The Alpha anchor leaned into the narrative with the genuine, invested enthusiasm of a man whose emotional connection to the story had exceeded his professional obligation to remain neutral. “It’s the kind of story that reminds you why the Games exist. The rise of the phoenix—reborn from the very ashes that should have consumed them. To see an athlete return from an injury of that magnitude, retrainher body, requalify through the pipeline, and arrive at the Olympic stage with a new partner and a new program? It’s exciting. It’s liberating. And I understand completely why it’s captured the public’s interest.”
The Omega grinned. The expression audible in her voice—the vocal shift that accompanied a smile, the consonants softening, the warmth climbing. “And it gets more intriguing. Because the word on the street—and by ‘street,’ I mean every social media platform with a pulse—is that Moreau is actually the bonded Omega of four men on the USA hockey team. Which, for those keeping score at home, means she’s managing an Olympic figure skating careeranda pack of four Alphas whose combined competitive schedule would give a logistics coordinator nightmares.”
The Alpha laughed. The sound warm, comfortable, carrying the specific,I’m-going-to-make-a-joke-and-I-hope-it-landsenergy of a broadcast professional testing the boundaries of his commentary with the careful, calculated spontaneity that decades of live television had refined into an art.
“Well, they do say—the Olympics and all that adrenaline can lead to someknottysituations.”
Oh God.
The Omega co-anchor laughed. The sound carrying the genuine,I-can’t-believe-you-went-theredelight of a woman whose co-anchor had just executed a pun on live international broadcast that referenced Alpha reproductive biology with the cheerful audacity of a man who understood that the audience was already thinking it and figured he might as well say it.
“Well, the coaching staff has been watching all the teams like hawks,” she responded, her tone shifting into thelet-me-redirect-this-toward-something-the-sponsors-will-tolerateregisterthat co-anchors deployed when their partners ventured into territory that the broadcast standards department would be reviewing at the morning meeting. “And they’ve ensured that the athlete village beds this year are practically reinforced cardboard—structural enough for sleeping, insufficient for…anything that might require more robust engineering.”
The Alpha anchor was grinning. “Heats will be a no-go for Omegas while the competitions are underway. Reserve those shenanigans forafteryour victories.”
“Absolutely,” the Omega agreed. “And the coaches were asked directly about their stance on…extracurricular activities during the Games.” She paused. The dramatic,wait-for-ithesitation of a broadcaster loading a quote she’d been waiting to deliver. “Coach Foxwood—who is, notably, the first Omega head coach to enter the Winter Games directing a USA program—was particularly direct. And I quote…”
Another pause. The stadium’s ambient noise filling the gap with sixty-two thousand voices.
“‘Knot on our pucking watch.’”
The arena’s reaction was immediate. Laughter rippling through the sections closest to the speakers, the sound propagating outward in concentric waves as the quote reached the further sections and the wordplay registered with the delayed,wait-did-she-really-say-thatrecognition that distinguished a good pun from a great one. The Alpha anchor was laughing—genuinely, the polished broadcast composure cracking into the real, delighted,that’s-going-viralamusement of a man who recognized a clip when he heard one.
“Knot on our pucking watch,” he repeated, savoring the phrase. “That is going straight to the highlight reel. I love it. The specificity. The commitment. Coach Foxwoodunderstands the assignment and she’s communicating it with a clarity that leaves zero room for interpretation.”
The Omega co-anchor was still laughing. “All knotting will be strictly off-limits on her watch. But”—she raised a finger, the gesture audible in the playful,howeverinflection of her voice—“kisses, hand-holding, and romantic embraces are still within regulation. So the heart can participate even if the…other organs are benched.”
I am standing in an Olympic stadium listening to international broadcasters discuss my sex life in puns. This is the pinnacle of athletic achievement and the summit of personal mortification, and they’re occurring simultaneously.
A warmth at my left ear.
