Isneeze.
Again.
The seventh sneeze in the last forty minutes, each one arriving with the escalating intensity of a body that is not fighting an allergen but losing a war it has been pretending not to fight for three consecutive days. I rub at my nose with the back of my glove, the friction doing nothing to relieve the pressure building behind my sinuses and everything to remind me that the glove smells like sweat and rubber and the specific, accumulated grime of equipment that has been absorbing the byproducts of elite-level training for a week straight.
The drill sequence is reaching its final set. The team completing their laps in the formation Coach Mercer designed yesterday: pairs of forwards cycling through the neutral zone at increasing speeds, the defensemen holding the blue line and transitioning to backward crossovers when the puck carrier crosses center. I was supposed to be in the third rotation. Was lined up for it, my stick positioned, my weight on my forwardedges, my brain issuing the command to push off and join the pattern that my body has been executing with precision for the last six practices.
My body declined.
I skid to a stop at the boards instead, the edge of my blade catching the ice at an angle that produces a spray I do not have the energy to make look intentional. My lungs are burning. Not the productive, training-induced burn that competitive athletes pursue as evidence of work. The heavy, saturated, oxygen-insufficient burn of a respiratory system that is processing air at a deficit and cannot explain why.
My stamina is shit today.
Has been shit for three days, declining in increments so gradual that I dismissed the first day as fatigue, rationalized the second as adjustment, and am now standing at the boards on the third day unable to deny that the pattern represents a trajectory rather than a fluctuation.
What is wrong with me?
The question circulates through my skull alongside the pressure and the exhaustion and the specific, bone-level aching that has been intensifying since I woke up this morning in Archie's bed, where I have been sleeping for four consecutive nights because neither of us has acknowledged the transition from temporary arrangement to default configuration and the universe has not provided a plumbing repair that would force the conversation.
My body aches. Not the localized, productive soreness that training generates in specific muscle groups. A distributed, systemic, every-joint-and-every-fiber ache that sits in my bones rather than my muscles and radiates outward through my connective tissue with the persistent, low-grade intensity of a body fighting a process it cannot identify.
I have been sneezing for three days. My stamina is declining. My body temperature is fluctuating between too hot and too cold with a frequency that makes thermoregulation feel like a full-time job my nervous system is underqualified for. My appetite, which has been voracious since the first meal Archie cooked me, has shifted from aggressive to nonexistent, my stomach producing nausea at the sight of food it demanded twenty-four hours ago.
This is either a cold, an allergic response to the sustained Alpha pheromone exposure I have been marinating in since moving into a dorm saturated with cedarwood, or the early indicators of a biological process that I have been chemically suppressing for years and that my body has apparently decided to renegotiate without consulting my schedule.
I sigh, standing at the boards while the others complete their circuits. The team has been generous about my declining performance, the vocal Alphas who celebrated my third-place ranking at the end of day one now directing concerned glances toward my position at the boards with the specific, worried attention of men who have noticed that their strongest defender is operating at fifty percent and are calculating the implications for the roster.
Maybe I should see the nurse after practice. Get checked. Rule out the worst-case scenario that my hindbrain has been whispering for two days and my pride has been shouting over.
Or maybe this is an Omega thing.
The thought arrives with the clinical specificity that my analytical brain produces when it is willing to consider a hypothesis it finds uncomfortable. I have never been around this many Alphas. Not in sustained, daily, multi-hour proximity. My history with Alpha contact has been limited to tryouts, short training sessions, and the brief, transactional encounters that Omega life in a non-pack configuration produces. The shift fromminimal exposure to full immersion, from the occasional Alpha in passing to a locker room full of testosterone every morning, represents a biological environmental change that my Omega physiology may not have been prepared to process.
The pheromone load alone is staggering. Fifteen Alpha scent profiles competing for atmospheric territory in an enclosed arena, each one broadcasting at the elevated output that competitive exertion produces. My olfactory system is processing a volume of Alpha input that it has never previously encountered, and the downstream effects on my hormonal regulation could be significant enough to produce the symptoms I am experiencing.
A hand presses against my forehead.
The contact is firm, diagnostic, carrying the specific temperature-assessment pressure of a person checking for fever through direct thermal comparison. I frown, my gaze lifting to the face attached to the hand, expecting Archie and finding one of the twins instead.
His amber eyes are looking at me with an expression that is unimpressed in the way that medical concern manifests in people who have decided the patient is underreporting their symptoms.
"Wildcard, you don't look hot at all."
I frown deeper.
"Well, that's rude, Rowan."
He smirks. But the smirk is off. Carrying a different cadence than the one I have learned to associate with the broader twin, the specific, subtle asymmetry of a facial expression being performed by the other face. I squint, the visual data recalibrating against the twin-differentiation system I have been developing across a week of close-proximity observation.
"Wait a minute." I point at him. "You're Ronan."
His smile spreads. Genuine. Warm with the quieter temperature that distinguishes his expressions from his brother's louder equivalents.
"Yeah."
He turns toward center ice, projecting his voice with the specific, unfazed volume of a man who is about to redirect the captain's attention and does not consider the interruption optional.
"Hey, Cap. Problem."
