"Etienne and Cal feel the same," he says. "I have spoken with both of them. We want to court you officially. Properly. Not the rushed, pressure-driven pack formation that the deadline demands, but a genuine courtship. Taking things slow. Allowing ourselves to truly fall in love at our own pace and not the pace the world dictates."
He lifts one hand from my waist and brushes the tear from my cheek with his thumb.
"If you would like that."
My heart is so full it is painful. A sweet, aching pressure that fills my chest and my throat and the space behind my eyes with a warmth that I have spent my entire adult life believing I did not deserve.
"This feels like a proposal," I whisper, a wet laugh escaping between the words.
He chuckles, the sound reverberating through the still air of the rink.
"It is more like a question," he says. "Would you be our pucking Valentine, Mabeline Mae Rose?"
The question is absurd. Perfectly, beautifully, ridiculously absurd. A hockey pun embedded in a declaration of romantic intent, delivered on an ice rink by a former figure skater disguised as a hockey captain, while I stand in neon pink leggings with tears on my cheeks and a heart that is beating so hard I can hear it echoing off the boards.
I beam.
The smile splits my face with a force that aches in my cheeks and burns in my eyes and radiates outward from a center that has been dark for so long I forgot what it felt like to be lit from within.
"Fuck yes!" I blurt.
The words explode from me with zero refinement. No poise. No elegance. No carefully curated response that a well-mannered Omega might offer in a moment of romantic significance. Just the raw, unfiltered, joyful profanity of a woman who has been asked the best question of her life and is answering it with her whole chest.
I pause.
"Oh wait. That is not ladylike, is it?"
He laughs. Full and warm and resonant, the sound filling the rink with an echo that bounces off the glass and the boards and the ceiling and comes back to wrap around us like an acoustic embrace.
"Fuck no," he says. "But I like that response infinitely more than a squealing mess. It is honest. Aggressive. Very you. I would not have it any other way."
I giggle, the sound bright and watery, caught between the tears that are still falling and the happiness that is producing them.
"But I do want a kiss, Sir," I say, tilting my chin upward with a playfulness that my tear-streaked face undermines entirely. "A proper one. On ice. With the dramatic lighting and the empty rink and the whole cinematic moment that we have accidentally constructed. It would be criminal to waste the atmosphere."
He chuckles, his hand sliding from my cheek to the nape of my neck, his fingers threading into my hair with the gentle deliberation of a man who is memorizing the gesture as he performs it.
"I would kiss you," he murmurs, his voice dropping to the low, intimate register that makes my spine liquify. "But the judges are watching."
I tilt my head.
The confusion registers before the words fully process, my brain attempting to reconcile the romantic momentum of the moment with a reference that makes no contextual sense.
"Judges?!"
CHAPTER 33
Golden Buzzer
~MABELINE~
Ifollow his gaze.
Past the boards. Past the glass partition. To the elevated seating section near the judges' table on the far side of the rink, where four figures are rising from their seats in the kind of coordinated motion that suggests they have been sitting there for a while. Watching. Observing. Documenting every crossover, every spin, every lift, every second of the routine that I just performed under the assumption that the only audience was the man holding my waist and the empty arena surrounding us.
They are clapping.
Not politely. Not the restrained, obligatory applause of officials fulfilling a procedural requirement. They are clapping with the genuine enthusiasm of people who just witnessed a performance that exceeded their expectations, their hands meeting with a rhythm that echoes through the vacant rink and reaches my ears with the disorienting impact of a sound that should not exist in a space I believed to be private.
