Defenceman: Parallel Ice (Non-Canonical Saga)
Copyright© 2025 by Cold Creek Tribute Writer
18. Old Enemies Rise Again
Coming of Age Story: 18. Old Enemies Rise Again - Defenceman: Parallel Ice (A Non-Canonical Saga) builds on Cold Creek’s Defenceman series while offering a new interpretation. Michael Stewart’s journey extends beyond the rink into intrigue, modeling, and the launch of his AI: Aegis. From Ann Arbor to London, Japan, and Spain, the story explores honor, love, betrayal, and resilience. Rivals and allies test his limits in the arena, courts and shadows—where triumph demands sacrifice and heart both on and off the ice.
Caution: This Coming of Age Story contains strong sexual content, including Romantic Celebrity Sports Interracial White Female Oriental Female White Couple Royalty AI Generated
Horny, Late June / July 1,2010
Hanna’s keyboard taps steadily in the living room while her music plays in the background. The condo feels normal with her here—busy, lived-in—but none of that does a damn thing to reduce my morning wood. It doesn’t matter how frigid the shower; my body has its own needs and wants. Going from nightly sex to nothing is its own special kind of hell. While my brain understands the breakup, my body, not so much.
I hate admitting it, but lately I’ve caught myself staring at random girls. There’s the cute brunette in the local coffee shop who leans over her laptop when she types. My eyes linger a little too long, and she catches me staring. She gives me a flirtatious smile in return. It isn’t her, and it isn’t a real attraction; it’s just stupid, distracting horniness.
And the only reason I haven’t acted on any of it is because of Keira.
One date, one kiss, one night of letting myself relax—that was all it took to pull her into the ugliest parts of my world. She had no idea what she walked into, and it nearly got her hurt. I’m not going to do that to another innocent girl, so I stick to school, hockey, and the small circle of people who already know how chaotic things can get around me.
But none of that solves the physical frustration building day after day, especially now that Willow and Asuka have started messaging again. I find myself thinking about them more than I want to admit.
I miss them, not just the sex. Though my body remembers every bit of it, I miss the closeness. Willow laughing into my neck, Asuka resting her hand lightly on my stomach. The feeling of being anchored and loved.
Losing them wasn’t just missing girlfriends; it was losing two people who steadied my life in ways I didn’t appreciate until they were gone.
Elizabeth was the one who drove the breakup, and she made sure it applied to all of them. Now this NCAA smear—anonymous tips, coordinated posts, everything landing exactly. I don’t want to accuse her of anything, but with Kiyomi’s evidence and the pattern lining up the way it does, it’s impossible to ignore.
Hanna makes the condo feel less empty, but she isn’t a replacement, nor is she supposed to be.
Then there’s Mitsy.
During her visit she takes one look at me, and doesn’t hesitate.
“Michael, are you TUGGING THE GOALIE?”
I almost drop my water bottle, snort water out of my nose, and splutter, “Mitsy—come on.”
A huge grin betrays her stern countenance. “You appear seconds from exploding. Seriously, the tension radiating off you could power a small city.”
Hanna practically slides out of her chair, cackling. “Oh my God, she’s not wrong. You’ve been stomping around here like a caged animal for weeks.”
“I have not been stomping—”
“You absolutely have,” Hanna cuts me off, spinning halfway around in her chair. “The floorboards are filing complaints. You should go out, meet someone instead of living like a monk.”
“Exactly,” Mitsy adds, clearly enjoying this way too much. She perches on the arm of the couch like she’s settling in for a show. “We know lots of nice girls who would love to meet you, and they won’t freak out when your life turns upside down. Unless you prefer cold showers and sad, lonely evenings?”
“I’m not having sad, lonely evenings—”
“The empty pizza boxes in your recycling say otherwise,” Hanna sing-songs.
