I allowed myself, in the stillness that followed, to step out of the analyst’s framework and into hers.
The pent-up anger that had detonated from her fifteen minutes ago on this ice—the volcanic, years-in-the-making eruption that had left her shouting in my face with tears tracking down her cheeks and her fists clenched and everywall she’d built crumbling simultaneously—that fury was in the program. Embedded in every element. The attack on her jump entries wasn’t technical precision; it wasviolencechanneled through choreography. The aggression in her footwork wasn’t musicality; it was a woman screaming through her blades because her voice alone hadn’t been loud enough to make the world hear her.
The frustration. The bone-deep, chronic, low-grade frustration of someone who possessed extraordinary ability and was systematically denied the infrastructure to deploy it. No partner. No pack. No support system that wasn’t either compromised by its own battles or absent by choice.
And the loneliness.
The loneliness I helped create.
That realization had been sitting on my chest since her breakdown like a block of granite I couldn’t shift. I hadn’t known. That was the worst part—the part that made the guilt stop being theoretical and become anatomical, a physical sensation in my sternum that ached when I breathed. I hadn’t known she was alone. Hadn’t had a clue that Garrison’s betrayal extended beyond the throw—that the man hadn’t just sabotaged her body but had dismantled her entire support structure, abandoning her with the pack that should have been her foundation during recovery. He’d isolated her. Surgically. Removed the people, the resources, the communal safety net that an injured Omega needed the way a body needed blood, and then walked away with his reputation intact and his smile hidden behind a camera-ready expression of manufactured concern.
It felt like a setup.
The thought had been nagging at me since her words had stopped echoing off the rafters, and the more I turned it overin the analytical sector of my mind—the sector that tracked puck trajectories and offensive formations and the behavioral patterns of shooters who telegraphed their intentions through micro-movements they didn’t know they were making—the more the shape of it solidified. Garrison hadn’t panicked. Hadn’t miscalculated. The insufficient launch height, the smile, the subsequent abandonment—it was an architecture. A sequence designed to produce a specific outcome: Octavia Moreau, dismantled. Career. Pack. Identity. All of it.
Almost like a contract hit executed on a skating rink.
And I want to know who placed the order.
It may have been years ago, but nothing remained buried in a world governed by power and statistics. Not in elite athletics. Not where federations tracked every score, every partnership dissolution, every suspicious injury report with the meticulous record-keeping of institutions that understood their currency was reputation and their liability was scandal. If Garrison’s sabotage had been orchestrated—motivated by something beyond jealousy, funded or facilitated by someone with a vested interest in removing Octavia from the competitive landscape—there would be evidence. Somewhere. Buried in federation archives or financial disclosures or the digital paper trail that every athlete, coach, and official generated by simply existing within the system.
Later. File it for later. Right now, she needs a partner, not a private investigator.
I pushed off the boards and skated onto the ice.
My blades cut a heavier track than hers—the broad, flat profile of hockey skates versus the precision edge of figure blades, the difference audible in the lower, more percussive sound my strides produced against the surface. She was stillin her final position, her breathing gradually decelerating from the ragged, open-mouthed panting of post-program exertion to something steadier. Her eyes found me as I approached, and the wariness in them was a living thing—a creature coiled behind her irises, ready to strike or retreat depending on what came out of my mouth next.
“Your jumps are strong,” I said. No preamble. No emotional buffer. She’d asked me to watch, and I was going to give her what I’d seen, because she deserved a critic, not a cheerleader. “Triple Lutz entry is textbook. Rotation is tight, air position is compact, you’re getting good height on the vault. The toe loop combination in the second half has clean flow, and your step sequence is at Level Four, minimum. The footwork sells the music. The spiral at the end is a weapon—hold that another half-second and the judges won’t remember anything else.”
A beat. Her chin lifted fractionally. Not pride—attention. The posture of a competitor who recognized that the next sentence was the one that mattered.
“But your spins are the weakness.”
Her frown was immediate. Deep. The kind that creased the space between her brows and hardened the line of her jaw simultaneously—an expression I’d cataloged years ago as herI disagree but I’m listeningface. The distinction between that face and herI disagree and you can fuck offface was approximately three millimeters of eyebrow elevation, and right now, she was on the correct side of the threshold.
But I could see it—deep in the storm-gray architecture of her eyes, behind the defensive frown and the crossed arms she’d folded over her chest. A flicker. The rapid, involuntary calculation of a mind that had already identified the sameproblem and was deciding, in real time, whether to admit it or defend against the diagnosis.
“The combination spin is decelerating during the camel transition,” I continued. “You’re losing approximately half a revolution per second between the sit position and the camel, which means you’re entering the layback below the rotational threshold for a Level Four designation. Additionally, you’re traveling—lateral drift of roughly eight inches by the time you reach the upright position, which any competent judge will flag.”
Her jaw tightened. Her eyes narrowed. But she didn’t interrupt.
“The root isn’t technical,” I said, and this was the part that required care—the diagnostic scalpel applied to the tissue closest to the nerve. “Your mechanics are sound. The positions are clean. The issue is weight distribution during the transition. You’re loading your left leg disproportionately when you shift from the sit to the camel, which suggests you’re guarding the right.”
Silence.
The ice hummed beneath us. Her breathing had stabilized. The sweat on her temples caught the fluorescent light.
“Which leg did you injure?”
She didn’t answer immediately. The question hung between us in the cold air, and I watched her process it—watched the debate play out behind her eyes, the internal negotiation between vulnerability and pragmatism, between the instinct to guard the wound and the recognition that guarding it was the wound’s greatest ally.
“Right,” she said. Quiet. Clipped. The single syllable carrying approximately ten thousand pounds of context she wasn’t offering.
I nodded. “So when I throw you into the spin for the pairs elements, land on your left. Your stronger leg. Let the right handle the extended positions—the free leg in the camel, the stretch in the layback—but the skating leg, the one absorbing the rotational load and the landing impact, needs to be the one you trust.” I held her gaze. “Can you do that?”
She nodded. Slowly. The motion careful, as if the agreement were a physical object she was handling for the first time and hadn’t yet determined its weight.
Then the wariness sharpened into suspicion.
