“Peaceful?” Benny echoes. “You’re gonna be living with an omega who can professionally diagnose what’s wrong with you. I’d be sleeping with one eye open.”
Marco's grin returns.
“Maybe he likes it. A little tension in the kitchen, a little power struggle over the shower schedule…”
I snap a towel off the bench and flick it hard in his direction.
“You want tension, keep talking.”
“Man’s probably got a decorative pillow quota now,” Marco laughs, kicking his locker door shut. “Bet she’s brought a bucket load of scented candles and emotional growth into that house.”
The groans are theatrical, but then the guys thankfully start filing out toward the rink; sticks over shoulders, skates clacking on the concrete, and alpha energy rolling ahead of them like a weather front.
My chest tightens, instinct tugging me toward the ice with them. I’m halfway through lacing up my shoes—habit, even when I’m not dressing for ice—when Coach appears again in the doorway.
“Wolfe.”
I glance up. “Yeah?”
“Where do you think you’re going?”
I pause, then look toward the guys exiting, then back at him.
“…to the ice?”
Coach lifts his eyebrows.
“Try again.”
I straighten slowly. “You said light skate.”
“And you’re not skating.”
I bristle. The instinctiveI’m finerises up before the pain even does.
“I’m cleared for—”
“You’re first on her list,” he cuts in. “You're not cleared for anything until she's seen to you.”
I stare at him in disbelief.
“You're serious?”
Coach steps further into the room, voice dropping into that deep alpha register that doesn’t leave room for argument.
“You want to play again this season?”
I say nothing.
“You want us towinagainthis season?” he pushes.
Still nothing.
We lock eyes. There’s no hierarchy question here: not when we both know where we stand.
I wear the C, but he built the room I lead.
“You do the damn work,” he tells me, no room for argument or push back in his tone. “Starting today. Starting with her.”
