Elias dropped down next to Noah without any pre-emptive. Jerkily, he looked over Noah's head, speaking to the Coach. "I might start blacking out with both Tkachuk and McDavid up in my nose."

The trainers moved around at that. Peters' growl sounded like a groan. Noah heard — rather than saw — Peters pinched the bridge of his nose. "Okay. I'll switch you to the third line."

Elias was studiously not looking at Matthew's direction. Noah followed suit, turning his attention back to the ice. They slid further along the benches as the fourth line cleared out. The Flames emerged from a grapple with the puck, the forwards pushed into the Oilers' territory. They lured in the offensive zone for a handful of seconds, before a hasty high shot sent the biscuit deflecting the other way.

Elias drawled, didn't even bother playing up the light-hearted and cheeriness tone he was angling for. His mouth a harsh slash, and his shoulders a grim line. Didn't take much to figure out Matthew had told Elias and Backlund his plan. "What are you gonna do about Draisaitl?"

"Follow the procedures. Not much else."

"Procedures?" Elias repeated, as if he couldn't figure out how to best spit the corrosive poisonous aftertaste out of his tongue. "Like this is some fun kiddies' experiment?"

Noah's eyelid twitched. He handed Elias a Gatorade bottle when the familiar plastic clicking of pills rattled through. The trainer gave Elias three nondescript white capsules. "Not what I meant."

"No?" Elias said. "I'm under the impression you haven't really considered what follows after all the glitter and gold, Hanny."

Noah clenched his jaws and exhaled a shallow breath through his nose. "Whatever you're mad at me for, take it up with Matthew."

"Go on. Dump this all on Tkachuk." Elias tilted his head — the blackness of his pupils flattened. "Not you who are incapable of telling him to pull the break." There was a vicious knife-edge to his voice — an implicit invitation for rebuttal threading underneath his words. And for a second, Noah contemplated letting the viscous vicious anger fill him — to reach out, rise to the bait.

He didn't get to say no. Even if he did say no, Matthew was going to bulldoze ahead regardless. Elias would know.

Elias had had splitting headaches for a solid week after they first toured the Flames' facility. Once he was put on a line with Matthew, he had hounded Matthew to tone it down. Noah didn't know whether over time, he acclimated to Matthew's scent, or the stronger meds eased some of the pain. Elias gave him a weary shrug whenever he asked. But, considering Elias was still taking too many pills per day and nobody in the facility ever remarked Matthew's scent had softened, there was a clear winner and loser for that fight.

Matthew Tkachuk had his own agenda and he ignored anything not perpetuating it. Compromises came after he reached his goals. With him at the helm, sometimes the best way was to go along rather than fighting back. Noah might grit his teeth and bite his tongue, though he'd rather pretend he had agreed with Matthew than clinging to his pride and dignity, only to be tossed into a bad situation anyway and forced to scramble for a solution with no preparation.

But Noah wasn't going to sit here and plead his case. He wasn't interested in spiraling down a rabbit hole with two minutes, forty-eight seconds left on the clock. Moreover, Elias had spoken all statements. No matter what answer Noah gives, it'd be wrong.

So he bit his tongue. Eyes trained on the puck bouncing back and forth in front of the Flames' net, too close for comfort.

Apparently, that was a wrong response, too, because Elias prickled. "Hanny, you agreed to help Tkachuk. Do you know what you're getting into?"

Noah said nothing.

Elias pushed Noah's side. Once. Twice. And when it was clear Noah would rather sit there and tank the hits than start talking, Elias shoved hard enough for Noah to almost tumble backward on the bench if Hamonic hadn't grabbed him.

"What is wrong with you?" Noah twisted, gripping Elias's shoulders and pressing him down. His torso flinched at the sudden straining motions, Elias's punches left phantom freezing imprints along his ribs, but the frustration he didn't want to acknowledge crawled under his skin, numbing out the pain. "Yes, I know I'm being asked contain a guy capable of murdering people with his eyes wide open. Yes, my plan is more than running around in circles and tiring him out 'til someone shoots a tranquilizer at him. Happy?" He said evenly, voice low, keeping the snarl out of his tone.

