He pauses, letting the comparison settle into the room's wounded pride like salt into a cut.
"Her father was one of the best coaches in competitive hockey. If you do not believe me, search his name. His training methodology is still referenced in professional programs across North America. The man developed systems that teams with ten times our budget would kill to implement, and his daughter grew up absorbing every principle, every drill, every strategic framework he built."
Etienne looks at Mae.
The anger in his expression dissolves when his dark eyes find her hazel ones, replaced by a trust so complete it transforms the command into an offering. He is not ordering her to speak. He is creating the stage and handing her the microphone, trusting that she will know what to do with it because he has seen what she is capable of and believes it more fiercely than she believes it herself.
"I want you to tell them exactly what they did wrong," he says, his voice softening by a single degree, the sharp edge receding to reveal the man underneath the Alpha. "And then they can decide if they are going to finally listen and take the chance to prove to our school that we actually have a shot at these preliminaries. Or we take our talent elsewhere and let them figure it out on their own."
Mae blinks.
She stares at Etienne first. Holds his gaze for a beat that communicates volumes in the silent language they have been developing since the first night she fell asleep in his arms while watching a movie she had seen twelve times. I watch her process the invitation, watch the surprise cycle through uncertainty and land on a resolve that builds behind her eyes like a wave gathering height before it breaks.
Then her gaze travels across the room.
To me.
I give her a nod.
Small. Encouraging. The kind of gesture that says I am here, you are capable, and this room full of frustrated Alphas is about to learn what a packless Omega with her father's strategic mind and her own ferocious intelligence can do when someone finally gives her permission to speak instead of reasons to stay silent.
Her vanilla sugar and frosted roses scent shifts. The sweetness remains, but beneath it, a new note surfaces. Warmer. Bolder. The olfactory signature of an Omega who is stepping into authority she has earned but never been offered, and the scent change ripples through the locker room with a subtlety that most of these players will not consciously register but will feel in the way their attention sharpens and their postures straighten and their bodies angle toward her without deliberate intent.
She straightens her spine.
The motion is small but transformative. Her shoulders roll back, her chin lifts, her posture shifting from the careful awareness of a guest navigating hostile territory to the grounded stance of a woman who belongs in this room and has decided, in front of two dozen witnesses, to stop pretending otherwise.
I see her father in that gesture. Not because I knew the man, but because the confidence she is pulling from has roots deeper than her own experience. It is inherited. Taught. The posture of a coach's daughter who grew up watching a man command roomsfull of athletes who doubted him until he proved them wrong, and who absorbed that lesson into her bones even if she has not yet realized she carries it.
She looks at the team.
Twenty-three faces look back at her. Some skeptical. Some desperate. Some too exhausted to care about the source of the help as long as the help arrives. And one face on the floor, jaw bruised and pride shattered, watching the Omega he tried to dismiss prove that dismissal was the most expensive mistake he has made tonight.
Mae nods slowly.
"Well," she says, her voice carrying across the silent locker room with a steadiness that makes my chest tighten with a pride I have no right to feel but feel regardless. "Let us review."
CHAPTER 30
Coach Rose's Daughter
~RAPHAËL~
She is magnificent.
That is the only word my brain produces as Mabeline Mae Rose proceeds to dismantle an entire hockey team's performance with the surgical precision of a woman who has been studying this sport since before she could spell it. She moves to the whiteboard at the front of the locker room, commandeering the space with a confidence that did not exist in her posture thirty seconds ago but now radiates from her frame like a frequency only the room's attention can receive.
She pulls a stack of papers from Coach Mercer's folder. Ten pages. Hand-sketched diagrams that she apparently prepared before the game, each one depicting ice formations, passing lanes, and player positioning with the kind of meticulous detail that tells me she did not throw these together during intermission. These were drawn with intent. With hours of film study behind them. With the trained eye of someone who learned to read hockey the way musicians learn to read sheet music, instinctively, translating motion into notation and notation into strategy.
"Page one," she announces, holding the first diagram up for the room. Her voice carries. Not loud. Not aggressive. Carryingin the way that a tuning fork carries, precise and resonant and impossible to ignore. "Opening faceoff. Your center won the draw cleanly, which was the last thing that went right for the next six minutes. Watch what happens on the breakout."
She traces the diagram with her finger, mapping the intended passing route against the actual execution, and the gap between the two is embarrassing.
"Your left winger was supposed to hold the wall and receive the outlet pass here." She taps the board. "Instead, he abandoned his lane to pursue a body check on a player who was already covered by the defenseman rotating from the point. That left this entire corridor open." Her finger sweeps across a void in the formation. "Their center recognized the gap, received the transition pass, and had a clean breakaway because no one was occupying the space your winger vacated. Goal one."
The left winger in question, a sophomore named Diaz, stares at the diagram with the expression of a man watching a security camera replay of his own crime.
"Page two," Mae continues, swapping diagrams without pausing for commentary or consolation. "Your penalty kill formation. I sent this breakdown to Coach Mercer two days ago with a highlighted note that read, and I quote, their power play overloads the left half-wall and uses a one-timer setup that exploits the gap between your weak-side defenseman and the net-front presence. The solution was a diamond formation with aggressive stick positioning in the passing lane. What you ran instead was a box that left the one-timer lane open like an invitation to score, and they RSVP'd with enthusiasm."
