"You know the swan move," I whisper.
He smirks. Upside down, from my inverted perspective, the expression looks like a smile that has been flipped, the warmth of it reaching his eyes with a softness that his composure rarely permits.
"You realize I did not start in hockey, right?"
I blink.
He begins to lower me, his arms guiding my descent with a controlled strength that lets me unfold from the swan without rushing, my posture correcting as gravity reclaims my body and my blades find the ice again. He sets me down facing him, his hands remaining on my waist, his gray eyes holding mine with the quiet intensity of a man who is about to rewrite my understanding of who he is.
"Wait," I breathe. "You were a figure skater?"
He chuckles, the sound low and carrying a vulnerability I have never heard from him.
"Even Rafe does not know." He pauses, letting the significance of that confession register. "I did not join hockey until later. My first love was figure skating. I wanted to pursue it professionally. Competitively. With the same intensity I eventually brought to hockey, except the dream came first and the compromise came second."
His thumb traces an idle arc against my hip through the neon pink fabric.
"My father knew it would not be accepted here. In America, where hockey is the established sport for Alphas and anything involving sequins and musical interpretation is treated as evidence of deficiency rather than discipline. He understood that if I stayed, people would bully me. Question my masculinity. Assume my orientation based on my choice of sport, because apparently the ability to execute a triple axel while maintaining artistic expression is incompatible with being attracted to women."
The bitterness in his voice is faint but present. The residue of a wound that healed cleanly but left a scar he can still feel when the weather changes.
"So he sent me abroad. France. Italy. Germany. Countries where figure skating is respected for Alphas. Where the artistry is embraced and the athleticism is recognized without the caveat of cultural judgment. I trained professionally in Paris for years. Competed. Medaled. Built a career on the ice that had nothing to do with pucks or body checks or the suffocating expectation that Alphas express their strength through collision rather than grace."
He meets my gaze.
"Meanwhile, everyone back home assumed I was on a hockey scholarship. The narrative was convenient. Easier to explain. Less ammunition for the people who would have used the truth as a weapon against a boy who just wanted to skate beautifully and be left alone."
My eyes are burning.
"It worked out," he continues, his voice softening. "I do love hockey. Genuinely. The speed. The strategy. The team dynamics that figure skating, for all its beauty, cannot replicate. Hockey became my second passion, and it is the vehicle that broughtme here, to this university, to this team, to this ice with you standing on it. But figure skating is my first love. My foundation. The thing I built everything else on top of, and the thing I never stopped practicing in private even when the public version of myself wore a hockey jersey."
A tear escapes down my cheek.
I cannot stop it. Cannot redirect it. It falls with the inevitability of a truth that has been building for years and has finally found the exit.
"I wanted you to discover that the best way I knew how," he says gently. "Not by telling you. By showing you. By performing what you love with someone who loves it for the same reasons you do."
My lower lip trembles.
"I was running," I whisper, the words catching on the thickness in my throat. "Running from the change I did not want to accept. Because it was terrifying. One day I was a figure skater with a future, and the next I was an Omega with a deadline. Forced to find a pack that only valued my body and the advantage of having me in their ranks rather than supporting the dreams that made me who I am. That is why I lost hope. Because it felt like everything I worked toward was pointless. Wasted. A foundation built for a house that was never going to be constructed."
I press my palm flat against my sternum, the gesture instinctive, holding myself together from the outside because the inside is cracking open.
"It broke me. The realization that no one would see me as a skater first and an Omega second. That no group of Alphas would look at me and think her dreams matter, her passion matters, we will build our pack around her ambitions instead of asking her to abandon them for ours."
Raphaël's hands tighten on my waist. Not possessively. Protectively. The grip of a man who is holding the woman in front of him together while she lets herself fall apart.
He smiles.
Not the smirk. Not the grin. A real, unguarded, luminous smile that transforms his composed features into a face I want to memorize in this exact configuration.
"I did not want you to think I was interested simply because we are scent matched," he admits. "The biological compatibility matters. I will not pretend it does not. But it is not the foundation I want to build on. I pursued you because I saw you on the ice during that first match with the rookies, and the fire in your eyes was the most honest thing I had witnessed in years. You skated like you were reclaiming a part of yourself that the world tried to take, and I recognized that fire because I carry the same one."
He pauses.
"I also know that Alphas pursue Omegas like objects. Like acquisitions. Like trophies to display rather than partners to cherish. I did not want to give that impression. I wanted time. Time for you to know me beyond the captain and the coach and the brother of the man who made your life difficult. Time for you to see that my intentions are rooted in respect, not possession."
His gray eyes hold mine with a sincerity that makes the rink feel smaller, more intimate, the vast arena contracting until it contains only this patch of ice and the two people standing on it.
