And he is looking at Mae.
Not the way Cal looks at her, with reluctant fascination and competitive denial. Not the way Etienne looks at her, with quiet devotion and gentle awe. Not even the way I look at her, which I refuse to examine too closely because the answer might destroy the narrative I have built about not giving a damn.
Raphaël is looking at Mae like she is a precious gem that fell into his lap and is about to rewrite his entire existence.
It is the most unsettling expression I have ever seen on a face that mirrors my own. Like watching myself feel an emotion I have never allowed myself to access, projected onto a version of me that is older, taller, and apparently capable of vulnerability.
Why is he looking at her like that? They do not know each other. He literally just caught her mid-crash. There is no reason for that level of intensity between two strangers who collided by accident.
Unless it is not an accident.
Unless it is a scent thing.
The thought makes my stomach drop.
"Are you okay?" Raphaël's voice carries across the ice, low and steady, the French accent threading through his English with a fluidity that makes the question sound like poetry instead of a medical inquiry.
Mae blinks up at him with an expression I have never seen on her face before. Wide-eyed. Flushed. Disoriented in a way thathas nothing to do with the near-collision and everything to do with whatever she is smelling right now.
"Uh... yeah." Her voice comes out breathless. Dazed. Nothing like the sharp, witty, unshakeable Omega who just lectured me about replaceable people and emotional manipulation thirty seconds before the race. "Thanks for cushioning my, uh, crash landing? I do not know what happened. There was a puck and then my skate caught it and then I was basically a missile with no brakes."
She is rambling. Mae does not ramble. Mae delivers calculated strikes disguised as conversation. The fact that she cannot string a coherent sentence together means her brain is short-circuiting, and the man holding her is the reason for the malfunction.
She tries to stand.
Her left leg locks up.
The joint seizes mid-motion, her knee refusing to extend, and she stumbles forward with a sharp gasp. She would have hit the ice face-first if Raphaël had not already been holding her, his arms tightening around her waist to absorb the fall before it begins.
Which, naturally, brings Cal and Etienne across the rink faster than I have ever seen either of them move.
They are there in seconds. Cal arrives first, his skates sending ice spraying as he stops so hard the shavings hit Raphaël's boots. His amber eyes are blazing, his jaw clenched, every line of his body radiating the protective fury of an Alpha whose instincts have been triggered by the sight of his Omega in another man's arms. Even though she is not his Omega. Even though neither of them has acknowledged what is clearly brewing between them. The biology does not care about denial. The biology sees threat and responds.
Etienne is right behind him, his storm-blue eyes wide with concern, his hands already reaching for Mae before he has fully stopped. His gaze flickers to Raphaël's face and something shifts. A recognition. A hesitation. A flicker of confusion that tells me he sees the resemblance to me but cannot yet place where this man fits in the puzzle.
"Are you okay?" Cal demands, his amber eyes flickering between Mae and the stranger holding her with an intensity that screams who the hell is touching our Omega.
"What happened?" Etienne asks at the exact same time, his gaze locked on Mae's face.
"I am fine," Mae says, wincing as she tests her left leg. "My knee sometimes freezes up when I twist it the wrong way. Old childhood injury from a bad landing during a competition. It just locks and then eventually releases. Happened all the time when I was younger."
She tries to stand a third time, pushing against Raphaël's chest to lever herself upright.
He does not let her.
Instead, in one smooth motion that looks entirely too practiced for a man who claims to study in Europe, Raphaël rises to his full height and scoops Mae off the ice completely.
Just lifts her.
One arm beneath her knees, the other supporting her back. Like she weighs nothing. Like picking up full-grown women on ice rinks is a casual Tuesday activity that does not warrant any additional effort or explanation.
Mae's face turns the exact shade of the red jerseys our team wears. Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. No words come out. The Omega who has a comeback for everything, who kicked me in the groin and stole Cal's stick and made Etienne swear in French, is rendered completely speechless by being swept offthe ice by a man she has known for approximately forty-five seconds.
And now everyone can see Raphaël properly.
Standing at full height, holding an Omega in his arms with the ease of someone carrying a stack of textbooks, my brother cuts an imposing figure. Taller than me by two inches. Broader through the shoulders and chest, his build the kind that comes from disciplined training over many years rather than gym vanity. His dark auburn hair is pushed back from a face that shares my bone structure but wears it with a calm authority mine has not earned. The stormy gray eyes are identical to mine, but they carry a weight behind them that comes from living a life I know nothing about in a country I have never visited.
The silence in the arena is so complete I can hear the refrigeration units cycling beneath the ice.
