Especially not after hearing how his former pack had leaned on him until he cracked. How leadership had kept stacking responsibility on his shoulders because he was capable and didn’t complain.
I’d promised myself I wouldn’t be another weight. I wouldn’t be another ambitious idiot who took and took because Jaime could handle it. Yet here I was, stepping back while he stepped in.
“You good?” he asked quietly afterwards.
“Yeah,” I said. Then, because honesty felt important even when it burned, “I messed up.”
“You corrected,” he said. “That’s part of learning.”
I swallowed. “Still.”
Jaime studied me for a beat, then nodded once. “We’ll talk later.”
Not now, not here. Later. That should have reassured me. Instead, it left a thread of tension humming between us as we moved back to our observer positions.
We resumed watching. That was the real reason we were here anyway.
The ballroom buzzed with contained energy. Dogs and handlers rotated through the rings, officials reset obstacles with practiced efficiency.
Spectators filled the temporary bleachers lining the space. Everything looked normal. Too normal. After yesterday’s discovery, vigilance sat just under the surface of every movement.
I let my senses stretch, wolf half-awake beneath my skin. I wasn’t scanning wildly, not anymore. I knew better. Sabotage like this thrived on subtlety.
So I watched patterns instead. Who lingered too long near the equipment. Who volunteered help they weren’t assigned. Who seemed more interested in the obstacles than the dogs.
Jaime stood close, close enough that our shoulders almost brushed.
He hadn’t said it, but I knew he was doing the same thing. Our awareness overlapped, a quiet synchronization that still startled me when I noticed it.
The next incident happened fast. A medium-sized border collie launched onto the A-frame with confident speed. The ascent was clean, the descent controlled until the final contact zone.
The dog’s back paw slipped. It wasn’t dramatic, but enough for a yelp to tear free as she landed awkwardly and stumbled. The handler froze.
Officials rushed in immediately, hands raised, voices calm. The dog was favoring her paw, nothing severe, but enough to stop the run.
A tech guided them off the course while murmurs rippled through the crowd. My heart pounded. Jaime was already moving, eyes narrowed on the obstacle.
I followed, crouching near the base of the A-frame as officials inspected it. At first glance, everything looked fine. No broken slats. No obvious instability, but something felt wrong.
I leaned closer, letting my fingers hover just above the surface. The rubberized contact zone was smooth, perhaps a little too smooth.
“Jaime,” I murmured. “This wasn’t like this earlier.”
He knelt beside me, hand brushing mine briefly as he tested the same section. His jaw tightened.
“The traction strip,” he said softly. “It’s been shifted.”
Not removed or damaged. It was shifted just enough that the edge no longer aligned with the grip underneath. Under speed and weight, it would slide.
A controlled failure. Plausible deniability. My stomach twisted.
An official asked what we saw. Jaime explained calmly, professionally. They marked the obstacle for a full reset, voices low but urgent. The course paused.
As they worked, another dog entered a different ring, a sleek malinois with sharp eyes and sharper movements. They flew through the first few obstacles without issue.
Then came a tight turn into a jump sequence near the perimeter. My wolf surged forward without warning. The upright pole on the left side of the jump wasn’t straight.
It wasn’t obvious, especially not to a casual observer. It leaned inward by a hair, altering the angle of approach. At speed, that hair would matter.
