Standing at the far end of the medal assembly area with his partner—the replacement Omega, the woman whose technically proficient, emotionally vacant performance had earned them third place. Bronze. The man who had been positioned as the Canadian program’s centerpiece, who had carried the dual-event registration that was supposed to demonstrate his dominance across both partnered and solo disciplines, had landed on the lowest step of the podium’s hierarchy. Third. Behind Japan. Behind us.
The disappointment on his face was visible from twenty feet—not because his expression was dramatic or uncontrolled, but because I had spent years reading this man’s microexpressions and knew the specific, subtle, jaw-tightening, nostril-flaring, my-composure-is-handling-this-but-my-ego-is-not configuration that his features produced when reality diverged from the outcome his self-image had guaranteed. He was wearing it now. The composure intact. The fury beneath it radiating through the cracks like heat through a furnace door’s seams.
He leaned toward me as the medalists assembled in their designated positions. Close enough that his scent reached my receptors—bitter, sharp, carrying the acrid, cortisol-laced top notes that stress and anger produced in an Alpha’s chemistry and that my Omega nose cataloged with the detached, forensic precision of a woman identifying evidence rather than processing attraction. His scent had never triggered compatibility in my receptors. Not in the years we’d been paired. Not now. The biology confirmingwhat the history had demonstrated: this man was never my Alpha. He was my saboteur wearing a partner’s jersey.
He huffed under his breath. The sound low, aimed, designed for proximity consumption only.
“Must be a nice day to enjoy the fluke,” he said, and his voice carried the specific, dismissive, reframe-the-loss-as-the-opponent’s-luck register that narcissists deployed when the alternative—acknowledging the opponent’s superiority—was psychologically intolerable. “But I guess it raises your appeal for the moment.” A pause. Calculated. “You don’t need to stick around with that fake pack of yours. Come back to where you actually belong.”
Where I actually belong.
The words sat in my awareness like a blade laid on a table—sharp, deliberate, placed there for examination rather than concealment. Where I belong. As if belonging were a location he could designate. As if the isolation he’d engineered and the letters he’d intercepted and the career he’d sabotaged were evidence of a home rather than a prison, and the invitation to return was generosity rather than recapture.
I held my tongue. The game plan demanded it. The strategy called for ignorance as armor, for the appearance of a woman who didn’t know the full scope of his betrayal and who could be approached as a potential asset rather than warned away as a known enemy. The tongue-holding was deliberate. Strategic. The specific, disciplined, I-am-choosing-not-to-respond restraint of a competitor playing a longer game than the one being offered.
Luka had no such restraint.
He chuckled. The sound was warm, carrying zero warmth—the specific, dangerous, I-am-amused-by-your-delusion frequency that he deployed when a man’s arrogancehad exceeded his intelligence by a margin that the goaltender found entertaining rather than threatening.
“You think this was a con?” Luka said, and his voice carried the casual, conversational, let-me-educate-you register that preceded his most devastating verbal dismantlings. “You can go check the official government records. As of the opening ceremony, we’re officially a pack. On paper. Legally registered. If you missed the memo getting lost in the social media coverage, that’s a personal oversight, not an institutional one.”
I turned to him. Sharply. My storm-gray eyes widening with the genuine, unperformed surprise of a woman who had just received information that her own pack had not disclosed.
“Wait—what?”
Luka smiled. Not the smirk. The real one—the warm, full, reaching-his-eyes expression that he reserved for moments where the truth he was delivering exceeded the recipient’s expectations and the delivery was a gift rather than a briefing.
“We had a conversation. All four of us. The night before the opening ceremony, while you were reviewing the schedule with Foxwood.” His green eyes held mine with the steady, unapologetic, I-made-this-decision-and-I-would-make-it-again directness that characterized every significant action he’d taken since the day he’d arrived at Olympia Academy. “We realized this would be our only window to prove we were serious. Not to the world. Not to the judges. To you.”
He paused. The beat carrying the weight of the disclosure that was coming.
“Also—you may not have known this, but a certain ex-pack Alpha had submitted a formal review request challenging your pack credentials immediately after we won the first segment.” His eyes flicked to Garrison, whose expression had transitioned from dismissive to rigid. “We were approached in the staging area while you were in the dressing room with Foxwood. The IOC compliance office required us to produce a verified pack certificate confirming legalized status before your scores could be ratified for the medal round.”
The implication detonated in my awareness like a depth charge—the shockwave traveling through every layer of comprehension simultaneously, each level processing the information at a different speed and arriving at the same conclusion through different routes: if they hadn’t legalized the pack before the segments, I would have been disqualified. My scores invalidated. My performance erased from the record. The gold that was currently being carried toward me on a velvet tray by an IOC volunteer would have been awarded to someone else—and the man who had filed the challenge would have achieved, through bureaucratic weaponry, the same destruction he’d achieved five years ago through physical sabotage.
Garrison’s threatening jealousy. Deployed not through a sabotaged throw this time but through a regulation challenge. Different weapon. Same intent. Same target.
I looked at Garrison.
Slowly. The rotation of my head carrying the deliberate, controlled, I-am-choosing-to-look-at-you-now energy of a woman whose ignorance-as-armor strategy had just been rendered unnecessary by the disclosure that the man in front of her had attempted to disqualify her through bureaucratic channels on the morning of her Olympic debut.
“So you were that threatened by my shine,” I said, and my voice carried the quiet, level, devastatingly calm register thatI reserved for moments where the anger exceeded the volume and the delivery required the inverse relationship between the two—the softer the voice, the larger the fury, “that you tried to do everything to destroy my spark. Huh?”
He frowned. The expression attempting to be dismissive and achieving, instead, the specific, caught, composure-under-strain configuration of a man whose contingency plans were being dismantled in real time. “It was never that serious.”
Luka’s voice arrived beside me. Warm. Lethal. “It must have been. For you to go above and beyond to try to ruin our Omega’s chances at winning the gold she wholeheartedly deserved.” His green eyes were locked on Garrison with the focused, analytical, I-am-reading-your-every-microexpression intensity of a goaltender tracking a shooter’s release point. “But I guess you’ve forgotten the premise of Olympia Academy. It’s not merely to sculpt Olympic champions. It’s to cultivate an environment where genuine connections can flourish. Or in this case—” he glanced at me, the look carrying a warmth that the preceding sentence’s steel had not contained, “re-flourish. Despite everything you orchestrated to keep us apart.”
The announcer’s voice crackled through the speaker system—the ceremonial, protocol-governed, this-is-official tone that the medal presentation required.
Then the tone shifted.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we have an update to the rankings.”
The arena’s ambient noise dropped. The specific, collective, something-unexpected-is-happening recalibration of thousands of people whose attention had been divided between the medal ceremony and their phones and whowere now redirecting their full cognitive bandwidth toward the speakers.
“Canada has been disqualified from the final rankings.”
The sentence detonated across the arena like a puck hitting glass at full velocity—the impact sudden, the reverberations spreading outward in concentric waves of gasps, murmurs, and the specific, open-mouthed, did-they-just-say-what-I-think-they-said silence that preceded the crowd’s processing of information that exceeded their established expectations for the evening’s proceedings.
