The thought is the last coherent thing my brain produces before sleep pulls me under, gentle and warm, like the weight of an Omega on my chest and the steady hum of a heater doing its job and the quiet, radical act of choosing to stay.
Like cuddling an Omega who makes you want to explore more about yourself.
CHAPTER 29
Well, Let's Review
~RAPHAËL~
We lost.
The scoreboard confirmed it twelve minutes ago, the final buzzer cutting through the arena with the clinical finality of a judge delivering a verdict that everyone anticipated but no one wanted to hear. Four to one. A margin that is not catastrophic in the grand scheme of competitive hockey but is humiliating when you consider the caliber of talent that sat on the bench tonight while a smaller, less skilled roster executed a game plan held together by ego and prayer.
I am sitting on the bench in the locker room, my clipboard balanced on my knee, my pen moving across the notes I began compiling during the second period when the collapse became inevitable. The observations are organized by position, each player's performance catalogued with the detached precision of a man who has coached enough losing games to know that emotions are useless in post-mortems. Emotions tell you how you feel about the loss. Notes tell you why it happened.
The first goal against us was preventable. A breakaway that originated from a failed dump-and-chase in the neutral zone, the puck turned over because the left winger abandoned his lane to pursue a hit that was neither necessary nor strategicallysound. The second goal was a power play conversion that exploited a penalty kill formation so poorly structured I could have diagrammed the exact passing lane they would use from the press box, and did, in the margin of my notepad, thirty seconds before the puck crossed the goal line. Goals three and four were products of fatigue. A roster overloaded with players who burned through their legs in the first period because no one managed ice time with any discipline.
All four goals were avoidable. All four goals were the direct result of a strategy built on ego rather than analysis.
The locker room is still mostly empty.
Cal sits to my left, his elbows on his knees, his blond hair damp from the shower he took before the game ended because there was no reason to wait when he was never called onto the ice. His amber eyes are fixed on the concrete floor between his shoes, his jaw tight with the particular frustration of a man who spent two hours watching a train derail in slow motion while holding a wrench that nobody asked him to use. His ocean salt scent carries a flat, stale quality tonight, the warm amber notes muted by the bitterness of enforced uselessness.
Etienne sits to my right. Silent. Composed in the way that Etienne is always composed, his posture straight against the bench, his dark eyes staring at a fixed point on the opposite wall with the concentrated stillness of someone who is containing a volume of anger that his calm exterior does not reflect. His cedar and pine scent carries an edge tonight, sharper than usual, the clean woodsy fragrance undercut with a tartness that tells me his composure is a decision, not a default.
The three of us did not play tonight.
Not by choice. Not by injury. Not by any coaching decision that involved rational evaluation of skill versus strategy. We did not play because Rafe Beaumont handpicked his roster with the surgical selectiveness of a man who is more interested incontrolling the narrative than winning the game. He filled the ice with players who would follow his lead without question, benched the ones whose talent threatened his authority, and constructed a lineup that prioritized his vision over the team's capability.
I let him.
Deliberately. Knowingly. With the full understanding that the game would end exactly as it did, because certain lessons cannot be taught through conversation. Some people need to experience the consequences of their choices before they develop the capacity to examine them. Rafe needed to lose his way, with his strategy, on his terms, so that the failure would be impossible to redirect or blame on external factors.
I have used this approach before. In Paris, with a center who refused to pass on the power play because he believed his individual skill transcended the need for teamwork. I sat back. Let him run three consecutive games with his philosophy. The team lost all three. By the fourth game, his own linemates were requesting a strategy change, and the lesson carried more weight coming from the consequences than it ever would have coming from my mouth.
Leadership is not always about intervening. Sometimes it is about creating the conditions for people to discover what you already know.
It was Rafe's game. His plan. His loss.
And now the rest of the team is about to walk through that door and reckon with the result.
The locker room doors burst open.
The sound is concussive, metal slamming against cinderblock with the force of twenty-three frustrated athletes converging on a single entrance at once. They pour in like a tide, helmets under arms, jerseys dark with sweat, faces carrying theparticular blend of exhaustion and anger that follows a loss you know you did not have to suffer.
The noise hits immediately. Raised voices overlapping in a cacophony of blame and deflection that echoes off the tile walls and metal lockers, amplifying every accusation until the room vibrates with the collective fury of a team that was set up to fail by its own leadership.
A sophomore defenseman throws his gloves into his locker hard enough to rattle the hinges. Two forwards are arguing near the showers about a botched line change in the third period that left the net exposed for forty-five seconds. The rookie goalie who replaced Etienne tonight sits on the bench across from me, still in his pads, his eyes glassy with the hollow stare of a man who stopped twenty-eight shots and let four through and is currently calculating which of those four he could have saved if the defense in front of him had resembled anything close to functional.
A senior winger slams his helmet onto the shelf above his locker and mutters a string of obscenities so creative they border on poetry.
I observe.
That is my function tonight. Observer. Analyst. The visiting consultant who sat in the stands with a clipboard and a strategic detachment that some members of this team resent and others are beginning to appreciate. I am not here to comfort or coddle. I am here to identify the fractures in the foundation so they can be repaired before the structure collapses entirely.
Rafe storms through the doors last.
He enters the locker room like a weather system, his presence preceding him by several degrees of atmospheric pressure. His dark hair is plastered to his forehead with sweat, his jaw clenched so hard I can see the tendons straining beneath his skin, his gray eyes carrying a fury that is directed outwardbecause directing it inward would require a self-awareness he has not yet developed. His scent floods the space ahead of him, smoked cedar and black pepper, aggressive and bitter with the particular stench of wounded pride that clings to Alphas who have lost and refuse to accept the losing as information rather than insult.
