Fangs Beneath the Ice

Chapter 2: The golden eyes

Asher's POV

I'd heard about the incident like three times before lunch, and each version had its own sauce added to it.

By the time it reached me secondhand from a junior I barely knew, Dev hadn't just gotten checked, he'd apparently been launched into the boards hard enough to dent them, courtesy of some transfer girl nobody had ever seen play a single game in her life.

"No way that's real," I said, twirling a pen between my fingers while half-listening to Marcus recount it for the second time at our lunch table.

"I'm telling you, Coach Daniels handed her a varsity jersey on the spot." Marcus shook his head, still clearly delighted by the chaos of it. "He didn't even make her try out. Just walked over, gave her the jersey, told her practice starts Thursday."

I stopped to look at him. "Coach doesn't do that."

"Exactly!" He hit his fist on the table, earning a glare from the lunch lady, and he lowered his voice. "Coach did that. Trust me I was surprised too."

Marcus kept going on and on about it until I got fed up and took my lunch elsewhere. Dev was a big guy. There was no way a freshman put him through the boards. I would believe it when I saw it.

Thursday was another day for practice, and we'd see if the rumors were actually true.

THREE DAYS LATER…

I was inspecting my stick when the new girl walked in, eleven minutes late, jersey slung over her shoulder like an afterthought. She looked bored and uninterested in a sport people literally worked their butt off for.

"You're late," Coach Daniels said, not even looking up from his clipboard.

"You're the one who signed me up without asking." She dropped her bag by the bench, pulling the jersey over her gear with zero urgency. "Figured punctuality was optional too."

A few of the guys laughed. I didn't. I was still cataloging her, trying to figure out what exactly had inspired three exaggerated cafeteria retellings.

Then she got on the ice, and so did I.

As a freshman, I expected her to be a little clumsy. What I got instead was someone who skated like she'd been doing it her whole life.

By the third lap of the warm-up skate, she was matching me stride for stride without even breaking a sweat. The rest of the line was struggling to keep up, and this freshman was going head to head with me like it cost her nothing.

"Let's get this over and done with," she said, and the next thing I saw was the puck flying full speed into the post.

Coach Daniels blew the whistle for a break and we all skated off the rink.

"You're staring," Marcus muttered beside me during a water break.

"I'm evaluating." I took a swig from my bottle.

"Sure."

I skated over anyway, mostly to get a read on her, settling onto the bench a seat away while she unlaced and relaced a skate that apparently hadn't been tied right the first time.

"I heard you sent Dev into the boards." She looked startled when I spoke but was quick to regain her composure.

"You heard wrong. He ran into me and then gravity did the rest." She didn't look up from her laces. "Physics, mostly."

"Physics doesn't usually leave a dent in the boards."

"Then maybe your boards are just cheap." She finally glanced at me, unimpressed, sizing me up the exact way I'd been sizing her up for the last twenty minutes. "You're the captain, right? The one Marcus keeps talking about like you hung the actual moon."

"I don't control what Marcus says." I shrugged. “But I'm the captain of this club and the best of the team if I may say so myself.” I added with an air of pride.

"Could've fooled me." She stood, testing the skate, apparently satisfied. "He's mentioned your fastest lap time approximately four separate times in the last hour. That's very impressive."

I got up to do a little stretch. "You matched it without trying."

"I wasn't trying to match anything. All I did was skate." She shrugged, like she wasn't aware of the fact that she was threatening the one thing I cared about.

"Careful," I warned. “I wouldn't want people thinking you're trying to steal my spot before you've even played a game."

"I don't want your spot." She pulled her helmet back on, clearly unbothered. "I want to go home, actually, but apparently Coach doesn't understand the word no, so here we are."

"Most people would kill for a varsity jersey without tryouts."

"Most people didn't move here two weeks ago and would like exactly zero attention drawn to themselves, but sure, let's go with that." She skated off toward center ice without waiting for a response, leaving me sitting there with an actual retort dying somewhere behind my teeth.

I caught up during the scrimmage instead, matching her stride down the boards, close enough to talk without the rest of the team catching it.

"You're fast." I pointed out.

"You already said that." She moved away from me but I skated towards her and she looked irritated.

"I'm saying it again because you didn't seem impressed the first time."

"I'm not big on compliments from people who look pleased with themselves." She cut sharply toward the net, forcing me to adjust, and scored clean past our goalie with a wrist shot that made two of the returning players actually swear out loud in surprise.

"Beginner's luck," I called after her.

"Says the guy who just got beat by someone who's never played a real game." She skated backward for a second. "Careful, Captain. I wouldn't want people thinking your reputation's built on guys slower than you."

Something in me actually flared at that, mostly due to the fact that she was very competitive and I answered.

"At least my reputation's built on more than one lucky check in gym class."

I could tell by the sudden change in her mood that I'd hit her where it was sore. Pretty sure she hadn't seen that coming.

“How about I prove you wrong?” She was moving faster than before and before I could intercept, she'd skated past me and scored another goal.

At that moment, I caught a warm flash of gold catching the rink lights at an angle that shouldn't have produced that color at all, there and gone so fast I immediately doubted I'd seen it.

"What?" She'd caught me staring, her guard snapping back up.

“Did your eyes just turn gold?”

She looked shocked when I asked and before I could get to her, she'd skated off the rink. She said something to Coach Daniels and hurriedly left.