The door to the private room opened.
Not the waiter. Not the hostess. A man in a dark jacket with a camera around his neck and the hungry expression of someone who'd tracked prey to its den. Behind him, two more—one with a phone already recording, another clutching a notepad.
"There he is." The first one pointed directly at Cinder. "Cinder Adair. Mr. Adair, is it true you're in a relationship with one of the players? Can you confirm which—"
The room went very, very quiet.
Every player at that table shifted. Not dramatically—not standing up or shouting—but the collective attention of twenty professional athletes swinging toward a threat was its own kind of violence. Max set down his fork with deliberate care.Cole straightened. Ash's expression went blank in the way that preceded something surgical.
But it was Cinder who went rigid beside me, his hand jerking off my thigh like he'd been burned. The color drained from his face so fast I thought he might pass out.
"Mr. Adair, sources say you were fired for sharing confidential—"
"Get out." Seph was on his feet, his usual laid-back energy replaced by something hard and territorial. "This is a private event. You weren't invited."
"The public has a right to know if team personnel are compromising player welfare—"
The temperature dropped.
I felt it happen—felt my dragon surge forward, felt the cold blast outward from my core like a shockwave. Frost spread across my water glass. My breath turned white. The candle nearest me flickered and went out, wax freezing solid in a heartbeat.
Cinder's head snapped toward me. I saw the recognition in his eyes—the same sharp clinical awareness that had caught my temperature drops before anyone else even noticed. But this time, instead of fear or frustration, something fierce crossed his face.
He stood up.
"Enough," he said, his voice cutting through the chaos with the same calm authority I'd heard him use during CPR, during a medical emergency, during every crisis that had tried to break him. He wasn't loud. He didn't need to be. "You're trespassing on a private booking. You have no authorization to film, and you have exactly thirty seconds to leave before the restaurant calls the police and I file harassment charges."
The lead reporter blinked, thrown off by the directness. "We're just asking questions—"
"You're harassing a medical professional at a private dinner. That's not journalism. That's stalking." Cinder's jaw was set, his hands steady even though I could see the rapid flutter of his pulse at his throat. "And if a single frame of footage from tonight appears anywhere, every person in this room will testify to that."
Behind the reporters, the restaurant manager appeared with two staff members and an expression that promised legal consequences. "Gentlemen. Out. Now."
The retreat was ungraceful—muttered protests, one last flash of a camera before Ash stepped into its line of sight with his broadest, most unhelpful smile—and then the door closed and the room exhaled.
Cinder turned to me immediately. His hand found my wrist under the table, fingers pressing against my pulse point with practiced precision. His eyes flicked to the frozen candle, the frost on my glass. “Breathe,” he murmured.
I stared at him, heart and hopes in my throat threatening to choke me, but I obeyed. I hung on to his hand and breathed. The ice melted. Conversation started. I caught Keegan’s satisfied expression, and it made me flush. Warm.
So warm I would have removed my sweater if that hadn’t meant letting go of Cinder’s hand.
Chapter eleven
High Stick - Raising the stick above shoulder height and making contact with another player.
Cinder
I couldn’t stop watching him.
That had been the problem from the beginning. From the first game. From the first moment my hands had touched his skin and my body had registered something that made no sense. Now, under the blinding lights of the arena, with thousands of voices crashing together into one deafening roar, Taranis Rees felt unreal.
Not just good.
Perfect.
Not the kind of perfect people argued about on sports panels or shouted about on highlight reels. This was something else—something that made my skin prickle and my instincts, honed by years in hospitals, start whispering that what I was seeing shouldn’t have been possible.
Los Angeles came at him hard right from the start. Fast. Aggressive. They moved with purpose, swarming the front of the net, forcing shots through tight spaces, trying to overwhelm him before he could settle in.