All Chapters of Monsters on Ice: Chapter 1 - Chapter 10

Chapter 1: Cold ImpactCody 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 loo

Chapter 3: Calculated RiskAtlas Kane"Out. All of you step into the hall right now."The nurse froze mid-step, glancing at Dr. Keller, like he might override me. He didn't. He looked up from the chart with the expression of a man deciding whether this was a fight worth having, weighing it, and finding the scale already tipped against him."Mr. Kane, I still need to check his vitals and adjust the—""You checked him ten minutes ago." I didn't raise my voice. I never needed to. Volume was for people who hadn't learned that stillness worked better. "Whatever's left can wait outside this room.""Sir, hospital protocol requires a nurse present for—""I'm aware of protocol. I sit on the board that funds this wing, Doctor, and I can have someone else's name on that chart in the time it takes you to argue with me." That landed the way I expected it to. Keller's mouth thinned into a hard line, but he nodded once, curt, and ushered the nurse out ahead of him. The door eased shut behind them wi

Chapter 5: Boiling PointHunter Conner "Stop pushing my hands away. You can barely hold your own head up."Cody's hand shoved weakly at my forearm anyway, more reflex than actual resistance. "I can wash my own hair, Hunter.""With one arm." I caught his wrist mid-swat and guided it back down to his side, careful, deliberate, even though careful cost me something every single time I touched him. "Hold still."Steam curled thick around both of us, fogging the glass, filling my lungs with wet heat that did nothing to cool the fire already banked low in my gut. His soaked shirt clung to his good shoulder, and I peeled it back with both hands, slow, working around the brace, working around every place that might hurt him."You don't have to be gentle," he muttered, jaw tight, eyes anywhere but on me."I'm not being gentle for you." My voice came out rougher than I meant it. "I'm being gentle, so I don't break something and have to explain it to Atlas."He huffed something that almost pass

Chapter 7 : Anchors in the Dark Cody Brennan "I can't—I can't breathe, the sling is caught—" The door slammed open before I finished the sentence, hinges cracking against the wall hard enough to rattle something on the dresser. Light spilled in gold from the hallway, and then two shapes filled it at once, blocking most of it out again, moving fast enough that I barely registered them crossing the room before they were already on me. "Cody." Hunter was on his knees by the bed before I'd even gotten another word out, hands finding the tangled strap at my shoulder, fingers working quick and sure despite how big they were. "Hold still, I've got it." "It's stuck, it's — everything's stuck, I can't move my arm—" My voice came out in pieces, breath catching hard on every other word. The sheets had wound around my legs sometime in my sleep, and the sling had twisted itself into a knot against my collarbone that pulled tighter every time I tried to shift. "You're panicking," Atlas said

Chapter 9: Line of Control Atlas Kane "I know how long you've wanted him. I've been watching you watch him since camp." Hunter's chest heaved once, hard, the confession still hanging raw and unanswered in the cold air between us. He didn't say anything right away. I didn't need him to. I'd already gotten what I came out here for — the truth, finally spoken instead of implied, finally something I could work with instead of guess at. "Say something, Kane." His voice had dropped rough at the edges, unsteady in a way I'd never once heard from him on the ice, not even after the worst losses of his career. "There's nothing to say that changes anything." I studied him a moment, the way his shoulders had locked, the way his hands hadn't unclenched since the porch. "You've wanted him for eight months and did nothing but watch from a distance, which tells me everything about your restraint and confirms what I already suspected the first week he joined this team." "You suspected." "I don'