"I need a pack, though, don't I?"
The question exits my mouth in a whisper. Thin and fragile, carrying the weight of every regulation that has been weaponized against my participation since I was old enough to understand that the rules were not designed to include me.
Coach Mercer's frown deepens. The expression restructures his weathered features into the specific configuration of a man encountering an obstacle he anticipated but hoped would not materialize.
"You don't have one?"
I cringe. The involuntary contraction of facial muscles that accompanies the admission of a deficiency you have been conditioned to view as a personal failure rather than a systemic injustice.
"Well, apparently being picky and not accepting shady Alphas who are ten to twelve years older than you means you have high standards." The sarcasm is a shield, deployed automatically, the verbal equivalent of crossing your arms to protect your chest. "Ridiculous, right? An Omega who wants to bond with people she actually respects rather than men her mother selected from a catalog of wealthy predators. What an outrageous expectation."
Coach Mercer arches an eyebrow.
"I'd never let my daughter be with someone even five years her senior, let alone ten." The statement carries the quiet conviction of a father whose protective instincts have not been dulled by decades of professional detachment. "Intriguing that your parents would be comfortable with that arrangement. Though if I know Coach Holloway, I doubt he'd be fine and dandy with it."
He pauses, reading my face with the same precision he applies to reading formations.
"I'm assuming it's your Mother, huh?"
I sigh. The sound deflates my posture by several inches, my shoulders dropping, my spine curving into the specific shape of a woman whose armor has been identified and gently set aside by someone who sees through it.
"The life of a socialite." I nod. "Forces some people to forget what it's like to live your passion versus following the world's standards of success."
Coach Mercer is quiet for a moment. The silence is different from Archie's. Not withholding. Processing. Selecting words with the care of a man who understands that what he says nextwill either build or demolish the fragile structure of hope that is assembling itself in the chest of the Omega sitting across from him.
"I can give you a few days to figure things out." His voice carries the pragmatic warmth of a coach who has navigated bureaucratic obstacles before and knows the difference between a rule that cannot be bent and a rule that has been bent by everyone who benefits from it. "Even if you can find a temporary agreement with a pack of Alphas, I can waiver and pretend I don't know the specifics of the arrangement. The league requires pack affiliation. It does not require me to audit the sincerity of that affiliation."
I frown. The expression carries genuine confusion rather than suspicion, my brain struggling to process the offer from a man whose profession has historically produced the gatekeepers who denied me access.
"Why would you act blind when every other coach has rejected me?"
He leans back. The chair squeaks. His eyes drift to a framed photograph on the corner of his desk that I had not noticed until this moment. A younger version of Coach Mercer, his arm around a woman whose smile carries the specific radiance of someone who is looking at the person they chose and seeing the future they built together.
"Because I owe everything I have to the Omega who was in my life when I was a teenager." His voice softens without losing its authority, the cadence of a man revisiting a truth he has never stopped being grateful for. "Every door that opened for me, every opportunity I received, every coaching position that led to this desk, exists because an Omega believed in me before I believed in myself. That's why she's my wife now. Because doors don't open in a vacuum. They open because someone on the other side decides to pull."
He returns his gaze to me.
"It's a shame our government is structured this way. Designed to ensure that neither designation succeeds without dependence on the other. It's only a matter of time before the regulations start affecting Alphas as heavily as they affect Omegas, and when that happens, the same men who built these barriers will be the first to demand they come down."
The marker taps his palm once. Deliberate. The punctuation of a man transitioning from philosophy to proposal.
"But you have genuine talent, Holloway. I've watched thousands of players skate across hundreds of rinks in thirty years of coaching, and what I saw from you today does not come from practice alone. It comes from something deeper. Something that training can refine but cannot create." He holds my eyes. "I want you to be the first Omega on the ice of a professional game. Not just because it would be historically significant, though it would be. But because it could be empowering to every Omega and every woman who has wanted to play this sport and never had a role model to prove it was possible."
My throat constricts. The pressure behind my eyes intensifies to the dangerous threshold where composure and collapse occupy the same breath.
He believes in me.
Not the way my father believes in me, through the lens of parental love and the obligation that accompanies it. Not the way Jace believes in me, through the loyalty of childhood friendship. Not the way Mae believes in me, through the solidarity of shared designation and reconnected history.
This man believes in me as an athlete. As a player. As someone who belongs on the ice because of what she can do there, not despite who she is.
No coach has ever said that to me.
In fifteen years of tryouts and rejections and clipboards that refused to bear my name, not a single person with the authority to put me on a roster has looked at me and said: I want you to be the first.
I nod. Slowly. The motion weighted with the accumulated gravity of every rejection that preceded this moment and every hope that will follow it.
"I'll figure it out." My voice comes out steadier than I expected, strengthened by the specific determination that activates in my chest when the stakes are real and the opportunity is genuine and the only obstacle remaining is the same institutional machinery that has been blocking my path since I was old enough to want one. "The pack situation. I'll find a way."
