I look like I want to tackle Mae into the boards.
Mae looks like she is having the time of her life.
"Focus!" She claps her hands, and the coaching energy that channels through her body when she stands on ice transforms her from a nervous, ponytailed figure skater into a commander whose authority the surface itself seems to recognize. "I lead. Let's make it quick. I want to hit the library before they close."
"What a nerd," I tease, because the alternative is addressing the fact that my face is approximately the temperature of a blast furnace.
Then I pause. "Actually, they've got new manga in. I'm coming with you."
Archie side-eyes me with naked disdain. "You still read that comic book shit?"
The insult detonates my territorial instincts with a force that has nothing to do with Alpha pheromones and everything to do with cultural loyalty.
"I will bite you if you say that again, you fiend. Manga is a respected art form with complex narratives and stunning visualstorytelling, and I will not have some textbook-sniffing Alpha disrespect it in my presence."
"Alpha and Omega," Mae groans, palms over her eyes. "Take it to the bedroom."
"Fuck off, Mae!" we say in unison, and the synchronization only proves her point and deepens the blush I am barely surviving.
Mae snickers. I grab her arm before the satisfaction can settle.
"Be easy on them." I jerk my chin toward the rookies. "The moment the commentary starts, you're going to turn into Bitch Mae. I've seen it. It's not pretty."
She grins with the calm ferocity of a predator who has been asked to show mercy and is considering the request with limited enthusiasm.
"I'll try to be easy. Maybe."
Archie glances at me, uncertain. "Should I be worried?"
I exhale through my nose. The sound carries the accumulated weight of having witnessed Mae Rose's competitive transformation before.
"All I'll say is the Mae you see in class is a completely different Mae on the ice. Watch the shift."
Because I have seen it. Years ago, before my mother dragged me away and before the distance made my memories unreliable. I sat in bleachers at seven years old and watched Mabeline Mae Rose step onto a figure skating surface and become a different species. The tentative, gentle girl who flinched at loud noises and apologized for existing transformed into a creature of precision and fury whose blade work left patterns in the ice that the Zamboni operator told my father he did not want to erase.
The Mae who exists on ice is the real one.
And the rookies standing in their formation, grinning at the Omega in the oversized jersey and the borrowed helmet, have absolutely no idea what is about to happen to them.
Coach Mercer skates to the face-off circle. The puck balances on his open palm. The arena hushes.
I plant myself on Mae's left, my posture coiled, my weight forward on my blades. The competitive switch flips in my chest with the clean, decisive click of a circuit completing. The dorm flood, the Archie pact, the blush, the manga insult, the matchmaking ambush: all of it recedes into background noise, replaced by the singular, consuming focus that my body enters when the puck is about to drop.
This is where I live.
Not in the hallways of my mother's mansion. Not in the curated discomfort of Valenridge dorm rooms. Not in the spaces between what I am and what the world expects me to be.
Here. On ice. With a stick in my hands and an opponent in front of me and the cold air filling my lungs with the only fuel that has ever made me feel alive.
Archie takes the right flank. Without the goggles, his green eyes carry the sharp, calculating focus of a center reading the opposing formation and cataloguing every positional error before the play begins. His body is coiled in a ready stance that contradicts every assumption this arena has made about him. His weight distribution is perfect. His stick positioning is textbook. The coach's son who allegedly watches from the bleachers is standing on the ice with the muscle memory of someone who has been playing this game since before he could spell his own name.
The rookie facing me is broad-shouldered and grinning, his stance carrying the relaxed confidence of a man who has already won the drill in his head.
He leans toward Mae. "I'll be easy on you. I don't bully Omegas."
Mae smiles back. Sweet. Innocent. The smile of a woman who has been underestimated so many times she has converted the experience into a weapon.
"Okay. Thanks."
