Four Alphas occupied the dorm room around me in various configurations of post-victory decompression. Luka on the couch to my left, his long legs extended, his navy-purple hair still damp from the post-game shower, his rain-soaked-stone scent mellowed to its resting register. Kael standing against the wall to my right with his arms crossed, the frosted-pine signature carrying the residual, sharpened edge of a man whose system was still processing the afternoon’s events. Maddox in Candy’s vacated armchair, the cedar-and-embers presence grounding the room’s scent landscape with the dense, stabilizing warmth that characterized everything the enforcer contributed to a space. And Renzo perched on the desk beside my laptop, his green hair catching the screen’s glow, his mint-citrus-tea signature threading through the heavier Alpha aromas like a bright stitch through dark fabric.
“What did you lot do to piss off the previous goalie?” I asked, rotating the laptop so the registry faced the room. “Does he have Mommy issues? Did his father drop him? Hell—does he have parents? Because the speed at which he defected suggests a man whose loyalty was formed on a foundation of absolutely nothing.”
Luka smirked. The expression carrying the specific, dark,I-punched-that-man-in-the-face-approximately-four-hours-agoenergy that I would be requiring a full debrief on at a later date.
Renzo sighed. The exhale was long, carrying the specific,I-have-spent-too-much-energy-on-this-person-todayweight of a man whose patience had been tested by events I was still piecing together from context clues and scent residue.
“Who knows what his deal was,” Renzo said, “but the fucker went digging into Luka and Kael’s past and was actively trying to turn the team against our captain. Mid-game. During a qualifying match. While simultaneously throwing the match from the crease by deliberately underperforming.” His dark eyes carried the specific, still-processing,the-audacity-hasn’t-fully-registeredquality of a man whose strategic mind was still computing the scope of the betrayal. “Orchestrated sabotage from a position of trust. Sound familiar?”
It does. It sounds exactly like the blueprint Garrison used on me. The embedded operative. The systematic undermining from within. The exploitation of access and trust to produce destruction that looks, from the outside, like bad luck rather than bad intention.
“Did you get rid of them?”
Maddox nodded. The motion carrying the definitive,the-matter-is-resolvedweight of an enforcer confirming the elimination of a threat. “Booted. All five defectors. Coach told them their access credentials would be deactivated by end of day and that any attempt to access Ironcrest facilities or training materials would be treated as a security violation.”
I smirked. “Good.”
Luka shifted on the couch. The movement bringing him closer—his thigh settling against mine, the warm, solid, hockey-built proximity radiating through the fabric of both our athletic pants and into the nerve endings of my leg, which cataloged the contact with the specific, Omega-receptor,compatible-Alpha-in-rangeenthusiasm that my biology produced in response to Luka Petrov’s physical presence regardless of the context or my conscious mind’s opinion on the matter.
“What’s the plan, Diamond?”
His voice was low. Intimate. Carrying the warm, specific,I-know-you-have-oneconfidence of a man who had learned, through years of proximity and months of recent reacquaintance, that Octavia Moreau did not enter a room—or a situation, or a competition, or a conversation with four Alphas about a conspiracy spanning years and countries—without a strategy already assembled and annotated in the handwriting on her lap.
I blushed.
Slightly. The warmth climbing my neck at the closeness, at theDiamond, at the implication embedded in the nickname that I was precious and difficult to break and that the man beside me had spent half a decade searching for a replacement and found the category empty.
“Why do you thinkIhave a plan?”
He smirked. “I know my Diamond always has a plan. Which is why we came straight here.” He leaned back into the couch with the casual, full-body settling of a man who had delegated the strategic planning to the most qualified person in the room and was preparing to receive the briefing. “There’s no way Kael’s thinking of one.”
Kael grumbled from the wall. “I’m your fuckingcaptain, remember.”
Luka waved a hand. The gesture dismissive, unhurried, carrying the specific,yes-on-the-ice-but-not-in-this-conversationenergy that he deployed when acknowledging Kael’s authority while simultaneously circumscribing its jurisdiction. “Yeah.” The word drawn out. Accompanied by the brushing-away motion of a man clearing a surface of irrelevant objects. “But outside of hockey, you’re clueless. So we’re safer letting our Omega handle things.”
Our Omega.
The phrase landed in my chest with a warmth that had nothing to do with the room’s temperature and everything to do with the possessive pronoun and the casual, assumed,this-is-settledauthority with which Luka deployed it. NottheOmega. NotanOmega.Our. The word that saidyou belong with uswithout requiring a verb or an explanation or the bureaucratic apparatus of a registration form.
Renzo smirked from the desk. The expression carrying the delighted, playful energy of a man who had just heard a phrase he wanted to practice.
“Damn. That does sound nice.” His dark eyes sparkled with the clean-zesty-mint brightness that characterized his moments of genuine pleasure. “Our Omega. We actually have an Omega in our midst who can moderate these two catastrophic arguers. Grand.”
“We don’t argue,” Kael and Luka said.
In unison.
Simultaneously. The same three words, the same defensive inflection, the samehow-dare-you-suggest-our-dynamic-is-combativeenergy delivered in perfect, unrehearsed, stereo synchronization that contradicted the claim at the molecular level—because men who didn’t argue did not possess the shared vocal timing that could only be developed through extensive, repeated practice at disagreeing with each other in the same room.
Maddox looked at me from the armchair. His near-black eyes carrying the quiet, amused,you-see-what-I-deal-withexpression of a man who had been managing this particular dynamic for years and who was now, for the first time, in the presence of someone who might share the burden.
“So,” he said, his cedar-and-embers voice grounding theroom’s escalating banter energy the way a bass note grounded a chord, “think you can put together a strategy that keeps them from being at each other’s throats within thirty minutes?”
I smirked.
“I already have a game plan.” I tapped the notepad on my lap. The pages dense with annotations, timelines, contingency branches. “But it’s vigorous. On all of us. The training component is demanding, the public strategy requires discipline, and the execution window is tight. But if we commit—fully, as a unit, with no half-assing and no solo missions and no sulking in upstairs bedrooms while the rest of the pack is working”—a pointed glance at Kael, who huffed but didn’t contest the reference—“it’ll put us in a position where we’re not just competing. We’redominating. The ice, the media, and Garrison’s entire narrative.”
Kael pushed off the wall. His arms uncrossing. The posture transitioning from casual to engaged—the captain’s body recognizing a briefing when he heard one and adjusting its configuration accordingly.