Luka’s breath, arriving at the shell of my cartilage with the proximity and precision of a man who had been navigating to this particular piece of my anatomy since Halifax and who could locate it in a crowd of sixty-two thousand with the same unerring accuracy he brought to locating a puck in a crowded crease. His scent concentrated at the distance—rain-soaked stone, clove, dark chocolate, arriving as a single, intimate,I-am-heresignal that my Omega receptors extracted from the monsoon of the arena’s ambient pheromone output with the devoted, focused,this-one-mattersprioritization that pack chemistry demanded.
“Nervous?”
The whisper was low. Warm. Carrying the specific,only-for-youregister that he deployed when the world was watching and the words were private, the vocal equivalent of a hand squeezed beneath a table—present, grounding, hidden from the cameras that were undoubtedly tracking us from multiple angles.
I smirked.
The expression arriving with the irrepressible, Octavia-default confidence that six weeks of the most intense training of my life had produced—the daily sessions with Coach Foxwood, whose “brutal in a good way” reputation had been confirmed within the first fifteen minutes of our initial session and who had proceeded to deconstruct and rebuild my technical foundation with the surgical, no-nonsense,you-are-capable-of-more-than-this-and-I-will-not-accept-lessmethodology that I’d been craving from a coach since my father’s illness had removed him from the active role. The pairs training with Luka that had evolved from the improvised, hockey-gear-on-figure-skating-ice experiment of the audition into a legitimately competitive partnership whose chemistry the coaching staff had stopped questioning and started studying. The conditioning. The visualization. The relentless, cumulative,I-am-sharper-today-than-I-was-yesterdayprogress that six weeks of undistracted, drama-free, locked-in training produced in a body that was built for this work and a mind that had been starving for it.
“Excited as fuck,” I said. The honesty unfiltered. The words carrying the specific, buzzing,every-cell-in-my-body-knows-what’s-comingenergy of a woman whose entire existence had been oriented toward this moment since she was four years old on her father’s shoulders in a Montreal bar. “But the crowd is ginormous. I knew the numbers from the venue specs but therealityof sixty-two thousand people generating sound at this volume is… a lot.”
Luka chuckled. The vibration traveling from his chest through the proximity of our shoulders—not touching, maintaining the camera-appropriate gap that the delegation’s formation required, but close enough that the thermaloutput of his body reached mine and the chuckle’s frequency conducted through the shared air between us.
“The turnout this year is significantly higher than projected,” he said, his voice still at the whisper register, the private-channel that sixty-two thousand people and approximately four hundred cameras could not access. “But the last six weeks of training camp coverage has generated more public interest than the IOC anticipated. Our first set is sold out. Tickets for the figure skating sessions are being bid for on resale platforms at three to four times face value.”
I shook my head. “How you follow the madness of the media cycle is beyond me.”
He smirked. “Well, you had your phone until we banned you from using it.”
Thewewas collective. Pack-issued. The decision that had been made approximately three weeks into training camp when Renzo had discovered me at two-fourteen in the morning, cross-legged on my bed, still in my training leggings, scrolling through a TikTok rabbit hole that had started with a video about figure skating jump mechanics and had deteriorated through a series of algorithmic suggestions into a seven-hour doom-scroll that encompassed conspiracy theories about Olympic judging, a deep-dive into the mating habits of Arctic wolves (relevant to Omegaverse discourse, apparently), and a forty-minute compilation of cats falling off kitchen counters that I had watched in its entirety with the devoted, hypnotized, unable-to-look-away attention of a woman whose dopamine circuitry had been hijacked by a social media platform whose engineers were significantly better at their job than mine.
The phone had been confiscated the following morning. Pack decision. Unanimous.
“Because you hyperfixate on TikTok,” Luka continued, the smirk audible in his whisper, “and then you’re spending eight solid hours doom-scrolling that app when you should be sleeping. I’d rather you be playing Poketopia at this point than on that forsaken platform.”
I snickered. The sound buried beneath the stadium’s ambient roar. “Well, I’m playing that tonight with Maddox and Renzo, and they both claimed dibs on the evening session, so don’t disturb us.”