"Jesus Christ," Elias said, a touch of maniac in his half-bitten laugh. "You're wrong. You're so wrong."

On either side of them, Hamonic and Giordano were peeking over, concerned.

Elias was panting through his mouth, red blotched across his pale cheeks. Eyes glazed. They were all sweat-drenched by this point of the game, so it could simply be due to Elias getting worked up, but it might also be signs prefacing a pheromone overload.

Losing both Elias and Tkachuk in McDavid's heat fallout meant their lofty comeback was up in flames. Matthew would be throwing himself away for nothing.

"We're just drawing a penalty, Lindy. McDavid's going to have a meltdown of a heat episode, anyway." Noah tried to come across as pacifying — ignoring the distant part of him that was wringing its hands, tripping over the guilt swelling at the back of his throat.

Teams had always capitalized on Elias's hyperosmia and manipulated him into ruts. Even though he was neither a physical nor an agitating player, for three years straight in Carolina, Elias racked up high PIMs from numerous Courting fight and Courting fight instigator infractions.

Sure, they had all played this league long enough to treat these subjects with clinical forceps and scissors — and goading McDavid into heat was going to be some slimy affair. But, discussing purposefully triggering heat and rut on the opposition — in front of someone who had been on the receiving end of pheromone manipulations multiple times — was calloused. Of course Elias would be upset. He had been and would be forced to field courting attempts on a regular basis once October hit. Knowing his teammates were planning to pull the same stunt on another vulnerable player wouldn't have been pleasant.

"I'm not thrilled about this, either. I know you think an underhand ploy—" Noah was saying.

"I wouldn't fucking care this much if you're just drawing penalties." Elias hissed, cutting him off. He grabbed the logo at the front of Noah's jersey, shaking Noah. "Hanny, this isn't a job you put your head down and get it over with. This isn't something you fucking play along with Matthew because he's your friend. There will be a courting fight, and you and Matthew are about to fuck up a few people's lives. I need you to get that through your thick skull, then go over and tell Tkachuk you're backing out now."

"You try changing his mind," Noah snapped, tugging away.

"Boys. Eyes are on us." Giordano warned in his Captain voice. A hand landed on Elias's shoulder. He didn't seem to register.

Elias's eyes buzzed, electric blue. "You aren't containing Draisaitl. You're being asked to be an accessory to a courtship by stopping a suitor. Do you understand how low it is for Tkachuk to pull such a cowardly move?"

The cold driving force at the forefront of Noah's brain wanted to shut this conversation down before the sympathy or fear leaked too far inside his chest again. Before other teammates got involved. Elias's emotions were infectious — everybody already had a bad case of their own to deal with, no need to pile onto it.

On the ice, Michael Stone unsuccessfully iced the puck to stem the Oilers' offensive onslaught, although the attempt bought enough time for the Flames' fourth line to come crashing back. Their first liners scurried off before the Oilers swung back. And Noah tamped the urge to wretch himself out of Elias's hold and hurl himself over the board in Bodie and Giordano's stead. He'd take getting hammered and flattened in than opening his mouth and letting Elias pull out his teeth one by one.

Fuck. He laughed aloud at the irony.

He knew he wanted Elias to calm down, he knew he needed to calm down first. But it was difficult keeping his temper cool when Elias was doing everything to get him to react and making Noah stare down the barrel at his own hypocrisy.

Mathew's eyes were set on courting McDavid — his world had already narrowed to McDavid. What was Noah's excuse? He hated Matthew for his pigeon-holed point-of-view. Yet here he was, doing the same thing, minimizing Elias's feelings and expecting Elias to be cooperative because Noah needed Elias to remain cool before they were back in the wringer.

Later, his voice of reason grinded out. Later, he'd apologize and let Elias properly unload on him. Right now, Elias needed to focus on hockey, not frivolous morality. He might have switched lines on paper, though Peters would still send him out if the opportunity arose. Noah was a defenseman — he wasn't always on the ice at the same time as Matthew, and he certainly couldn't tell if something went wrong as fast as Matthew's linemates. Anything happened, Matthew, Elias and Backlund would be the first to have each other's back. Whether Elias liked Matthew's plan or not, the Flames's valuable second line had to be gelling.

