Chapter 16
Collision Course
~MABELINE~
The boards press cold against my lower back as I settle into position at the far end of the rink.
My eyes fix on the opposite boards. The distance stretches between us and our destination like a frozen battlefield, the fresh ice gleaming under the fluorescent lights in pale streaks that catch and scatter every beam.
My competition skates hug my ankles with a precision that grounds me.
Cal's jersey hangs past my thighs, the fabric still warm with his body heat, his scent lingering in the fibers like a ghost I cannot shake.
Beside me, Rafe drops into position.
His scent flares. Leather and burnt cedar, sharp and aggressive, filling the gap between us with a territorial intensity that presses against my skin like a warning.
He plants his skates wide, his posture coiled, his gray eyes locked on the far boards with the laser focus of an Alpha who has never lost a race and does not intend to start today.
Coach Mercer skates to the center line, one hand raised.
"On my signal! First one to touch the opposite boards wins. Clean race. No contact. No checking. Just speed."
Rafe huffs.
"I should give you a head start out of sympathy," he mutters, loud enough for me to hear but low enough that the audience will not catch it. "Seems unfair otherwise. Captain versus the new girl. At least make it interesting."
I side-eye him with the full weight of my exhaustion for his attitude.
"Why are you so threatened by me?"
His jaw flexes.
"I am not threatened by you."
"You challenged me to a race in front of your entire team because I scored a few goals in a practice drill. That is textbook threatened behavior." I tilt my head, studying his profile. "Was my performance so eye-catching that you actually caught feelings? Is that what is happening here?"
His nostrils flare.
"Me? Fall for you?" He lets out a laugh that is more scoff than amusement.
"Please. Etienne can go all gaga over an Omega who is actually giving him the time of day for once.
And Cal is just being nice because it benefits the team dynamic.
She is not going to fool me with her cute little performance and her borrowed jersey. "
She. Not you. She. Like distancing himself from the conversation will protect him from whatever he is feeling.
I frown, the expression pulling at muscles I have been using too much today.
"You are the lead of this pack," I say, keeping my voice steady. "Wouldn't you be happy that Etienne found someone who actually acknowledges him? Someone who sees him as a person and not just a replacement for your brother?"
The shift in Rafe's expression is microscopic. A twitch at the corner of his mouth. A flicker behind those stormy gray eyes. The kind of reaction that most people would miss entirely but that years of watching competitors on the ice have trained me to catch.
He felt that.
And he did not like it.
He brushes it off with the speed of someone who has perfected the art of emotional avoidance.
"He is a replacement," Rafe says flatly. "Obviously. His brother was a better fit. Everyone knows it. Bastien was built for this pack. Etienne was the consolation prize."
My frown deepens until my brows are practically touching.
"Then why don't you be in Bastien's pack? If Etienne doesn't meet whatever impossible standards you have set, then go find the one who does. Let Etienne be free of the comparison."
Rafe huffs, his grip tightening on his stick.
"Because he is convenient."
The word lands between us like a stone dropped into still water.
Convenient.
I repeat it slowly, feeling the ugliness of it coat my tongue.
"Convenient. That is what you see friendship as? Convenience? He is your packmate, Rafe. He lives with you. He plays on your team. He defends your goal every single game. And you think he is just convenient?"
I shake my head, trying to keep the anger from spilling into my voice but feeling it bubble up despite my efforts.
"You are playing with his feelings, then. If that is genuinely what you think of him. Stringing along someone who clearly wants to belong in this pack just because it is easier than finding a real connection. That is cruel. That is not leadership. That is just selfishness."
"Why the fuck do you care?" He turns to face me fully, his gray eyes blazing. "What, you smitten for the fucker? That it? You have been here two days and you are already defending him like he is your mate?"
"Well, maybe I am smitten."
The words leave my mouth before my brain can catch them.
But I do not take them back.
"Maybe I am. What are you going to do about it?" I hold his glare, matching his intensity with my own. "Or is the real problem not Etienne at all? Is it Bastien? You into Bastien instead? Is that why his absence bothers you so much? Why every mention of his name makes you flinch?"
