The particular, weighted silence that follows an application submitted into a void. The kind that could meanwe are still reviewing your materialsoryour application was routed to a spam filterorwe received your personal statement, laughed about it during a staff meeting, and moved on to candidates whose biology does not require a waiver and a press release.
I am trying not to be mopey about it.
I am failing.
The pout has been semi-permanent for three days, settling into the muscles of my face like a cramp that refuses to release. My lower lip has taken up residence approximately two millimeters further forward than its resting position, creating an expression that Jeffrey describes as "quite melancholy, Miss Holloway" and my father describes as "looking like someone stole your puck and ate it in front of you."
The disappointment sits in the pit of my stomach like a river stone. Smooth and cold and impossibly heavy for its size. I carry it through drills and meals and the long, quiet hours between training sessions when there is nothing to distract me from the growing certainty that Valenridge was just another door. Another handle I turned, another threshold I stepped toward, another politely worded rejection waiting on the other side dressed in better stationery.
Maybe this is it.
The thought surfaces during the drive home from the community center, rising through my exhaustion like a bubble through dark water.
Maybe Valenridge was the last swing, and you missed. Maybe the dream of playing on a professional team that accepts an Omega is exactly as impossible as every scout and every coach and every clipboard-wielding gatekeeper has been telling you since you were fourteen. Maybe your mother was right. Maybe the world does not bend.
I press my forehead against the Escalade's window, watching the estates and manicured hedgerows blur past in the gray November light. Jeffrey is driving with his usual silent competence, his eyes on the road, his posture offering the respectful distance of a man who has learned to read my moods through the rearview mirror and knows when to speak and when to let the quiet do its work.
The Holloway estate materializes through the treeline. Iron gates. Trimmed hedges. The limestone facade glowing faintly in the overcast afternoon like a monument to a family whose greatest achievement is looking impressive from a distance.
Jeffrey pulls the Escalade to a stop beneath the portico and opens my door with his customary precision.
"Welcome home, Miss Holloway." His brown eyes flicker across my face, cataloguing the pout, the slumped shoulders,the damp compression gear clinging to a body that reeks of four hours of community center ice and the specific brand of despair that smells like frozen Gatorade and shattered optimism. "I should mention that there are guests in the house."
I sigh with the full weight of my twenty-four years.
"Great. Then I better get my musty-smelling self to the shower before Mother adds personal hygiene to her list of my failures as a daughter." I grab my gear bag from the trunk, slinging it over one shoulder with the resigned momentum of an athlete returning from a war nobody else acknowledges. "Thanks, Jeffrey."
He opens his mouth to continue, and I catch the slight furrow between his brows that indicates the information he is about to deliver is more significant than a standard guest notification.
But I am already moving. Already climbing the front steps with my bag bouncing against my hip and my sneakers leaving faint rubber marks on the imported marble that the cleaning staff will have to buff out later and my mother will add to the spreadsheet she maintains of my domestic infractions.
I am not in the mood.
Not for guests. Not for the performative hospitality that transforms our living room into a stage where my mother plays the role of gracious hostess and the rest of us function as supporting cast in a production nobody auditioned for. Not for the polished smiles and the careful small talk and the elaborate charade of pretending that this family is held together by affection rather than tax benefits and a shared property deed.
Such a fake fucking lifestyle.
I am halfway to the staircase when her voice catches me like a hook through the ribs.
"Sage Elowen Holloway."
Full name. All three words deployed with the clipped precision of a woman who treats her daughter's identitylike a legal summons. The syllables echo off the marble foyer, bouncing between the chandelier and the floor-to-ceiling mirrors that line the entrance hall, multiplying until it sounds like a courtroom full of Eleanoras pronouncing judgment in unison.
I stop.
My gear bag slides down my shoulder, catching at my elbow. My sneakers squeak against the marble as I pivot toward the living room doorway, where the warm glow of the interior spills across the threshold like a boundary between my world and hers.
And immediately, I catch the scent.
Alphas. Multiple. Their pheromones saturating the living room air with a density that seeps into the foyer like smoke under a closed door. Thick, cloying, layered in a way that suggests they have been occupying this space for a while, long enough for their combined territorial markers to soak into the upholstery and settle into the curtains and claim the room's atmosphere with the possessive certainty of men who believe any space they enter automatically belongs to them.
I roll my eyes. Hard enough that my optic nerves lodge a formal complaint.
My nose wrinkles involuntarily, and I fight to smooth it before crossing the threshold. The scent is not just Alpha. It is a specific variety. Stale tobacco smoke and overapplied cologne and the sour undertone of men whose biological dominance markers have been chemically supplemented by whatever synthetic pheromone booster is currently popular among Alphas who need assistance projecting authority they do not naturally possess.
Charming. We are hosting the tobacco aisle of a discount pharmacy.
I shuffle into the living room with all the enthusiasm of a prisoner entering a courtroom, my gear bag dangling from one arm, my compression shirt still damp with four hours of sweat, my hair plastered to my temples in dark, salt-stiffened streaks that have escaped the elastic band and are staging a rebellion against the very concept of presentability.