“Those are from studying—”
“Sure they are.” Mitsy’s grin turns absolutely wicked. “Face it, Michael. You’re wound tighter than a hockey stick. It’s actually becoming concerning. Hanna and I have discussed it.”
“You’ve discussed it?”
“At length,” Hanna confirms, nodding solemnly. “There was a whole agenda. Bullet points. Mitsy made a presentation.”
“There was no presentation—”
“There was definitely a presentation,” Mitsy interrupts. “Very professional. Graphs showing your declining mood. A pie chart of your social interactions—spoiler, the biggest slice was ‘talking to your laptop.’”
I hate the interference, but I know it comes from a place of love. Also, they’re clearly having way too much fun with this.
I sigh. “You both remember what happened with Keira, right?”
They look at each other and quiet immediately.
“Fair,” Hanna says, her teasing tone softening.
“Okay, that’s a good point,” Mitsy admits, then her eyes light up again—always a warning sign. “What about Emma or Kristen? They already live in the spotlight, know what your world is like, and they’re both crazy about you. Emma texts you constantly, and don’t think I haven’t noticed Kristen’s name popping up on your phone.”
“Have you been reading my messages?”
“Please. I don’t need to read them. Your face does this thing whenever certain names appear.” She mimics what I assume is supposed to be my expression—something between hopeful and constipated. “It’s adorable and also deeply pathetic.”
I freeze.
She isn’t wrong.
I’ve been so wrapped up in my own bullshit pity party that I haven’t even considered the people who still care about me. Emma. Kristen. Even Molly. I’ve been a lousy friend to them, disappearing into my own head while they keep reaching out.
Mitsy isn’t being subtle, but she isn’t wrong either.
“When’s the last time you actually called any of them?” Hanna asks, gentler now. “Not texted. Called.”
I don’t have a good answer.
“That’s what I thought.” Mitsy stands, brushing off her jeans. “Look, we’re not trying to run your love life—”
“Could’ve fooled me.”
“—but watching you mope around like a kicked puppy is getting old. You have options. Good ones. People who actually understand your world and won’t run screaming when things get complicated.” She pauses, tilting her head. “Also, Molly keeps asking about you, and I’m running out of excuses for why you haven’t visited.”
My dick thinks for me before my brain catches up. Molly. Red hair. That laugh.
“Maybe I should call Emma,” I say slowly. “Maybe Kristen. Definitely Molly.”
“There it is.” Mitsy claps her hands together. “The fog lifts. The man awakens.”
“Don’t push it.”
“Too late. Already pushed.” She grabs her bag, heading for the door. “Serbia’s only days away, right? Willow and Asuka will be there. Maybe sort out whatever’s happening in that thick skull of yours before you see them again.”
She’s right. Between the guilt, the leftover feelings, and the physical frustration, I don’t know whether to hope or brace myself.
But I know this much: I can’t keep hiding from my own life.
Basra Ghosts: Sir Alaric Voss
(Concurrent with the NCAA hearing – Late June 2010)
Wind off the Irish Sea slips through the wooden window frame, causing a slight draft in the room. Voss sits at his desk in the half-light, the kettle muttering behind him, the smell of Yorkshire Tea mixing with the iodine tang of the sea.
A single logbook lies open across his desk. Basra ‘96 — Objective Rhinehold. Each line bears a name, each name the same marginal note: Abandoned.
He traces the faded ink with a finger. Men once under his command, erased by a government more frightened of headlines. They had been promised extraction; instead, London disavowed the mission to calm Parliament. The official report said, Mission exceeded scope. Voss calls it treachery.
He believed in order once. SAS Major Alaric Voss—disciplined, punctual, loyal to a fault. He thought service could impose shape on chaos, but Basra taught him that discipline without truth was only obedience.
When the inquiries began, he expected vindication; instead, the generals who had signed his orders fed him to the press. The Crown called it accountability; he calls it erasure. They stripped his command, closed his accounts, and used his fall to protect themselves. That was the first betrayal—the one that ended his faith in uniforms.
