The horn blasted.
The red light flared behind me while Declan’s eyes found mine across the crease—wide, already knowing exactly what he’d done.
Two-two. End of the second period.
I didn't slam my stick. Didn't swear. I tapped my posts, looked at the scoreboard, and skated to the bench for the intermission with the grim acceptance of a man who knew the next twenty minutes would define the season.
In the room, Coach didn't yell. He adjusted. Told us to play smart and tight and wait for our moment. Cole sat with his eyes closed, that preternatural stillness he got before big shifts, and I wondered if the dragon under his skin was as restless as mine.
I caught Cinder's eye in the tunnel on the way back out. He was standing against the wall with his tablet, doing his job, being exactly where he was supposed to be, and the look he gave me was not a smile this time. It was something steadier. Something that said I'm not going anywhere, and if you want to talk about it later, I'll be here, and also, you need to stop the goddamn puck.
I loved him so much it was physically painful.
The third period was a knife fight.
Nashville came out swinging, desperate to protect home ice, desperate to extend their streak. We matched them shift for shift, hit for hit, the game degenerating into the kind of grinding, chaotic hockey that turned pretty systems into brawls and brawls into moments of individual brilliance. The refs lost control around the eight-minute mark when Ash and Nashville'senforcer got tangled up after a whistle and both benches emptied in a shoving match that took four officials to sort out.
Penalties. Offsetting minors. Then more penalties. A roughing call on Ember. A slashing call on Nashville's center. The penalty boxes filled and emptied and filled again, and the clock ground down with the merciless patience of something that didn't care about anyone's hopes.
With ninety seconds left, both teams had fought themselves into matching penalties, leaving us four-on-four with the score knotted at two and the building so loud I could feel the vibrations in my teeth.
Nashville's coach called timeout with sixty-eight seconds remaining. When play resumed, their goaltender skated to the bench. Five Nashville skaters. Empty net. All-in.
The faceoff was in our zone. Max won it, barely, scraping the puck back to Ash, who fired it along the boards. Nashville's defenseman intercepted, kept it in, fed it to the point. Shot. I caught it clean, squeezed it, felt the whistle blow for a stoppage.
Thirty-nine seconds.
Another faceoff. Our zone. The linesman dropped the puck, and Nashville's center won it this time, pulling it back to the point. Their defenseman held it, surveying, looking for the lane. Bodies everywhere. Five Nashville skaters clogging every inch of available ice, sticks down, screening, tipping, doing everything they could to get one more past me.
The shot came from the top of the circle. I blocked it with my chest. The rebound kicked to the half-wall. A Nashville forward collected it and fired again. I got my blocker on it, sent it spinning into the air, and it landed on the ice in front of my crease.
Three Nashville players converged on it.
I didn't think. I didn't calculate. I did something I'd done maybe twice in my entire career, something that went againstevery instinct a goaltender possessed, every lesson about staying in your crease and trusting your defense and not playing the puck unless you were absolutely certain.
I swung my stick.
Not a pass. Not a chip. A full, two-handed baseball swing that caught the puck and sent it rocketing off the ice surface with a velocity that surprised even me. The cold channeled through my arms and into the shaft and through the blade, and the puck screamed down the ice like it had been fired from a cannon, rising slightly, humming, carrying every ounce of frozen desperation I had left.
It cleared the Nashville players. Cleared the blue line. Cleared center ice. It was still rocketing when it crossed the far blue line, when it passed over the empty crease where Nashville's goaltender should have been standing, and then it hit the back of the net with a sound that was swallowed instantly by something far louder.
Silence.
One heartbeat of absolute, disbelieving silence.
Then the arena came apart.
Not the Nashville fans. They sat in stunned, horrified quiet, eighteen thousand people processing the impossibility of what they'd just witnessed. The sound came from our bench. From our guys. From every single Dragon who was already climbing over the boards before the horn finished sounding, sticks and gloves flying, a tidal wave of bodies pouring onto the ice and converging on me with a force that should have knocked me flat.
Max hit me first. Then Cole. Then Ember, who was screaming something completely incoherent and crying and laughing simultaneously. Ash piled on. Sorin materialized from somewhere. Declan, the kid whose turnover had let Nashville tie it, wrapped his arms around my waist and buried his face in my jersey and shook.
I couldn't breathe. Not because of the bodies crushing me but because the scoreboard read 3-2 and the clock read 0:00 and I had just scored a goal from my own crease in a game that kept our season alive.
The broadcast team had lost all pretense of objectivity.
"TARANIS REES! THE GOALTENDER SCORES! I HAVE NEVER—IN TWENTY-THREE YEARS OF CALLING HOCKEY—"
"Dave, I don't even know what to say. The goaltender just won the game. From two hundred feet. Into an empty net. With thirty-five saves and a performance that—I don't have words. I genuinely do not have words."