"Tkachuk wants to bond with McDavid—"

"Matthew wants to fight McDavid. That's it. Nothing is set in stone," Noah said. It came out more impersonal than he intended. But might as well.

Courting fights in games were a nightmare to comprehend. People told him the pheromone signaling romance was different from the other fuck-you pheromone probe, although he was pretty sure the Omegas and Alphas couldn't tell the differences between the two any better than him — especially in an environment where the competitiveness would fog out any underlying horniness until too late, or vice versa. The fans and his teammates had mixed up courting fights and regular fights. Others just clued in faster once things blew up, thanks to pheromones.

McDavid and Matthew's fight would probably unfold the same. Matthew could bluff and do whatever intricate pheromone-flirting or bickering with McDavid. But until they drop the gloves and grapple each other into open center ice, until everybody witnessed both of them somehow arriving at the point where they mutually agreed to rip out the other person's throat for romantic reasons and not hatred or spite — there was no point arguing whether Matthew was courting McDavid or what-not. Noah wasn't going to ponder reasons why Matthew wanted to carve McDavid's face in.

Made no difference to him. Noah's foremost responsibility was making sure Matthew wouldn't be the one being rushed to the ER at the end of the night. Be it containing Draisaitl or having to bail Matthew out of McDavid's heat craze at the last second, he only needed Matthew to be fine.

Noah grabbed Elias's fists in his jersey, yanking at his gloved fingers. "Besides, Matthew has been putting out heavy pheromones. If the Oilers lets McDavid walk straight into this, their loss."

Hockey players liked to pretend there was a universal unwritten code of honor they followed once they were on the ice. Except, the same way the official rules discouraged courting and fighting even though fighting was so ingrained in hockey culture, the rules around courting were a game of semantics and assumptions.

The Oilers peddling out Connor McDavid and Leon Draisaitl high on inducers would've been immediately punished in the Metro Division, where the pheromone war had always been neck-to-neck. A roster-full of either Alphas or Omegas primed with strong pheromone output would tip McDavid and Draisaitl over the edge during the first period or mid-second. The Washington Capitals certainly wouldn't have let Draisaitl off scot-free. On the Carolina Hurricanes, Brind'Amour might've gotten several Alphas to pitch in for maximum efficiency — unlike Peters, who hemmed and hawed but sat on his hands and did nothing. The Flames' approach was tame in response to the Oilers' aggressive baiting.

"The problem isn't Matthew courting McDavid, Hanny. It's how he's—"

"This is a tactic, Lindy. Nothing more, nothing less."

It must have shown on Noah's face, or maybe Elias recognized he wasn't appealing to the correct part of Noah's brain. He pulled back — calculating. Then, carefully, Elias released him, easing him back onto the bench and bumped their visors together in a mock soothing gesture, and Noah's insides clenched into a defensive ball.

Seeing Elias's eyes cleared up gave his chest a false shot of relief. Elias was sensible again. Good.

But Noah's stomach twisted and tensed, knowing what was coming after.

A logical Elias Lindholm arguing on the side of his emotions was going to be much worse.

"You're right, you aren't responsible for the choices the Oilers, or Matthew, or McDavid make," Elias said, softened, hackles lowered. "But I'm asking you to thoroughly understand the choices you're about to commit to, Hanny. This is their courting fight. If you stop Draisaitl, you've taken away a choice out of two people. You're going to tie McDavid to someone he didn't love forever."

"I'm not tying anybody down." Noah said, sharp. "McDavid in heat is still capable of rejecting Matthew's courting attempt." Elias was the living testament of that sentiment. "And if somehow they bond, McDavid can always form a full-bond with Draisaitl once he comes to. Might hurt him for a bit, but he'll live."

"And Matthew?" Elias asked. "He has no Alpha to overwrite the half-bond with."