Out of that exile, he built something new. At first, it was simple commerce: moving aid, securing convoys, escorting relief flights through fractured lands. Order was still a service, and Voss learned to sell it. Then clients began to ask for things that could not pass customs, and he discovered profit in discretion. Humanitarian corridors became trade routes; trade routes became pipelines; soon, those pipelines carried more than medicine.
The press later called it the Adriatic Chain. Inside the trade, he was only ever the Colonel, the strategist who kept borders open and names hidden. After he was “Retired on Grounds of Service Requirements”—or ’We want this problem gone, now, quietly’—his private empire ran without a leak and with military precision.
Then came the boy from Ann Arbor.
A British minister had approached Michael Stewart after the Queen’s granddaughter vanished while working in New York. With official channels paralyzed, Michael volunteered to help—no payment, no protection—because doing nothing felt like cowardice. Using Mr. Carroll’s introductions, Michael penetrated Voss’s Adriatic Chain under the guise of a buyer, purchasing four captives outright to secure their safety: Chelsea, the Queen’s granddaughter; Natalie, Chelsea’s American roommate and closest friend; Kim, a Japanese teen later confirmed as Kenji Yamamoto’s daughter; and Mindy, a schoolgirl barely sixteen.
Between what Michael witnessed and the debriefing of the rescued women, MI6 assembled the picture they had been missing. The intelligence identified Voss’s safehouses and command structure. The Queen authorized a SAS operation that struck overnight, rescuing the remaining captives and capturing Voss’s trusted lieutenants. Worse, Drake was taken alive, and the Adriatic Chain collapsed in days.
Voss watches ten years of effort and profit vanish beneath the same royal crest he once served. He lost more than revenue; he lost the legend that protected him. To his clients, he is no longer the untouchable Colonel—he has become a ghost, undone by a student who acted from conscience. London calls it justice. Voss calls it humiliation that will be repaid in kind.
The tea finishes steeping, and he takes his first sip, instantly returning to the simpler days in the Regiment. He pauses, savoring the warmth in his hands, and stares at the letter Cormac Doyle sent him—cream stock, no return, Belfast postmark, the handwriting exact as a draft officer’s. The letter is anachronistic in an age of instant communication—but then, so is Cormac Doyle. Once an IRA bomber, now his most trusted lieutenant, Doyle was forged in Belfast’s sectarian fires and tempered by the years that followed.
Inside are three pages. The first carries a typed memo.
Source: Richard Carroll (MDC Brooklyn, NY — Former Calvin Klein Executive, Federal Custody for Assault). Sent our intermediary to meet Carroll in detention under a legal pretext. Carroll claims Charles Ford of Dearborn is financing the smear campaign on Michael Stewart, probably through his long-time lobbyist Harold Whitcombe. Motive: retaliation against Michael Stewart for rejecting Ford’s assistance and for AEGIS’s emerging threat to Ford corporate contracts. Carroll also blames Stewart personally for the charges that cost him his career. Verification pending.
Voss leans back in the chair. Carroll—once a fashion-house executive who traded introductions instead of secrets—has become a man consumed by grudges. He is now rotting in American custody for the violence that followed exposure. If Carroll named Ford, then the money is real.
The second page freezes him: Whitcombe Strategies — media operations overlapping AEGIS smear, 2010.
He reads slowly, lips moving without sound. Doyle’s summary is clinical: identical headlines across multiple outlets, synchronized timing, social amplification from bot farms. With insight gained from the Carroll meeting, Doyle links Harold Whitcombe and his firm Whitcombe Strategies LLC to the smear campaign.
Voss rereads the memo twice. Political maneuvering disguised as commerce. Whitcombe’s fingerprints. Ford’s wallet. A coalition of men too proud to admit they have been outplayed by a boy they could neither predict nor control—and that boy destroyed his operation as well.
