The words arrive with the confident, weighted certainty of a man who has been planning this for longer than tonight andwhose whisper contained not a request but the final briefing of a strategy that has been developing since the first incident report the twins delivered after a puck crossed a dividing line.
I nod.
The agreement settling into my chest alongside the scouting news and the pre-game adrenaline and the specific, layered, competing emotional inputs that this locker room conversation has deposited into a system that is about to walk onto the most important ice of its life.
Three professional organizations want me on their rosters.
My coach has a plan to address the man who hurt my Alpha.
And in approximately four minutes, I am going to step onto a competitive surface in front of scouts and crowds and the institutional machinery of a sport that told me I did not belong, wearing a jersey with my name on the back, skating beside the man whose lips taste like cedarwood and whose voice in the dark whispered "thanks for not running away" as if my staying was the bravest thing anyone had ever done for him.
No pressure.
I straighten my jersey. Check the tape on my stick. Adjust the helmet that still wobbles by a fraction because the equipment manufacturer has not yet produced a women's line and the men's sizes remain an approximation of my head's actual dimensions.
HOLLOWAY. Number 55.
The name and the number that will be visible to every scout in the stands and every camera covering the game and every person in the building who has an opinion about whether an Omega belongs on the ice and who is about to receive the only answer that matters: the one delivered through performance rather than argument.
I walk to the door. Through the doorway. Into the corridor where my pack is waiting.
Archie's eyes find mine immediately. The green irises performing the rapid, diagnostic assessment that his gaze executes every time I emerge from a space he was not occupying, the scan confirming my safety and my emotional state with a thoroughness that would be clinical if it were not accompanied by the slight softening at the corners of his mouth that tells me the scan's results have been satisfactory.
"Good?" he asks.
"Good."
He nods. Does not press. Does not ask what Coach wanted or why the conversation required privacy. The trust that has been building between us across weeks of sleeping arrangements and locker room crises and the specific, accumulated evidence that I return from every separation intact and undimmed providing the confidence that whatever transpired behind that closed door is information I will share when I am ready and that his curiosity does not override my timeline.
Rowan bumps my shoulder with his.
"Ready to make history, Fifty-Five?"
I bump him back.
"Born ready."
Ronan offers a fist. I connect mine with his, the gloved contact producing the muted, padded impact that hockey equipment converts from a fist bump into a pillow fight between two hands that cannot feel each other through the protective layers.
"Leave everything on the ice," he says. The simplicity of the instruction carrying the weight of a man whose approach to competition is the same as his approach to everything: measured, deliberate, and concealing a ferocity that the calm exterior does not advertise.
The corridor stretches before us. Long. Fluorescent-lit. Carrying the distant, growing, amplifying noise of a crowd that has assembled in the arena beyond the tunnel exit and is producing the specific, building, anticipatory roar that competitive athletes hear in the final stretch between the locker room and the ice and that the nervous system processes as either a threat or an invitation depending on whether the person hearing it has decided to be terrified or exhilarated.
I choose exhilarated.
Because I am Sage Holloway. Number 55. First Omega on a competitive hockey roster. Defensive anchor of a Division Two squad captained by a man whose hockey IQ operates at a level that makes professional coaches defer to his reads. Flanked by twins whose combined skill set and unwavering loyalty constitute the offensive engine that has produced a 21-to-7 average across our training scrimmages. Claimed by a pack that asked my father's permission and held me through a medical crisis and confronted the predator who stood behind a shower curtain and discovered that the target he victimized is no longer alone.
I am carrying three scouting offers in a folder behind a whiteboard. A secret assignment from a coach whose plan I trust without knowing its full architecture. And the specific, fierce, hard-earned, rejection-forged conviction that the woman walking down this tunnel has survived every obstacle the world placed between her and this ice and will not be stopped by the final one.
The tunnel exit brightens. The crowd noise amplifies. The cold arena air reaches us through the opening with the specific, sharp, pre-game bite that competitive rinks produce when the ice is fresh and the stands are full and the lights are set to performance intensity.
I take a breath.
And hope that this moment of secrecy plays out in their favor.
CHAPTER 39
Lucky Shot
