Chapter 17
Older Brother
~RAFE~
Iblink once.
Then twice.
Then a third time, because my brain has clearly malfunctioned and is now producing hallucinations vivid enough to include scent, sound, and the specific way this person holds himself like he owns every square inch of the air he occupies.
Because the man currently cradling Mabeline Mae Rose against his chest at the far end of the rink is someone who absolutely, categorically, should not be here.
Fuck.
Fuck fuck fuck.
My heart skips once. Twice. A third time that sends a sharp pain through my sternum. The realization does not arrive all at once. It seeps in, slow and poisonous, settling into my bloodstream like ice water injected directly into my veins.
Around me, confusion erupts.
"Wait a damn fucking minute." Dillon skids to a stop beside me, his helmet pushed back, his eyes squinted at the far boards. "Is that... Rafe?"
"It looks like Rafe," another teammate mutters, leaning over the boards. "Like an older Rafe. A bigger Rafe. A Rafe who got hit with a growth ray and a jawline upgrade."
"Is that his Dad?"
"His Dad wouldn't be at this school wearing skates, you dummy. What kind of father shows up to a college rink in full gear?"
"A cool one?"
"Shut up, Marcus."
Everyone is wondering. Whispering. Craning their necks and squinting across the rink at the tall figure holding Mae like she weighs absolutely nothing. Theories bounce between them like a puck in open play, each one more ridiculous than the last.
But I do not need theories.
I know exactly who he is.
Obviously.
It is my older fucking brother.
Raphael Calder Beaumont.
Three years my senior. Same stormy gray eyes, same bone structure, same arrogant tilt to his chin that makes you want to either punch him or follow him into battle.
But taller. Broader. With dark auburn hair where mine is lighter, and a physical presence that fills a room the way my bravado tries to but never quite manages.
Raphael left when he was five.
Gifted. That was the word our parents used.
Gifted and selected for an accelerated academic program in Paris that would give him opportunities no school in North America could match.
He was shipped across the Atlantic with a suitcase and a tutor and a future already mapped out for him by people who saw his potential and decided it belonged to France.
I was two years old when he left.
I do not remember saying goodbye. I do not remember his face, his voice, or whether he hugged me before he went.
All I remember is growing up in the aftermath of his departure, in a house that still had his bedroom decorated exactly how he left it, with parents who spoke his name with a reverence they never applied to mine.
Raphael is doing so well in Paris. Raphael scored the highest marks in his class.
Raphael was selected for the junior leadership program.
Raphael. Raphael. Raphael. The golden son who conquered Europe while the spare held down the fort and tried not to feel invisible in the shadow of a ghost who sent Christmas cards in French.
I was thankful he was gone.
I will admit that freely and without shame.
His absence was my oxygen. Without Raphael in the picture, I was the Beaumont son.
The one who mattered in the spaces he occupied.
The one who ruled the ice, captained the teams, collected the trophies and the praise and the recognition that would have been diluted to nothing if my genius brother had been standing beside me.
Hockey was mine.
Every predawn practice since I was six. Every broken finger taped up and skated on.
Every concussion I downplayed because missing a game meant someone else might take my spot and prove I was not as indispensable as I needed to believe.
I built my entire identity on the ice because the ice did not know Raphael's name.
The ice did not compare me to a brother studying at the Sorbonne.
On the ice, I was not the spare. I was the captain.
The fastest. The best. The one they cheered for because there was no one standing next to me to draw their eyes away.
He was in Paris and Europe. They did not care about sports like hockey over there. At least, that is what I assumed. That is what I told myself every time I stepped onto the ice and pretended the cheers were filling a void that had nothing to do with a brother I barely knew.
That assumption is currently disintegrating in real time.
Because Raphael is here. At Valenridge University.
On the ice. In skates that look professional-grade.
Holding an Omega in his arms with the casual confidence of a man who has done this before, who knows how to plant his blades and absorb a full-speed collision without losing his balance or his composure.
And he is looking at Mae.
