The face is similar. The bone structure, the sharp jaw, the high cheekbones. But where Rafe's features carry the sharpness of youth and unresolved anger, this face has settled into its angles. Matured. The lines are more defined, the expression more guarded, the overall impression one of someone who has been through storms and decided to stop running from them.
He is taller than Rafe by an inch or two. Broader through the shoulders. His body beneath the unfamiliar jersey is solid in a way that suggests consistent training without the bulky aggression of a hockey enforcer. There is a calm to his physicality that Rafe does not possess, a stillness in the way he holds himself that speaks to discipline rather than dominance.
Everything about him echoes Rafe.
And nothing about him is Rafe.
Bastien.
This is Bastien Laurent.
Etienne's older brother. Rafe's former packmate. The ghost that haunts every conversation, every argument, every crack in this fractured pack. The man whose name makes Rafe flinch and Etienne withdraw. The absence that defines them all.
And he just caught me mid-flight and stopped me from shattering against the boards like I weigh nothing.
He is looking at me with the same shocked recognition that I imagine is plastered across my own face. His arms are still wrapped around me, holding me steady against his chest, and neither of us has made any move to separate.
One eyebrow rises slowly, curiosity replacing the initial surprise.
"Scent match?" he whispers.
Two words.
Two words that restructure my entire understanding of my life.
I blink, my face flooding with heat so fast I must look like a tomato in a hockey jersey. His voice wraps around me with the same devastating effect as his scent, making every nerve ending rise in pure, electric excitement. Low and rough and warm, carrying a timbre that vibrates through my bones and settles in a place beneath my navel that I am not prepared to acknowledge in public.
His word finally clicks.
Scent match.
A scent match.
The biological phenomenon that occurs when an Alpha's pheromone signature and an Omega's pheromone signature align so perfectly that the body recognizes its counterpart on a molecular level. It is rare. Extraordinarily rare. Most people go their entire lives without encountering their scent match, settling for compatible pairings that are pleasant but lack the visceral, bone-deep, cellular recognition that a true match produces.
A true match feels like coming home.
Like finding a piece of yourself you did not know was missing.
Like the universe looked at two people and said, these two. These two belong together in a way that transcends choice and logic and circumstance.
And I am standing in the middle of a hockey rink, wearing another Alpha's jersey, another Alpha's helmet abandoned on the ice beside me, with my arms gripping the chest of an Alpha I have never met who smells like everything I have ever wanted and never known how to ask for.
Holy fucking shit.
HE is my scent match?!
CHAPTER 17
Older Brother
~RAFE~
Iblink once.
Then twice.
Then a third time, because my brain has clearly malfunctioned and is now producing hallucinations vivid enough to include scent, sound, and the specific way this person holds himself like he owns every square inch of the air he occupies.
