Coach Lizzy identifies him from the sidelines as "Captain Calder," and the arena detonates.
"CALDER?!"
Fifteen mouths producing the name simultaneously, every head swiveling between the stranger and Rafe in the whiplash tennis match of a building discovering that its captain has a secret older brother who plays professional hockey in France and looks like the premium edition of a face they already considered elite.
"Raphaël Calder." His voice rolls the name with a French accent that makes English sound like a preliminary language. "Rafe's older brother. Captain of the Brûleurs de Loups. Paris Wolves. Semi-professional league."
The information hits the arena like a controlled demolition. Rafe, standing at center ice where the race deposited him, absorbs the revelation with the rigid stillness of a man watching the foundation of his identity crack in real time. His stick hangs limp. His jaw is unhinged. His gray eyes are fixed on his brother with an expression that contains approximately seventeen emotions, none of which he appears capable of processing simultaneously.
Raphaël announces his intention to carry Mae to the nurse's office, pausing at the gate to deliver a parting assessment of therace that lands on Rafe's pride with the precision of a surgeon placing an incision.
"And the winner is Mabeline, by the way. Next time, actually try to win instead of thinking you have some natural advantage going against an Omega with actual skill."
Cal and Étienne follow Raphaël and Mae through the gate without exchanging a word, their bodies moving in synchronized pursuit of their Omega toward a destination they will not let another Alpha reach alone.
Rafe is left at center ice with his pride in rubble.
The arena buzzes with aftermath. Conversations erupt in every direction, the story being retold and embellished before the participants have even cleared the building.
"Dude. His brother is hotter. That's genuinely tragic."
"Did you see the way he looked at Mae? Like she was the sun and he'd been living underground."
"Did you see the way he looked at Vanessa? Like she was a parking ticket."
I exhale slowly, the adrenaline of the last twenty minutes beginning its descent from peak to plateau. My hands are still gripping the boards. My heart rate is still elevated. The residual terror of watching Mae hurtle toward the plexiglass has not fully metabolized, leaving a tremor in my fingers that I conceal by tightening my grip.
Archie stands beside me, his glasses catching the fluorescent light, his arms crossed in that self-contained posture that I have learned is his resting state when he is processing information at a speed that his face does not reveal.
Our eyes meet.
A shared glance that communicates the specific, wordless understanding of two people who just witnessed something extraordinary and are both calculating the implications faster than the ambient conversation can supply context.
His green eyes carry a question:do we follow them?
My green eyes carry the same:do we stay?
The debate is silent, conducted in the language of micro-expressions and slight shifts in posture that we have developed across weeks of pretending not to know each other while knowing each other more intimately than anyone else in this building suspects.
Before either of us resolves the question, a voice cuts through the chatter.
"Holloway. Rosedale."
Coach Mercer. His gruff, commanding cadence slicing through the arena noise with the practiced authority of a man who has been directing attention for decades. He is standing near the bench, his clipboard tucked under one arm, his weathered face carrying an expression that does not match the chaos surrounding him. Not angry. Not amused. Deliberate. The expression of a coach who has been watching two specific players all afternoon and has arrived at a conclusion he intends to act on.
"Can I see you both in my office? Now, please."
The "please" is a formality. The "now" is not.
I frown, my posture stiffening with the instinctive rigidity of a person who has been summoned by authority and is rapidly scanning their recent behavior for violations. The scrimmage? The bickering? The fact that I screamed profanity across a rink in front of coaching staff? The manga defense that included the word "bite" in proximity to an Alpha in a professional setting?
I glance at Archie.
He glances back.
"Are we in trouble?" I mutter, low enough that only he can hear, my lips barely moving. "Because if so, it's your fault."
His smirk surfaces. The real one. The asymmetric curl that hides behind wire-rimmed frames in public and emerges onlyin moments where the mask cracks just enough for the actual Archie to peer through.
