I take a breath.
Press my palm against my sternum, where his scent has settled like a thumbprint on glass.
You do not want this, Sage. You do not want anything serious with an Alpha right now.
You are thirty-seven hours into an application that could change the trajectory of your entire career. You are on the edge of something that matters more than cedar-scented strangers with broken glasses and green eyes and the audacity to claim you in a forest before learning your name.
Alphas are distractions.
Packs are vulnerabilities.
Bonds are cages dressed in silk.
You know this. You have always known this.
I start running again.
My pace picks up faster than before, my legs grateful for the return to movement, my lungs expanding to accommodate the increased demand. The trail stretches ahead, familiar and endless, winding through the estate's forest like a path designed specifically for people who need to outrun their own thoughts.
He smelled divine, though.
The admission sneaks past my defenses, slipping through a crack I did not know existed.
Absolutely divine. Cedarwood and graphite and amber that could make an Omega forget her own name if she breathed it in long enough.
I shake my head. Push harder. Force my legs to carry me faster, as if speed can outpace the memory of a scent that has already embedded itself in the lining of my lungs.
I do not want anything serious with an Alpha right now.
But maybe one day I will meet another Alpha that smells as divine as he does.
CHAPTER 3
Uninvited
~SAGE~
The community center ice smells different from professional rinks.
Professional arenas carry the sharp, industrial scent of chemical refrigerants and compressor exhaust, the air processed and recirculated through filtration systems that strip it of anything organic. Community center ice smells alive. Chlorinated mop water from the lobby, rubber floor mats baking under fluorescent lights, the ghost of a hundred birthday parties celebrated in the adjacent banquet hall where the frosting never fully comes out of the carpet.
I spent four hours on that ice today.
Four hours of drills I designed myself from memory, running patterns across a surface shared with twelve-year-olds in beginner skating lessons and a beer league team of middle-aged accountants who think they are reliving their glory days every Thursday afternoon. I dodged toddlers in penguin-shaped skating aids, waited patiently while the Zamboni operator took his contractually mandated smoke break between sessions, andpracticed edge work in a six-foot corridor between the boards and a woman teaching her golden retriever to ice skate.
The dog was better at crossovers than half the beer league.
The point is: I trained. Hard. With the specific, grinding determination of someone who has nothing left to train for and refuses to admit it.
Because the forty-eight hours came and went.
Then seventy-two.
Then a full week.
No email from Valenridge. No phone call. No registered letter arriving through the courier entrance while my mother attended board meetings. The inbox on my ancient phone remained stubbornly empty of anything bearing a university crest, populated only by spam advertisements for suppressant brands I do not use and a weekly newsletter from a hockey analytics website I subscribed to three years ago and keep forgetting to cancel.
Silence.
