CHAPTER: 9. A POWER PLAN.

DORIAN'S POV.

The black ice had no business being as beautiful as it was. That was the only thought I didn't say out loud because it was the kind of observation that served no practical purpose.

Draven Stadium, a place that we've owned for more than two years, was the perfect place for us to practice. I wasn't really a fan of hockey. Never had much time to play it unless necessary. Emphasis on necessary.

I looked around. Lucien was already stretching at the far end when I came out which meant he hadn't slept. Caius followed me out thirty seconds later with his notebook which he would set on the boards and reference exactly twice and then ignore. Riven came last, no greeting, stick, already in his hands and moved directly to the left circle to begin his own warm-up without being asked.

We ran the first drill in silence. This was the standard. The first twenty minutes of any session we did together belonged to instinct. We had learned years ago not to interrupt it. I sent the puck wide to Lucien and he was already moving before the pass completed because he had felt it coming the same way he always did.

The four of us shared a bond. It was the same thing that made Riven flinch when I took a hit in the game three weeks ago, the same thing that made Caius pull up short in the middle of a sprint last month because Lucien had twisted his ankle two hundred meters away.

What we experienced was an unusually heightened version of a documented phenomenon among multiple birth vampires, a resonance effect as the specialists called it. We shared a similar nervous frequency.

Caius cut across center and I moved without deciding to, the puck finding him in the slot as though the pass had been agreed upon in a meeting I didn't remember attending. He shot and it went all in.

He didn't celebrate. None of us did. We just looked at each other.

A few mistakes here and there from Riven almost set me on an edge. This was a critical period and we just couldn't afford...I couldn't afford not getting what I wanted. Luckily for him, he was able to adjust mid-stride with the kind of correction that would have put a human player on the ice.

I came off the ice at the ninety minute mark and Lucien was already at the boards with a water bottle, breathing harder than he wanted to look like he was breathing.

"Clean session," he commented.

"Not bad." I replied.

He looked at me with the expression he used when he thought I was being unnecessarily withholding and had decided not to push it.

"Why are you looking at me as if I fucked your mate?" I blurted out without much reasoning. He scowled at me before removing his skates.

"You wouldn't even dare to or else I'd have your soul burning so badly in hell."

"Luckily, I don't have one." I taunted, feeling my annoying self starting to show.

He was going to reply but restrained himself and just rolled his eyes, "It seems Caius wants a word."

The latter was already coming off, notebook under his arm, skates still on. He stopped at the gate and looked at me with the specific expression he reserved for information he had verified three times before presenting.

"The match." He said.

"What about it?" I leaned over, paying rapt attention to whatever genius words he might say.

"Four games out. I have confirmed it on both sides of the bracket. If we maintain current form and Ezra's team maintains theirs, which based on the footage I've reviewed they will, we're looking at a head to head in Voss City." He paused. "We'd be going to them. Playing on their ground."

I absorbed that. "His ground." I corrected.

"Does it matter?"

Lucien had gone very still beside me.

"How solid is the projection?" I asked.

"Solid enough that I'm not calling it a projection anymore." Caius turned the notebook over in his hands. "There's one variable though. Ezra's team has a match against the Northern division leaders which is a legitimate difficulty spike. If they lose and it affects their bracket standing, they might not qualify. "

"I doubt that they would lose." Lucien spoke after a while. Caius looked at him.

"I watched him play," Lucien continued in a tone that hinted to us that the conversation was settled as far as he was concerned.

"They won't lose."

Caius looked back at me and I gave him a short nod. "Work on the assumption that they will advance. I want the full match details by the end of the week. This should include the venue, logistics, and schedule."

"Copied that. I have already started." He snapped his fingers and went back to the bench. Riven had not contributed to any of this. He was still on the ice, moving slowly while I kept my eyes on him for a while. Sometimes, it was a bit hard to guess what any of them could be thinking just like I was always unpredictable.

"You told Father?" Lucien asked, drawing me away from my thoughts. I had almost forgotten his presence.

"I will tell him tonight."

Lucien nodded. "Do you think he'll actually play?"

I raised my brow at him, "Why? Are you suddenly having doubts now? You sounded confident earlier."

"Use your brain for once, brother. I sounded confident that he wouldn't lose the match IF he plays. I am not confident if he WILL play."

"As far as I am concerned, he is on the roster. He will play."

"That's not what I asked." I shot him a deadly look to quit playing with my mind.

"I mean..." he sighed, thinking for some seconds, "When he sees us. When he realises it's us on the other side of the ice." He turned the water bottle in his hands. "Do you think he will stay on the ice or do you think he will —"

"He won't run." I cut in.

"You don't know that."

"But what I know is that he spent eight months planning an exit down to the transit ticket. He is not impulsive." I picked up my own water bottle. "He will be angry but he will play. Because that's just who he is. Ezra." I replied.

Lucien was quiet for a moment. Whether or not he was convinced, I cared less.

"Okay." He replied finally.

"Good. Get to work." I left him at the boards.

The others filtered out over the next twenty minutes. Caius to his office and whatever seventeen-tab spreadsheet he was currently running. Lucien to wherever Lucien went when he needed to not be looked at. Riven came off the ice last, his skates over his shoulder, and passed me on the way out without saying a word, which was normal but then he paused at the tunnel entrance for just a second and looked over his shoulder.

"If all reasonable plans to bring him back aren't working, we have no choice but to forcefully do it. We don't have much time to cuddle a baby. We can only last this long so let's do what we have to do. He belongs to us after all." Then he was gone.

It was clear to me that he was beginning to feel weary and I knew that it was because of the lack of blood. The pressure to bring Ezra back without frightening him made my body ache badly.

I wonder how he was doing. Whether or not he knew this but we had known about his heat for a long time now. Last night was when I saw the red moon show up again, causing my heart to draw towards him.

In Veyrath, the red moon had a name that predated the city by several centuries. The old texts called it the Surrender Moon, not in the romantic sense, but in the biological sense. The sense that referred to a body reaching the limit of what it could suppress and beginning, whether it wanted to or not let go.

I knew what it means for a standard omega. I knew what it meant for Ezra specifically, which was different and significantly more serious. His heats had been irregular since he was seventeen. Without the estate's pharmaceutical infrastructure, without Caius monitoring the cycles and adjusting the supply accordingly, without any of the controlled conditions we had maintained around him for twenty years, the red moon rising wasn't a warning.

It was a countdown. The match was getting closer yet Ezra was out there alone with whatever he had managed to source and no one monitoring the cycle and no one knew what his biology actually was or what it was capable of doing when it stopped being manageable.

He didn't know what he was.

He had left without knowing and we let him do so without telling him the truth. Because this would have required explaining things that were complicated and in some cases inexcusable and Caelan had made a decision about timing that I had not pushed against and now Ezra was alone, probably watching the red moon from an apartment we didn't have the address of with a suppressant supply barely enough to cope with his pain.

Just four more matches and we'd be seeing each other.

If all measures to bring him back the logical way wouldn't work, we'd have to resort to the last option to bring him back.