His aroma makes me want to completely swoon. To submit. To curl into his chest and let every defense I have spent years constructing dissolve into nothing. Like a puppy begging its master for attention, desperate and shameless, all wagging tail and exposed belly and please, please, please just keep holding me like this forever.
I would never imagine doing that.
I have spent my entire adult life building walls against exactly this kind of vulnerability. Against needing an Alpha. Against wanting one. Against the biological imperatives that tell Omegas to find a protector, a provider, a pack, and settle into the role that evolution designed for us.
And yet this man is making me think otherwise.
I look up at his face, studying him while he focuses on the hallway ahead. His jaw is relaxed, his expression carrying a calm that I recognize from Etienne. The same quiet intensity. The same ability to move through chaos without absorbing it. But where Etienne's calm feels like a shield, Raphaël's feels earned. Like it was forged through experiences that stripped away everything unnecessary and left only the essential.
He has been through more than the rest of us. I can see it in the fine lines at the corners of his eyes. In the way his gaze carries weight without heaviness. In the set of his shoulders, which are broad and strong but do not carry the defensive tension that Rafe's always do.
He is the same age range as them, maybe twenty-five or twenty-six, and yet he moves through the world like a manwho has already fought his wars and come out the other side knowing exactly who he is.
There is a tattoo on the left side of his neck.
A phoenix, its wings outstretched, the ink dark and detailed against the warm tone of his skin. The design is elegant, the lines clean and precise, the bird captured mid-rise with its feathers trailing into flames that lick along the edge of his collarbone. It is beautiful. Striking. The kind of tattoo that tells you a person has a story and has chosen to wear part of it on their skin.
A phoenix. Rising from ashes. I wonder what he burned to earn that symbol.
He catches me staring.
"What?" One eyebrow lifts, and a smirk tugs at the corner of his mouth. "Never seen an Alpha as good-looking as me?"
I pout, the expression automatic.
"Eww. You are cocky like him too."
He chuckles, the sound low and warm and vibrating through his chest in a way that I feel against my ribcage because I am still pressed against him like a permanent accessory.
We reach the nurse's office, and he pushes the door open with his shoulder, carrying me inside with the same effortless grace he has maintained since scooping me off the ice.
The office is small and clinical, smelling of antiseptic and the faint trace of lavender from one of those plug-in diffusers they use to make medical spaces feel less terrifying. Two beds line the far wall, separated by a blue curtain, and a desk near the door holds a computer and a stack of intake forms.
A woman at the desk looks up, her eyes widening slightly at the sight of Raphaël before professionalism smooths her expression.
"The nurse is in a quick meeting," she says, standing. "I will fetch her. Is she in immediate pain?"
"No," I answer before Raphaël can speak for me. "I just did not do my stretches properly and tweaked my knee during a hard stop. Old childhood injury acting up. But having a professional check it would be smart, just to make sure nothing shifted."
The assistant nods, gesturing toward the bed.
"Let her rest there. I will have the nurse here in a few minutes."
Raphaël carries me to the nearest bed, lowering me onto the mattress with a gentleness that contradicts the confidence of his public persona. His hands linger on my waist for a fraction of a second longer than necessary, and the warmth of his palms through the jersey fabric sends a cascade of shivers down my spine that I desperately hope he does not notice.
He does.
The slight twitch at the corner of his lips tells me he absolutely notices.
He pulls the curtain around us, creating a small pocket of privacy in the clinical space. The blue fabric blocks the rest of the office from view, enclosing us in a world that is approximately six feet by four feet and contains one examination bed, one Alpha whose scent is making my brain malfunction, and one Omega who has completely lost her ability to behave like a rational adult.
I study him.
Really look at him, now that we are still and close and the adrenaline of the ice is fading into the quiet hum of the nurse's office. The dark auburn hair falls across his forehead in a way that is both careless and deliberate, the kind of style that takes no effort because it does not need any. His gray eyes are lighter than Rafe's up close, carrying flecks of silver that catch the fluorescent light. The freckles that dust the bridge of his nose aresubtle, nearly invisible unless you are this close, and the stubble along his jaw is a shade darker than his hair.
He is devastatingly attractive in a way that is completely different from his brother. Where Rafe's attractiveness is sharp and aggressive, designed to intimidate, Raphaël's is warm. Inviting. The kind of face you want to keep looking at, not because it demands your attention, but because it rewards it.
And the phoenix tattoo on his neck is calling to me like a beacon, the outstretched wings framing his pulse point in a way that makes me want to press my lips to the ink and trace the flames with my tongue.
