“Please,” I said, “can we not have another cultural wave of Alpha-Alpha romance discourse where the entire internet collectively discovers that Alphas can be attracted to each other within the same pack.” I pressed my palms against my eyes. “We had that trend last year when that book came out.”
Candy’s grin widened to a wattage that threatened the room’s electrical infrastructure. “You meanHeated Ri?—”
“NAH NAH NAH.” I removed my hands from my eyes to deploy them as sound barriers against the incoming title, the childish, aggressive,I-refuse-to-hear-thisgesture of a woman whose literary preferences were being used against her by a best friend who had memorized the catalog of her weaknesses and deployed them with gymnastic precision. “I don’t want to hear it. Nor read it. If I want Alpha-on-Alphacontent,” I said, lowering my hands and gesturing at the television with the sweeping, demonstrative energy of a woman presenting evidence to a jury, “I can encourage Exhibit A.”
The screen was still framing Kael and Luka. The eye contact lingering. The chemistry radiating through the broadcast with the specific, undeniable,this-is-not-subtext-this-is-textenergy that made commentary unnecessary and speculation redundant.
Candy pouted. The expression carrying the theatrical, exaggerated sadness of a woman whose entertainment had been redirected. Then her eyes narrowed. The investigative focus returning.
“Wait. Are theyactuallyinto each other?”
I shrugged.
The gesture was calculated. Extended. Accompanied by a drawn-out, syllable-stretched “Maybeeee,” that I delivered with the specific, information-hoarding, I-know-more-than-I’m-telling energy of a woman who possessed classified intelligence and was choosing to distribute it in teaspoons rather than tablespoons.
Candy’s jaw descended.
“What in the lucky cards is in your coochie to attractthat?!”
I hollered. The laughter erupting from my chest with the bright, full, uncontainable force of a woman whose best friend had just articulated the question with a vulgarity and a precision that no diplomatic framing could have improved upon. The sound bounced off the dorm walls and probably reached the adjacent suites and I did not care, because Candy’s face—the wide eyes, the dropped jaw, the genuinely bewildered,I-need-answers-and-the-universe-isn’t-providing-themexpression—was the funniest thing I’d witnessed in theentire chaotic, emotionally catastrophic, four-Alpha-intensive week I’d just survived.
“Aww,” I managed between laughs, “don’t be jealous. Pray to the coochie gods that your pack—the one you’re ‘manifesting’ for the summer Games—will include two troublesome, stubborn, sexually-tense Alphas who spend three years circling each other before one of them finally makes a move.”
She groaned. Full-body. The dramatic, floor-targeted,the-universe-is-unfairgroan of a woman whose best friend’s romantic situation had exceeded the statistical probability of her own and who was processing the disparity through theatrical despair.
“You’re too lucky. I’m completely jealous.”
I laughed again—softer this time, warmer, the frequency shifting from entertainment to affection. “Nah, you’re not. You’re secretly happy for me.”
Her expression softened. The drama receding, replaced by the real thing beneath it—the genuine, uncomplicated,I-love-you-and-your-wins-are-my-winswarmth that lived in the foundation of every interaction between us and that neither the banter nor the theatrical jealousy could reach. Her strawberry-cinnamon scent gentled. The celebration spike settling into the warm, ambient,my-person-is-happy-and-therefore-I-am-happybaseline that my Omega receptors recognized as the scent of home.
“I agree,” she admitted. Then her expression hardened with the strategic, competition-aware focus of a woman who had been navigating the politics of elite athletics since her first international meet and who understood the social terrain of an Olympic training academy the way she understood the terrain of a gymnastics floor: every surface hid apotential landing zone and a potential trap. “But we’ve gotta act like we hate each other before the other girls realize we’re besties and try to manufacture a rivalry by default. That’s how the drama stirs with the Winter Games. The narrative needs heroes and villains, and the media will construct them from whatever material is available—including a friendship between an Omega figure skater and an Omega gymnast who share a dorm and who the press would love to frame as competitors rather than allies.”
I groaned. “That’s going to be hard as fuck with the collaborative training plan I’ve been assigned with Coach Foxwood. If our schedules overlap in public spaces, people are going to see us interacting.”
Candy waved the concern away with the dismissive,I’ve-managed-worsegesture of a woman who had navigated the social politics of international gymnastics since she was fourteen and who considered an Olympic training academy’s interpersonal drama to be a downgrade in difficulty from the circuit she’d already survived.
“I’ve heard Foxwood is brutal. But like, in a good way—the kind of brutal that produces results instead of trauma, which in coaching is apparently a rare combination.” She nudged me with her elbow. “You’ll love it. You thrive on hard shit.”
I smirked. “Funny.”
A knock at the door.
Three raps. Firm. Measured. The specific, we-are-here-and-we-are-expected percussion of men whose knocking style communicated the same thing their presence on an ice surface communicated: authority, intent, and the implicit understanding that the door was going to open because the people on the other side had been anticipated.
Candy’s eyes lit up with the incandescent, Christmas-morning energy of a woman who had been waiting for this particular development and was going to enjoy it with the enthusiasm of a front-row spectator at a production she’d been following since episode one.
“I’ll get it!”
She skipped.Skipped. The gymnast’s explosive, joy-propelled locomotion carrying her from the couch to the door in approximately two seconds, her ginger bun bouncing, her strawberry-cinnamon scent spiking with anticipatory delight that my nose tracked across the room like a tracer round.
She opened the door.
And the scent hit first.
Four Alpha signatures, arriving in the narrow doorframe of an Omega dormitory room simultaneously. The layered, combined, harmonic composition that my nose had cataloged individually over the past week and that was now presenting itself as a unified arrangement—a chord rather than individual notes, each signature finding its complementary frequency in the others with the specific, biological,this-is-pack-chemistryintegration that couldn’t be manufactured or rehearsed:
Frosted pine. Cold steel. Aged whiskey.
