Chapter 152: We’ll Figure Something Out

"Kain?" Reid’s voice broke through the thick, suffocating fog in my head. He tugged at my hand, his grip warm, protective, and grounding, but my fingers remained entirely limp in his grasp. "Come on. Let’s go. Don’t listen to a single word that psycho says."

​I couldn’t move. My gaze was still locked on the heavy metal exit door just inches away, yet my mind was trapped back at the conference table, staring at the empty, dark void in Edward’s eyes.

​If I pushed that door open, I was stepping off a cliff.

​Everything I had ever bled for—the endless hours on the ice until my lungs burned, the agony of injecting those black-market blockers into my thighs, the absolute terror of every mandatory league drug sweep, the pride of lifting the division trophy while carrying the secret weight of my secondary gender—it would all be erased.

I wouldn’t just be banned; I would be public enemy number one. A fraud. A liar. The media would tear my legacy apart piece by piece, and the Serpents’ name would be dragged through the mud forever.

​But if I turned around...

​I looked up at Reid. His jaw was clenched, his slate-grey eyes burning with a desperate, untamed ferocity. He was willing to throw away his entire rookie career, his future, and his life just to put himself between me and the world. If I gave in to Edward’s sick, calculated ’compromise’ just to save my career, I would be destroying the one real thing I had ever been given. I would be shattering Reid.

​"Kain..." Reid’s voice lost its aggressive edge, dropping into a rare, panicked whisper as he noticed the hollow, terrified look on my face.

He stepped closer, his broad shoulders blocking the hallway from view, his scent of frozen pine swelling around me like a shield. "Look at me. Don’t do this. We’ll figure something out. Marcus can—"

​"Even if we tell Marcus, he can’t stop a genetic test, Reid," I whispered back, my voice barely audible, raw and trembling. "If Edward makes that call, the league won’t ask questions. They’ll just mandate a sweep. And we both know what the results will say."

​A soft, slow clicking sound echoed from inside the room.

​Edward had stood up. He walked toward the doorway, stopping just a few feet behind us. The pristine, gentlemanly aura he usually wore like a second skin was entirely gone, replaced by the terrifyingly cold authority of a man who knew he held the ultimate leash.

​"The rookie is right about one thing, Evans," Edward murmured, his voice smooth, dark, and utterly devoid of its previous warmth. "You are running out of time to choose. If you walk out to that parking lot, I will consider it a definitive rejection. And a whistleblower’s civic duty waits for no one."

​Reid whirled around, his left arm immediately slinging back to lock me behind his torso as he bared his teeth at the Avalanche captain. "I told you to shut your fucking mouth, Stein!"

​Edward didn’t even look at him. His eyes remained fixed on me, tracking the slight, pathetic tremor in my shoulders. "I am a patient man, Kain. But I don’t tolerate being discarded. Give me the answer I want, and your career continues seamlessly. You keep your captaincy. You keep your legacy. All it takes is letting me in."

​The silence in the hallway grew so thick it felt like physical concrete pressing down on my chest. My heart throbbed violently against my ribs, a chaotic, agonizing rhythm.

​I was the captain of the Seattle Serpents. I was the strategist. I was the one who always found a loophole, who always saw the open lane on the ice when everyone else saw a wall.

But staring down the barrel of Edward’s obsession, the board’s systemic rules, and Reid’s fierce, unyielding devotion...

​For the first time in my life, I couldn’t see a single way to win.

​In that exact moment, when it felt like I was completely losing my footing, when it felt like I was falling down a bottomless abyss and couldn’t find a single rope to grab, my phone rang.

​I violently shoved my fingers through my hair, ripping my hand away from Reid’s grip, and took three blind, heavy steps away from both of them. My hands trembled so violently I almost dropped the device as I pulled it out.

​The caller ID flashed on the screen. Marina.

​Just when I thought the water had finally closed over my head and I was about to drown, my eldest sister reached down and pulled me straight out of the sea.

​"Hey, sis?" I rasped, my throat so tight the words barely formed.

​"Kain," Marina’s voice came through the speaker, instantly cutting through the lingering, toxic pheromones in the air. She didn’t sound angry; she sounded fiercely, intensely sharp. "You have to tell me the truth right now. I saw those pictures circulating online, and I saw a certain Alpha’s remark on his timeline that has me worried. Kain... are you in trouble? Is something going on that I should know?"

​My heart immediately began to pound against my ribs like a trapped bird.

​For years, I had lied to everyone—including my family—to protect this elaborate facade. I had carried the grueling weight of my secret entirely on my own shoulders. Even towards Marina, I kept things because she had done so much for me. She had helped me keep this secret until now and worried about me more than anyone else.

If this were some other problem, I would’ve kept it to myself, because I wanted to take care of everything on my own.

But looking at the brick wall in front of me, looking at Edward’s dark, hollow stare and Reid’s desperate, unhinged fury... I knew I was done. I had absolutely no intention of lying to her this time. I had no intention of hiding when I was in such deep shit.

​I put my trembling hand over my face, pressing my palm against my eyes as I fought the hot, stinging tears that were finally threatening to spill over. The sheer, exhausting weight of the last twenty-four hours crashed down on me all at once.

​"Yes, sister," I said, my voice completely breaking down the middle, a ragged sob catching in my throat. "I... I really need your help this time."

​A heavy, violent thud echoed clearly from the other side of the line, like a chair being aggressively thrown backward or a fist slamming into a desk.

​"Where are you right now?" she demanded, her voice dropping into a low, lethal register that made a shiver run down my spine. "I’m coming."