Page 9 of Knot Sharing the Ice

"No!" I say, too quickly. I clear my throat, trying to sound casual. "I mean, the roads are pretty bad out there. It's safer to wait it out here until the storm passes. Or at least until I can get these lights on."

She doesn't respond, but she doesn't leave either. I fumble with the keys, finally finding the right one for the utility room. As I step inside, the beam of a flashlight cuts through the darkness.

"Need a hand?" Adder asks, appearing in the doorway with Ember.

I nod, grateful for the help. "Yeah, thanks. The generator should be over here..."

It takes a few minutes of fumbling and muttered curses, but finally, the generator roars to life. The emergency lights flicker on, bathing the rink in a soft, otherworldly glow.

When we emerge from the utility room, Mason is coming back from the entrance with a somber look on his face. "Too little, too late. Door's already frozen shut. Back one, too."

"Are you serious?" Ember asks, her voice lilting with panic.

"It's okay," I say, resisting the way my hand twitches to reach out and lay on her shoulder. "If it's that bad out, the roads aren't safe anyway. But we've got plenty of power to keep this place warm."

"I'm not scared of the cold," she snaps, folding her arms. "I've got a video interview to do at five and there's no way I'll be able to get decent signal in this place."

She's already got her phone out, holding it up and trying to get more bars.

Adder and I exchange a look of bewilderment. Most omegas would be at least a little shaken by the idea of getting stuck in a snowstorm with four strange alphas, but ours just seems… annoyed.

And she still has no clue she's ours. Pretty sure she'd kick us in the balls—with her skates on—if we tried to tell her at this point.

"Uh… Carter?" Mason calls, lowering his voice as he saunters over to me. "You see what I see?"

I follow his gaze up to the ventilation system overhead and notice the shimmery streamers that are always billowing from the vent grates are limp.

Oh, fuck. The emergency generator must not be connected to the main ventilation system. And why would it be? The whole building is way too big to power on a backup generator, and there'd be no reason to keep more than a few areas warm, since no one would stick around to play in a power outage scenario.

No one except one aggressively determined omega. At least she's presently too distracted with trying to get signal to notice.

But her scent… it's getting stronger. If there was somehow any lingering doubt in our minds that she's our scent match, that would solve it.

We all exchange a look as the unspoken realization passes between us. Emberisour match, we all already knew that—and soon, she's going to know it, too.

"So much for taking things slow," Jayce mutters under his breath. "One of us needs to tell her before she figures it out."

Adder clenches his jaw. "I'm the leader. I'll handle lit."

I start to protest for reasons I'm not fully sure of, but the sound dies out in my chest and I mask it as clearing my throat. I've always been the laid back sort. Never had any particular interest in being in charge on or off the ice. Hell, I play so aggressively, people assume I'm like that in every other aspect of life, too, but I've never had a problem with Adder being our defacto leader. He's good at it. Keeps the others in check and runs the Reapers like a well-oiled machine, but this?

This is the first time I've ever wanted to challenge his authority.

The first time I've ever had reason to.

Chapter

Five

EMBER

Ifrantically wave my phone around, desperately seeking even a single bar of signal.

Come on, come on.

This can't be happening.

Not today.

---