Rafe's entire body locks rigid.
"Shut your trap," he snarls, and for the first time since I have known him, the venom in his voice sounds less like aggression and more like a wound being pressed. "You do not know shit about Bastien. You do not know shit about this pack."
I smirk, not threatened by him in the slightest.
There it is. The nerve. The real one. Buried under all the bravado and the cruelty and the captain's armband. Bastien is not just his former packmate. Bastien is the absence that defines him.
I lower my voice, keeping my eyes forward on the far boards while my words land squarely on his exposed nerve.
"If you think Laurent is just a replacement for the man you actually respected, then go ahead.
Keep thinking that way. But I have seen plenty of people just like you, Rafe.
At the top of the world. Getting the girl.
Getting the fans. Getting the idolization of their team and their coaches and everyone who watches them perform. "
I pause, letting the silence sharpen my next sentence.
"And then losing it all because they played with people's feelings like those feelings did not cost anything.
You are just as replaceable as you think Etienne is.
Maybe more. And maybe you need to experience that firsthand before you realize the village you have around you.
The people who lift you up every single day despite you being a douche who does not deserve half the loyalty they give you. "
His throat bobs with a swallow he cannot hide.
"Why don't you stop being a preaching bitch," he grinds out, his voice raw, "and show me what you have got, NerdyMae. Before I get good old Bastien to come antagonize you himself."
I frown, my brows furrowing together, the mention of Bastien landing with a weight I cannot fully explain. Like a promise and a threat braided into one.
Who is Bastien to this pack? What happened between them that left this much damage behind? And why does Rafe use his name like a weapon against everyone, including himself?
"Ready!"
Coach Mercer's voice cracks across the rink, snapping the tension between us like a branch under pressure.
I exhale slowly, the cold air leaving my lips in a visible cloud that dissolves into the arena's chill.
My fingers flex around Cal's stick. My skates dig into the ice, blades biting into the surface with a precision that sends a familiar vibration up through my ankles and into my calves.
And my father's words echo through my mind.
Not the anger. Not the resentment. Not the years of bitterness I have accumulated since the day he agreed with my mother that I should leave.
Just his voice.
Low and tired and carrying more love than he knew how to properly express.
"You know I love you, Mae. And you may think I am agreeing with your Mom to punish you for being a late bloomer.
But I want you away so you can find that spark in yourself again.
Being here is not going to help you. So maybe being free to experience life will help you realize you are not some helpless Omega who needs to rely on a bunch of men to chase her dreams."
He said that while I was standing in the doorway with my broken suitcase and my crumbling future, wearing clothes that did not fit because I had grown out of everything during the years my parents spent pretending my late presentation was not happening.
I remember the way his hand hovered near my shoulder but did not touch. The way his eyes glistened but did not spill. The way he turned away before I could see if the man who taught me to fly on ice could also cry on solid ground.
I remember the smell of his coaching jacket.
Pine and ice and the faint burn of coffee from the thermos he carried to every morning practice.
The smell of safety. The smell of a man who built his entire world around discipline and excellence and somehow failed to build a world that included his Omega daughter.
I hated him for it.
For years, I hated him.
Because leaving did not free me. Leaving cut me off. Left me broke. Left me surviving in communal housing on drops of leftover coffee and scraps of sympathy from people who pitied me just enough to share but never enough to truly help.
Leaving forced me to suffer in a world that pities Omegas until we are needed. Until we become useful. Until we transform from burdens into assets, like diamonds hidden deep in piles of coal, only valuable once someone decides to dig us out and polish us into shapes that serve their purposes.
I hate that I have to prove myself to make it in this life.
The anger rises, familiar and bitter, curling through my chest like smoke.
I hate that despite everything I just did on that ice, despite the goals, the speed, the strategy, the proof that I am more than what they see when they look at my ancient phone and my safety-pin bag and my secondhand clothes, I still have to race Rafe to prove myself further.