He smiles without humor. The world turns predictable after all. The smear against Stewart is not politics to Voss; it is invitation—proof that even the powerful have begun to move with caution around Stewart.
He rises, crosses to the window, and looks out at the tide dragging kelp across black stone. Revenge, he knows, is not a passion but a profession. You set terms, measure distance, and let gravity do the rest.
On the far table lies a small stack of mobile phones—cheap, matte-black devices with scuffed cases and no carrier logos. Each holds a cassette of SIMs in a little plastic wallet beside it: three different numbers for Belfast, two for Luxembourg, one routed through a prepaid relay to further mask his communications. Voss picks one up, thumbs the tray free, swaps a fresh SIM into the slot, and feels the practiced cadence of a man who has done this more times than he cares to count.
Doyle’s call comes across as a short, curated burst—the sort of connection that leaves nothing on a single cell tower.
“Line’s clean, sir,” Doyle says. “Team’s on assigned SIMs. Comms rotate daily to avoid detection.”
“Understood,” Voss replies, listening not for warmth but for precision.
Doyle asks quietly, “Do we move on Whitcombe?”
“Not yet,” Voss says. “We open through the Luxembourg consultant first; you will represent the Belfast side. Both of you will meet Whitcombe together to offer our services, discreetly.”
“Understood,” Doyle replies.
A faint click follows—no farewell, no confirmation, just the quiet discipline of men who understand brevity is protection.
Voss sets the handset down carefully; the devices make no pretense of sophistication; their artfulness lies in their simplicity and anonymity. Each SIM swap, each short call, is a small, deliberate obfuscation.
He crosses to the desk and opens a slim, unmarked laptop. A single USB key slides into the port; the screen blinks to life. He types the brief himself—three lines of instruction, a reference code, and one closing phrase: Rhinehold.
The message routes through a chain of dead-drop servers, and he watches the delivery confirmation, then pulls the drive and feeds it into the shredder next to his desk.
Outside, the wind shifts again, carrying the metallic scent of rain. The Irish Sea blurs under a thin mist. Voss watches it gather, slow and deliberate, as if the horizon itself were plotting.
“Let them believe they’re hiring insight,” he murmurs. “What they buy is a man who remembers—and the butcher will have his due.”
He shuts down the laptop and leaves the room dark.
The Invitation. July 1, 2010
The photo-studio lights dim one by one until only the backdrop glows. Molly slips off her heels and flexes her feet, the skin at her temples still tacky with makeup. Another long morning when her phone buzzes — a new message.
It’s from Willow: bright, breathless, full of energy. Serbia shows confirmed July 9th! Michael’s coming early! You and Liz have to join — it’ll be just like old times and I know he would like to see you ♥
Elizabeth’s name sits neatly beside hers in the group thread. Molly scrolls once, then again, as if the text might rearrange itself.
She smiles despite the heaviness that comes with it. Willow knows the history and is offering inclusion in the only language she trusts — fairness. It’s her way of saying there are no lines to draw, no rivalry to feed.
Serbia sounds wild, alive, the kind of stage Willow loves. Molly pictures Michael in that crowd, laughing and proud of her. Then the calendar in her head intervenes: fittings in Paris, a Milan runway, another Dior shoot waiting overseas. New York is only a stopover on the way to another flight.
She types a reply to Willow — short, polite, with a heart emoji to soften the refusal — and presses send.
Scrolling up, she sees Elizabeth’s name again and feels her anxiety return. If Elizabeth goes, the old fault lines will surface under festival lights. The thought settles heavy in her chest, and she finds herself chewing the inside of her cheek the way she always does when something gnaws at her.
She exhales, opens her contacts, and taps Michael’s number. The studio around her has gone quiet — just the soft rustle of assistants breaking down equipment in the far corner, the distant clatter of a C-stand being collapsed.
“Hey,” she says when he answers. “Do you have time to talk?”
Michael’s voice comes warm and surprised through the speaker. “Always for you, Molly.”
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