controlling it your whole life. Every game. Every practice. Every time your father pushed you and you didn't push back. That's not weakness. That's strength."

"You don't understand—"

"I understand perfectly." I pressed my forehead to his, the way he'd done to me in the motel room. "You're terrified of becoming your father. But your father doesn't have gold in his eyes, Jace. Your father is just a man. Whatever this is—whatever you are—it's not him. It's never been him."

His hand came up and wrapped around my wrist. His grip was iron, but his touch was gentle. "What if I hurt you?"

"You won't."

"How do you know?"

"Because you've had a hundred chances to hurt me, and you haven't. Because you threw your father to the ground but didn't hit him. Because the thing inside you isn't a monster—it's just power. And power is only dangerous when you use it the way he does."

Gregory laughed behind us. "Pretty speech. Let's see if you still believe it when he loses control."

He charged. I didn't see what happened next—only the blur of motion, the sound of impact, and Gregory flying backward across the ice. Jace was on his feet in an instant, standing between me and his father, his body vibrating with something ancient and violent and barely contained.

"Don't," Jace growled. "Touch. Her."

Gregory lay sprawled on the ice, blood dripping from his nose, and for the first time since I'd met him, he looked afraid. "You'll regret this. When the scouts find out what you are—when the press gets hold of the footage—you'll lose everything."

"Then I'll lose it." Jace's voice was steady now. His eyes were still gold, but the storm in them had quieted. "But I won't lose her."

Gregory scrambled to his feet and limped toward the tunnel, disappearing into the shadows. The arena fell silent except for the hum of the lights and the sound of Jace's ragged breathing.

"Sophie." He turned to me, and his eyes were blue again. Human. Terrified. "I'm sorry. I should have told you. I should have—"

"Stop." I stepped forward and took his hand. His fingers were still burning hot. "You don't have to explain anything tonight. We need to get out of here before your mother shows up."

"My mother?" His face went pale. "What are you talking about?"

"Detective Cross. She's not a cop. She's your mother. She's been following you, protecting you, and she sent me here to find you before Gregory—"

The lights in the arena exploded.

One by one, the bulbs overhead shattered, showering the ice in sparks and glass. The emergency lights flickered and died. We were plunged into absolute darkness, and in that darkness, something moved. Something large. Something that breathed with a low, guttural growl that vibrated through the ice beneath our feet.

"Jace?" I gripped his hand tighter. "What is that?"

His voice, when it came, was barely a whisper. "That's not my father."

A new voice echoed through the dark arena—not Gregory's, not his mother's. Female. Young. Familiar in a way that made my blood freeze.

"Hello, big brother. Did you really think you were the only one?"

The lights flickered back on.

And standing at the edge of the rink, her eyes glowing gold, was a girl I recognized from every hockey game I'd ever worked. The one who always sat in the back row. The one who never cheered. The one who watched Jace like she was waiting for something.

His sister.

The sibling he'd never mentioned.