I stop the thought before it can finish.
The bathroom is small but functional, a mirror and sink combination that every dorm room in this building shares. I walk to it, turn on the cold water, and splash my face with enough force to shock my nervous system into resetting.
The water drips down my chin, pooling on the porcelain, and I brace my hands on either side of the sink and stare at my reflection.
My father stares back.
The same jaw. The same brow. The same hard set to the mouth that comes from years of swallowing emotions instead of expressing them. The same gray eyes that turn cold when disappointed and colder when furious. I look like him more every year, growing into the mold he carved for me before I was old enough to understand what I was becoming.
Be the best, Rafe. Accept nothing less. The Beaumont name means excellence, and you will not be the one who tarnishes it.
His voice echoes in my skull, permanent and inescapable. Every time I look in the mirror. Every time I step onto the ice. Every time I feel the pressure to perform, to lead, to prove that I am worthy of the legacy I was born into.
I remember the first time I lost a game in front of him. Eight years old, playing in a junior league tournament, and we lost by a single goal in overtime. I was devastated. Crying in the lockerroom, inconsolable, the way children are when the world hands them their first taste of failure.
My father walked in, sat down beside me, and said nothing for a long moment.
Then: "Get up. Tears are for Omegas. You are a Beaumont, and Beaumonts do not lose gracefully. They do not accept defeat. They learn from it and come back stronger, or they get replaced by someone who will."
I stopped crying that day.
I have not cried since.
NHL-bound.
That is the trajectory my father mapped when I was eight years old, the first time I showed natural talent on skates. He hired coaches, enrolled me in elite programs, pushed me to train while other kids were playing video games and having normal childhoods. Every sacrifice was for the goal. Every decision was calibrated to maximize my chances of reaching the professional leagues.
And I am good.
I am genuinely good at hockey. Fast, aggressive, smart on the ice when I let myself be. I have the skills to go professional, the drive to compete at the highest level, the raw talent that scouts notice when they attend our games.
But underneath all the bravado, underneath the captain's armband and the confident posturing and the arrogant certainty I project to the world, there is a question I have never been brave enough to answer honestly.
What if I am not good enough?
What if all the training and all the sacrifice and all the years of being molded into my father's vision of excellence still leave me short of the mark? What if I peak at college hockey and never make it to the leagues that matter? What if I am just good enough to be promising but never good enough to be great?
The fear coils in my gut, cold and familiar, the companion that has shadowed me since I was old enough to understand what expectations meant.
And now Raphaël is here.
A walking reminder that the Calder bloodline produces greatness, and I am the Beaumont half scrambling to keep up.
A knock at the door pulls me from the spiral.
I push off the sink, wipe my face with my sleeve, and cross the empty room to answer. The knock was confident. Unhurried. The kind of knock that belongs to someone who knows they will be let in.
I open the door.
Bastien Laurent leans against the doorframe with the casual elegance of a man who has never had to try for attention in his life. His dark hair is artfully disheveled, falling across his forehead in waves that frame a face that looks like Etienne's but sharper. More angular. Carrying the kind of beauty that draws eyes across crowded rooms and holds them without effort.
He is smirking.
"Looks like you got kicked out, huh?"
His voice carries the same smooth cadence I remember, warm on the surface with darker edges underneath. The scent that rolls off him is familiar in a way that makes my chest tighten. Dark chocolate and aged whiskey and the faint bite of something forbidden.
I groan, stepping back to let him in and slamming the door behind him with more force than strictly necessary.
