The words leave my mouth carrying the weight of fifteen years of rejection and the lightness of a woman who just played the best hockey of her life alongside two people who made her feel like she belonged on the ice rather than tolerated on it.
Cal whistles. "Damn, she's cocky."
I laugh, jabbing my thumb toward Mae.
"If you think I'm cocky, then you really haven't seen MaeBell in full throttle. I'm the mild version. She's ruthless."
The coaching offers arrive in rapid succession. Coach Mercer propositions Mae for a strategy consulting role with the hockey team. Coach Lizzy, the pink-haired twin of Miss Phillip whose existence I was not aware of until she glided onto the ice with the confident energy of a woman who has been scouting from the bleachers for the past hour, recruits Mae for the figure skating squad. The twin sister dynamic provides a brief comedic interlude that I file away for future reference: identical in every way except the hair, with a bickering dynamic that rivals mine and Jace's.
Mae navigates both offers with the careful diplomacy of a woman who has been burned too many times to accept opportunity at face value. She agrees to consider both. Requests time. Maintains the option to retreat.
But she won't retreat. I can see it in her eyes. The ice has her again. The ice has always had her. And no amount of caution is going to overpower the gravitational pull of a surface that makes Mabeline Mae Rose feel like the version of herself she was born to be.
And then Rafe Calder crashes into the moment with the subtlety of a freight train arriving at a station that did not request service.
He skates into the group with the aggressive momentum of a man who has been stewing on the sidelines for twenty minutes and has reached the precise temperature at which Alpha pride converts from simmering resentment into verbal confrontation.
"Y'all see her do some flashy moves once and now you're offering her positions left and right?" His stick gestures at the assembled coaches with the indiscriminate accusation of a man who considers recruitment a personal insult. "Strategy coach? Figure skating team? What's next, a statue in the lobby?"
Cal chuckles. "You sound jealous, Beaumont."
"I'm not jealous. I'm realistic." Rafe's jaw could cut steel. "She's fast, fine, I'll give her that. But fast doesn't mean she can beat me. I'm the fucking captain. I've been training on ice since I could walk. I can outskate her any day of the week."
Étienne whistles low. "You better not challenge MaeMae, Rafe. You'll be disappointed."
Rafe's chin lifts. Pride and stubbornness fused in the rigid set of his shoulders.
"I can beat her easily. Bring it on."
Every pair of eyes in the vicinity rotates to Mae.
She blinks. Tilts her head. Performs the wide-eyed innocence routine that I have now witnessed enough times to recognize as the psychological equivalent of a loaded weapon being aimed at an unsuspecting target.
"Um... I guess I can do a quick race."
She pauses. Glances at the scoreboard clock.
"But after that, I need to leave in like three minutes. Library closes soon and I want to check out some books before they lock up."
She just accepted a race against the hockey captain and her primary concern is library closing time.
This woman is clinically unhinged and I have never been prouder to call her my best friend.
Coach Mercer grins with the satisfaction of a man whose afternoon has exceeded his entertainment budget.
"Perfect. Get to the other end of the ice, you two."
Mae glides toward the far boards with the unhurried stride of a woman who does not consider the captain of the hockey team a worthy adversary and has mentally allocated approximately ninety seconds of her attention to this task before redirecting the remaining bandwidth to library card logistics.
Rafe follows, his stride aggressive, his jaw set, his entire body communicating the specific energy of an Alpha who has been publicly challenged by an Omega and intends to restore the natural order through velocity.
I lean against the boards next to Archie, who has escaped the recruitment mob and is adjusting his glasses with the relieved composure of a man who has survived a social siege and is documenting the experience for future avoidance.
"She's going to destroy him," I murmur.
Archie says nothing.
But the grin that surfaces at the corner of his mouth, half-hidden behind the wire-rimmed frames, says everything his silence does not.
