"Just throw the Alpha under the bus, hmm?" His voice matches mine in volume, quiet and conspiratorial, carrying the warm edge of amusement that he reserves for interactions with me and no one else in this building. "Classic Omega move."
I smirk back, the expression tugging at muscles that are tired from a day of performing nonchalance while my internal landscape rearranged itself approximately forty-seven times.
The adrenaline is receding now, draining from my limbs in increments, leaving behind the heavy, buzzing fatigue that follows sustained competitive exertion. My legs feel like they belong to someone else. My shoulders carry the accumulated tension of a woman who just watched her best friend nearly crash into a wall, discover her scent match, and get carried off the ice by a French Alpha who looks like a luxury cologne advertisement, all within the span of approximately ninety seconds.
But Coach Mercer did not summon Mae. Or Cal. Or Étienne. Or Rafe.
He summoned us.
The Omega who wants to be the first female on the hockey team. And the Alpha who pretends he does not play hockey but just anchored a seven-to-zero demolition of the rookie squad with a hockey IQ that made the head coach nod in approval.
This is either very good or very bad, and I genuinely cannot determine which.
I push off the boards, rolling my neck to release the stiffness that has accumulated during the last hour of standing, sitting, skating, shouting, and trying not to betray the fact that the quiet Alpha beside me has kissed me against a locker and I can still feel the ghost of his teeth on my lower lip every time I bite down on it.
Archie falls into step beside me as we follow Coach Mercer toward the tunnel that leads to the coaching offices. His stride is measured. His hands are in his pockets. His face has resettled into the neutral, bespectacled mask that the campus recognizes as its default setting, the utility player and the hidden Alpha tucked safely behind the wire-rimmed frames and the hunched shoulders and the deliberate invisibility that has been his survival strategy since whatever happened in his past that made him decide being seen was more dangerous than being ignored.
But I have seen the other one. The one who blocks shots and bites lips and whispers Wildcard against my ear with a roughness that makes my hindbrain purr.
And Coach Mercer just called both of us into his office after watching both of us play.
Which means he has seen us too.
The tunnel is quiet. The arena noise fades behind us, converted by concrete walls and distance into an ambient hum that accompanies our footsteps without intruding on the silence between us.
I wonder what Archie is thinking. Whether his analytical brain is running the same calculations mine is. Whether he is weighing the possibility that Coach Mercer is about to offer us roster spots against the probability that he is about to lecture us about unauthorized ice time or unsanctioned scrimmage participation or whatever institutional violation we committed by being good at a sport we were not scheduled to play.
I wonder if he is nervous.
I wonder if the Alpha who stood between me and a hostile stranger in a forest, who fabricated a tutoring lie to extract me from an arranged marriage meeting, who held back his shot power during a competitive drill to avoid hitting me, is nervous about walking into a coaching office beside the Omega he is pretending not to know.
The office door is ahead. Closed. A brass nameplate reading COACH MERCER catches the corridor's fluorescent light.
I take a breath.
Archie takes one beside me, synchronized without coordination, two bodies preparing for the same threshold at the same instant.
"Well," I murmur, my voice carrying the specific blend of bravado and terror that has accompanied every significant moment of my athletic life. "Let's find out."
CHAPTER 18
Two Divisions
~SAGE~
Coach Mercer's office smells like old coffee and whiteboard markers and the faint, permanent residue of competition that embeds itself into the walls of every room where strategy has been discussed with enough intensity to leave chemical traces.
The space is functional in the way coaching offices always are: cluttered without being chaotic, every surface occupied by materials that serve a purpose even if that purpose is not immediately apparent to visitors who do not speak the language of playbooks and scouting reports and the specific organizational logic of men who process the world through formations. A desk buried under game film folders. A whiteboard dominating the east wall, its surface ghosted with the erased remnants of diagrams drawn and redrawn until the correct answer emerged. Two chairs positioned across from the desk, angled toward each other at a proximity that forces their occupants into either conversation or confrontation.
I occupy one chair. Archie occupies the other.
Coach Mercer settles behind his desk with the deliberate weight of a man who has conducted enough of these meetings to know that the opening seconds determine the tone. His graying hair is pushed beneath a backwards cap. His weathered face carries the permanent scowl that I am learning is less an expression of displeasure and more the default configuration of features that have been evaluating athletic performance for three decades and have set themselves permanently toassessing.
He looks at Archie.
"Rosedale." The name lands with the direct, no-preamble efficiency of a coach who considers small talk a waste of ice time. "Why aren't you on the team?"
The question fills the office. Settles into the chairs. Presses against the whiteboard and the film folders and the stale coffee air with the patient insistence of a query that will wait indefinitely for its answer.