Noah's jaws snapped shut, and he had to take a second to swallow around the spiky ball clogging his throat. "It's just a half-bond," He said carefully, tamping down on the hint of shakiness threatening to creep in. "Matthew and McDavid aren't close. As long as the bond's severed early, they are both fine."

"Remind me how many people can live with a broken bond for over five years?" Noah didn't quite flinch. Except, his words faltered. And that was all Elias needed. Elias pressed, knowing he could twist the knife in further with Noah's wall deteriorating. "The pain doesn't fade, doesn't heal, you know. Even if McDavid and Draisaitl, or let's say Matthew and I, bond later, our mates never stop feeling a piece of themselves is missing. It's painful." Elias grabbed his elbow, anchoring him down. Noah's muscles jumped — an inhale lodged deep like a wood splinter in his lungs. "Look me in the eyes, Hanny. You're really carrying this through?"

He felt trapped, backed up toward the cliffside, the earth crumbling under his feet.

Elias knew Noah knew he couldn't look Elias in the eyes. Couldn't look and not remember the times he had to drag Elias off feverish fights against suitors. Couldn't look and not be reminded of Elias, twisted and broken at all the wrong places, yet unyielding.

Alphas and Omegas laid their life down for their mate. Getting and maintaining a bond in the first place was already a promise the two parties were willing sacrifice their whole beings for each other — and breaking a bond resulted in painful blowbacks, often leading people to severe depression and suicidal.

Elias knew Noah couldn't look him in the eyes and say, Yeah, that's the fate I'm going to condemn McDavid to. That's the fate I'm going to let Matthew put upon himself.

He hated this. Hated how both Elias and Matthew weaponized his cowardice and attachments to them and forced him to follow their morals. They used things Noah could only imagine and extrapolate from the bleak statistics and rose-tinted horror stories as supporting evidence — and how the hell was he supposed to argue against something intangible he couldn't even come close to experience or understand.

"I can't—" Noah said, choking up on a last gasp for air. "I can't just let Draisaitl kill Matthew, Lindy." He could feel his face twisted up, but he had no idea what kind of expression he was making, but whatever Elias's intense focus dialed to something gentle enough to cut.

"Matthew isn't jumping into the fray blind. He's asking for someone's hand. But he has to pry McDavid out of Draisaitl's clutch fair and square," Elias said. "You can't protect him, Hanny. He's gotta walk into the fire himself, and you've to trust he'll come out of the other side alive."

Noah shook his head, not wanting to hear another word.

Elias didn't understand.

For a hit on McDavid, Tom Wilson was hospitalized for eighteen months, having to rehab his arms and legs. Matthew would be comatose. Even that felt a little like overly-optimistic delusion.

He knew Matthew's parents — stayed over at his place a million times when they used to play on the Boston Junior Bruins. How could he face them if he let their son die to a pheromone overload he could prevent because he got cold-feet?

How could Noah tell the bench, his teammates, the fans donning proud Flames jerseys, the kids wearing Matthew's number 19, that he chickened out when people counted on him the most? Calgary loved Matthew. The city — the team — would break if he was gone. It'd come back to haunt him. Noah wouldn't forgive himself.

"Nobody will blame you," Elias said. "It'd be Matthew's own decision. He picks his fight. But there'll be a lot of collateral damage if you shield him out of blind obligation. Things you're going to say to Chantal and Keith — are you prepared to say that four more times? To Connor's family, to Draisaitl's, to your own family?"

Kailer Yamamoto flung a wide shot which ratcheted off the high glass and put the puck out of play. He shrugged, laughing in an annoying fake humble Ah, what can you do manner when his linemates came over to cajole him. As Yamamoto skated by on his way back to the Oilers' bench, Noah bit his mouthguard, resisting the urge to spit out something stupid and added fuel to the fire, just because of the excessive energy skittering under his skin.

On the other end of the bench, Matthew was already perching over the board — the muscles on his neck flexed. Directly across, almost in a mirror image, McDavid was leaning forward on his elbows like he might leapt onto the ice the moment he was left unsupervised.