Not the way Cal looks at her, with reluctant fascination and competitive denial.
Not the way Etienne looks at her, with quiet devotion and gentle awe.
Not even the way I look at her, which I refuse to examine too closely because the answer might destroy the narrative I have built about not giving a damn.
Raphael is looking at Mae like she is a precious gem that fell into his lap and is about to rewrite his entire existence.
It is the most unsettling expression I have ever seen on a face that mirrors my own. Like watching myself feel an emotion I have never allowed myself to access, projected onto a version of me that is older, taller, and apparently capable of vulnerability.
Why is he looking at her like that? They do not know each other. He literally just caught her mid-crash. There is no reason for that level of intensity between two strangers who collided by accident.
Unless it is not an accident.
Unless it is a scent thing.
The thought makes my stomach drop.
"Are you okay?" Raphael's voice carries across the ice, low and steady, the French accent threading through his English with a fluidity that makes the question sound like poetry instead of a medical inquiry.
Mae blinks up at him with an expression I have never seen on her face before. Wide-eyed. Flushed. Disoriented in a way that has nothing to do with the near-collision and everything to do with whatever she is smelling right now.
"Uh... yeah." Her voice comes out breathless.
Dazed. Nothing like the sharp, witty, unshakeable Omega who just lectured me about replaceable people and emotional manipulation thirty seconds before the race.
"Thanks for cushioning my, uh, crash landing?
I do not know what happened. There was a puck and then my skate caught it and then I was basically a missile with no brakes. "
She is rambling. Mae does not ramble. Mae delivers calculated strikes disguised as conversation. The fact that she cannot string a coherent sentence together means her brain is short-circuiting, and the man holding her is the reason for the malfunction.
She tries to stand.
Her left leg locks up.
The joint seizes mid-motion, her knee refusing to extend, and she stumbles forward with a sharp gasp. She would have hit the ice face-first if Raphael had not already been holding her, his arms tightening around her waist to absorb the fall before it begins.
Which, naturally, brings Cal and Etienne across the rink faster than I have ever seen either of them move.
They are there in seconds. Cal arrives first, his skates sending ice spraying as he stops so hard the shavings hit Raphael's boots.
His amber eyes are blazing, his jaw clenched, every line of his body radiating the protective fury of an Alpha whose instincts have been triggered by the sight of his Omega in another man's arms. Even though she is not his Omega.
Even though neither of them has acknowledged what is clearly brewing between them.
The biology does not care about denial. The biology sees threat and responds.
Etienne is right behind him, his storm-blue eyes wide with concern, his hands already reaching for Mae before he has fully stopped.
His gaze flickers to Raphael's face and something shifts.
A recognition. A hesitation. A flicker of confusion that tells me he sees the resemblance to me but cannot yet place where this man fits in the puzzle.
"Are you okay?" Cal demands, his amber eyes flickering between Mae and the stranger holding her with an intensity that screams who the hell is touching our Omega.
"What happened?" Etienne asks at the exact same time, his gaze locked on Mae's face.
"I am fine," Mae says, wincing as she tests her left leg. "My knee sometimes freezes up when I twist it the wrong way. Old childhood injury from a bad landing during a competition. It just locks and then eventually releases. Happened all the time when I was younger."
She tries to stand a third time, pushing against Raphael's chest to lever herself upright.
He does not let her.
Instead, in one smooth motion that looks entirely too practiced for a man who claims to study in Europe, Raphael rises to his full height and scoops Mae off the ice completely.
Just lifts her.
One arm beneath her knees, the other supporting her back. Like she weighs nothing. Like picking up full-grown women on ice rinks is a casual Tuesday activity that does not warrant any additional effort or explanation.
Mae's face turns the exact shade of the red jerseys our team wears.
Her mouth opens, closes, opens again. No words come out.
The Omega who has a comeback for everything, who kicked me in the groin and stole Cal's stick and made Etienne swear in French, is rendered completely speechless by being swept off the ice by a man she has known for approximately forty-five seconds.
And now everyone can see Raphael properly.