Raphaël looks at Coach Mercer.
"Apologies for the late arrival. My flight was delayed by three hours out of Charles de Gaulle." His voice carries effortlessly, the French accent lending a gravity to his English that makes my own speech sound like sandpaper by comparison. "Let me bring her to the nurse's office to get that knee examined. Make sure nothing is compromised."
Before anyone can respond, Vanessa's voice shatters the silence like a champagne flute dropped on marble.
"Who the HELL are you?"
She is sputtering. Actually sputtering, her mouth working faster than her brain can supply words, her manicured hands gesturing wildly at Raphaël like she is trying to conjure an explanation from the freezing air.
"Why do you look like Rafe? Are you his cousin? His clone? Why are you holding her like that? Who gave you permission to just pick people up? This is a university, not a romance novel!"
Raphaël turns his gaze toward Vanessa.
He looks at her.
Up.
Down.
And his expression shifts into the most complete, devastating, bone-dry display of boredom I have ever witnessed on a human face. Like she asked him to recite the periodic table backward and he cannot be bothered to engage with the request on any level. Not hostile. Not rude. Simply, profoundly, entirely uninterested in everything she represents.
He says nothing.
The silence stretches. One second. Two. Three. Five. Long enough for Vanessa's sputtering to die in her throat, her flush deepening from indignation to embarrassment as the entire arena watches her question dissolve, unanswered, into the cold air.
Coach Lizzy sighs from the sidelines, her pink ponytail swaying as she shakes her head with a familiarity that suggests she has seen Raphaël pull this move before.
"Now come on, Captain Calder. Be friendly. I know that is not how you treat the French Omegas back at the club."
Captain Calder.
"CALDER?!"
The name erupts from approximately fifteen mouths simultaneously, the volume enough to make the overhead lights tremble in their fixtures. Every head in the arena swivels from Raphaël to me, then back to Raphaël, then back to me again, the tennis match of confused gazes making me feel like a specimen pinned under fluorescent glass.
They stare at me for at least three solid, excruciating seconds. Searching my face for confirmation. For denial. For any reaction that will explain why a man who looks like the premium version of their captain is standing on the ice holding an Omega like he just stepped out of a film.
Then they look back at Raphaël.
Captain. She called him Captain Calder. Which means he captains a team. In Paris. Captain of what? They do not play hockey in France. Do they? That is not a thing. French people play football and drink wine and argue about cheese. They do not lace up skates and smash into each other on frozen surfaces.
Do they?
The answer arrives before I can finish spiraling.
"Raphaël Calder."
He lets his name roll off his tongue with the full weight of his French accent, every syllable precise and deliberate, the kind of pronunciation that makes English sound clumsy by comparison. The arena goes quiet once more, captivated by a voice that commands attention without ever raising its volume.
Then he glances at me.
Directly at me.
And the look he gives me is so thoroughly unimpressed that I feel it in my spine. Like he assessed everything I am in a single glance and found the total unremarkable. Like returning to the country where his younger brother lives was not even a significant enough event to warrant preparing an expression of acknowledgment.
"Rafe's older brother." He says it like a footnote. An afterthought. My existence reduced to a descriptor appended to his introduction. "Captain of the Brûleurs de Loups. Paris Wolves. Semi-professional league."
He pauses, letting the words detonate across the arena.