The second Coaches of both teams signaled, both McDavid and Matthew were springing over, gravitating toward each other. Draisaitl trailed after McDavid — a menacing shadow.

Peters tapped Noah, and Hamonic was standing up.

The feelings Noah had been putting a lid on started chewing out of his rib cages again as he tethered on the metaphorical cliff edge.

He could see the bottom, and they were all jagged rocks.

"There's no good way out, huh," Noah said.

"No, Hanny. There is, for you." Elias let him go. "Don't get involved."

/

"Hey," Matthew said, stopping Noah while Sean Monahan and Hamonic were hashing out where they wanted to send the puck off the draw. "Are we still good?"

Noah ignored Elias's glare from across the ice and scanned the jerseys drifting over into formation, bracing his stick across his hips.

It seemed like the perfect storm for disaster. One, Matthew was on the ice with McDavid and Draisaitl — trying to get his shots in. And two, Zach Kassian was sent out to pressure Matthew.

Noah had been keeping half-an-eye on Kassian after he seemed to have locked onto Matthew within the first three minutes of the game. Habitual instinct and curiosity, so to speak — despite him being perfectly aware Kassian was full-bonded off the ice.

Kassian had zero self-control. And whenever he mired a miniscule of any, he spent it beating brats. Matthew had declared, in his pompous, conceited style: it was a destined hate-at-first-sight ever since he came in as a rookie — carrying the proud Tkachuk last name and a prouder family history of being a pesky pest. Although, considering Kassian got irregular hormonal episodes due to a long history of ingesting high amounts of inducers, and the two had been bashing the other's head into the board for a good chunk of the game, whenever they were near each other, the cathartic car crashes kept getting bigger and messier.

Heading into the second period, the Oilers had wisely only deployed Kassian when Matthew wasn't on the ice to minimize incurring unnecessary penalties. Matthew and Kassian kept jawing off each other from the benches and tried to poke each other's eyes with their sticks. Nonetheless, otherwise, the sheet was kept clean. However, him being paired against Matthew once again was maybe both a rare example of the Oilers' management being competent for once and deserve some applause — since Kassian had been doing an excellent job leading Matthew askew and away from McDavid — as well as the Oilers' bench signaling they were now happier than ever to accommodate the Flames' dirty fights since their huge lead wasn't fucking going anywhere.

A full-on line brawl was a matter of when, not if.

Funnily enough, with Matthew now presumably injecting some sex pheromone into his usual aggressive and aggravating scent, Noah wouldn't be surprised if somehow, Kassian was the one Matthew unwittingly goaded into heat instead.

Elias might call it karma.

"Kassian will be a problem." Noah remarked idly. "You'll have to shake him off."

Matthew snorted. "Nah. He's a useful tool."

Noah glanced up at the scoreboard.

One minute and sixteen seconds remained.

It's not too late to back out, Elias's voice echoed at him. Do the right thing, Hanny.

"How long do you need?" It was a rhetorical question, to be honest. Nobody knew. Some courting fights tapped out in five minutes. Others dragged on for hours.

Still, Matthew entertained it, anyway. He pivoted his mouthguard to the other side of his mouth and shifted his weight onto his back leg, considering. "Buy me five minutes, yeah?"

Noah nodded slowly.

He could say no. Could say he changed his mind.

Matthew wouldn't hold grudges. Might rib Noah for being spineless, might scheme other ways, might get other people involved. But, knowing Matthew, he'd simply shrug and dive right in anyway, the magnitude of mayhem he was about to inflict be damned. After all, they were living in Matthew's world, where the universe bent to his will.

And he had always found glory and beauty in chaos.

Noah loosened his stiff shoulders, turning. He pushed a little harder at Matthew as he skated by, eliciting a soft oof out of him. "If I'm holding Draisaitl back, I'm doing it for the team, not for you." He said in a whisper, looking at Matthew in the eyes. "I don't care what you want to do with McDavid, but don't let Lindy be proven right once this is all over."

Matthew grinned and tipped his eyes, eyes narrowed — dirty blue and grey, like a stormfront gathering — and it read, You know how much I love to prove people wrong.