He is fighting with one of the rookies before he fully clears the threshold.
"I called that pass THREE times!" Rafe's voice ricochets off the walls, raw and hoarse from two hours of shouting instructions that his team stopped following midway through the second period. "Three! And every single time, you whiffed it like you have never held a stick in your fucking life! What the hell were you doing out there? Did you forget what sport we play? Were you having an existential crisis at center ice?"
The rookie, a freshman with wide eyes and trembling hands who looks like he might vomit or cry or achieve both simultaneously, fires back with the desperate bravado of someone cornered.
"Your positioning was wrong! I cannot make a pass to someone who is already skating away from the play! You were supposed to hold the blue line, and you abandoned it to chase the puck carrier yourself because you do not trust anyone else to do their job!"
"Because none of you CAN do your job! That is the entire problem! I put you on the ice and you skate around like it is your first day at a public session!"
"The problem is that you built a lineup based on who agrees with you instead of who can actually play!"
The accusation lands with the precision of a slap shot to the chest. Rafe's expression flickers, the anger cracking for a fraction of a second to reveal the bruised pride underneath before the mask reseals itself. The rookie, to his credit, does not back down,though his hands are shaking badly enough that his gloves rattle against his leg pads.
I make a note on my clipboard.
The locker room doors open again.
Coach Mercer enters.
And Mae is with him.
My pen stops moving.
She is standing slightly behind Coach, her posture carrying the careful awareness of a person who knows she is entering hostile territory and has chosen to enter anyway. Her dark hair is loose around her shoulders, her hazel eyes scanning the room with a quick, analytical sweep that catalogues the emotional landscape in seconds, identifying the fault lines and the pressure points with the instinctive precision of a woman who grew up reading rooms to survive them.
She is wearing black tights and a jersey that drapes her frame with the oversized warmth of a garment that belongs to someone significantly larger.
Cal's jersey.
I bite my bottom lip.
She looks simple tonight. Not polished. Not performative. The kind of understated that has nothing to prove and everything to offer, dressed for comfort rather than impression in a way that makes her more striking than any calculated effort could achieve. The jersey falls past her hips, the fabric clinging when she shifts her weight, the number on the back partially obscured by the dark curtain of her hair. The black tights beneath it trace the line of her legs with a fidelity that I file away in the part of my brain designated for observations I will not be voicing aloud in a room full of Alphas.
I have noticed she enjoys wearing Cal's jersey. The last few nights, it has become her default, the garment she gravitates toward when comfort is the priority and appearanceis secondary. She has new clothes now, purchased during the shopping trip she and Cal took earlier this week, but the jersey persists. A fabric security blanket that smells like ocean salt and pack belonging, wrapping her in a declaration she may not consciously recognize but that every Alpha in proximity can read without translation.
A mental note adds itself to the growing list I maintain for Mae Rose's comfort and happiness. Those pajama sets. The ones the girls in the corridor have been discussing between lectures with the breathless enthusiasm typically reserved for celebrity sightings and limited-edition sneaker drops. The cozy matching sets with the soft cotton and the pastel colors that show up in every campus common room during winter months. Mae would look devastating in a set like that. Soft pink or lavender or a muted sage green, the fabric loose enough to be comfortable and fitted enough to make three Alphas forget how to form complete sentences.
I would want to take her shopping myself. Walk with her through the aisles. Watch her face when she realizes that picking clothes can be an experience rather than a necessity, that trying things on can be playful rather than purely functional. Our schedules have been frustratingly misaligned since I arrived, my coaching obligations and her academic commitments creating a gap that I have not yet found the window to close. Morning practice consumes my hours before she wakes. Her afternoon lectures run through the time slots when I am reviewing film. We orbit the same apartment but rarely overlap in it, two satellites circling a shared center without crossing paths.
But she is not accustomed to receiving gifts. I can see that in the way she reacts to every small gesture from Cal and Etienne. The surprise that flickers across her features before she can suppress it. The instinctive suspicion that kindness must come with conditions because every kindness she has previouslyreceived did. The way she holds new possessions with the reverence of someone who has learned that things can be taken away as easily as they are given.
She would appreciate the thought more than the item itself. And that is precisely why I want to give it.
The room registers Mae's presence in stages.
Heads turn. Voices lower. A few players exchange confused glances, their frustration momentarily interrupted by the question of why an Omega is standing in their locker room after a loss that has left most of them wanting to break things rather than discuss strategy with the girl who embarrassed their captain on the ice during her first week on campus.
"What is she doing here?" one of the seniors asks, directing the question at Coach with the incredulous tone of a man who has been told the solution to his engine failure is a ballet dancer.
Coach Mercer does not flinch.
He is a stocky man with salt-and-pepper hair and the weathered patience of someone who has been coaching teenage and twenty-something Alphas long enough to know that resistance is a reflex, not a conclusion. He plants his feet, crosses his arms, and addresses the room with the steady authority of a man who holds every scholarship in this locker room in the palm of his hand.
"She is your strategist," he says. "The one whose analysis none of you wanted to listen to before tonight's game. I circulated her breakdown of the opposing team's footage two days ago. Their offensive tendencies. Their power play formations. Their goalie's weak-side vulnerability. She identified every pattern that they used tonight to score four goals against you, and she did it from film study alone without setting foot on their ice."
The silence that follows is loaded.
"So it is about time," Coach continues, his voice hardening by a single degree, "that we start listening to the person in this room who actually did her homework."
