4. CHAPTER THREE
My nerves were a tangled mass in my stomach as I wiped my sweaty hands on my too-soft outfit.
“You’re nervous? You?” Eli French asked incredulously as we waited for the officials to signal that it was my time to step onto the ice.
Eli was the Olympics level coach that was employed at the Seattle Sports Complex. I’d worked closely with him for the past year when Brynn and I made it through the Olympic trials.
He was a brawny, bushy haired man who looked more like a football coach than a women’s figure skating aficionado. But he was probably one of the best American coaches in the business.
He was a strict, often-times bullish man. A very different experience from getting coached by Maxim or Alexei. We’d spent the last month butting heads over everything from my routine to my outfit, but now as we stood together I wanted to cling to him the way I would have done with the dads.
Instead, I just squared my shoulders and shook my head. “No, of course not.”
I wasn’t nervous. I never got nervous.
Even at the last Olympics I’d stepped onto the ice with little fuss. Hell, I hadn’t even been upset when the gold had gone to Brynn. She’d been the better skater then. That was easy enough to admit.
But sometime during the night I’d awoken with a jolt, my heart thudding in my chest and my stomach twisted into knots.
Several cups of calming tea and no sleep later, I was antsy and jittery as I watched them smooth the ice out in between events.
Going over my routine in my head once again, I picked at the soft skirt of my outfit as it hung just past the tops of my thighs.
“I look like a bloody fairy princess,” I grumbled, staring down at the soft lilac material. I’d petitioned hard for black, red, blue… any color other than pink or purple.
But Eli hadn’t listened.
“You look approachable,” the other alpha said without missing a beat. “The purple softens the constant resting bitch face you’ve got going on and that’ll go a long way to endear you to the judges.”
Alpha women had a harder time in the figure skating industry than most. At nearly six feet, I towered over most of the omega and beta skaters, and alpha females got a bad reputation for being aggressive and hard to work with.
I was one of a handful of successful alpha skaters at the moment and one of only four that made it through to the Olympics in women’s singles.
“I still think blue would have been approachable,” I muttered.
Eli scoffed. “It would have been a powder blue, are you all right with that?”
I thought about it for a moment and shuddered.
“The lilac is fine,” I finally surrendered, the bickering about my outfit actually seeming to help soothe the tangles in my stomach.
One of the brightly dressed officials moved for me to get into position to head onto the ice.
Eli gave me one last nod.
“You’ve got this,” he said, probably attempting some kind of pep talk. “You can literally do this with your eyes closed. You’re a freak like that, remember?”
I hated when anyone brought up my quirky little habit, borne from watching my favorite childhood movie one too many times as a kid. I tried to never do it while others were watching, but no matter how hard I tried it seemed to spread amongst the figure skating people at the Complex.
“Not helping,” I told him curtly, removing my skate guards and handing them to him. “But thanks for trying.”
“Anything for you,” Eli said, holding his fist up for a bump, yet another thing that set the American coach apart from all the older stoney faced coaches we’d seen since arriving.
The official hurried me along, pointing aggressively to the edge of the ice.
“C’mon before the light turns green,” she told me in a thick Glaswegian accent as she pointed up at the red light shining on the other side of the arena. It would tell me when the announcers said my name and my information flashed onto the screen of the world’s televisions.
With one last half-wave to my coach, I sucked in a deep, steadying breath and put my hands on either side of the half wall.
It took another fifteen seconds and then the light flashed green.
Painting what I hoped was a cheerful, and as Eli would phrase it, approachable smile onto my face, I pulled myself onto the ice and skated into the middle where I posed and waited for my music to start.
I always struggled with my short program. With a free skate I always felt as if there was enough time to get comfortable on the ice and really show the judges and audience my flow, but with just under three minutes allotted for the short skate there was a lot to do in a very little amount of time.
It was technical in all the best ways, but at the same time it felt too rigid for me. The cantankerous old figure skating coach that used to teach classes at the ice rink the dads used to own in Minnesota would always scold me about it.
‘You’re far too loosey goosey for all of this, girl,’she used to say in her thick Russian accent as she shook her cane at me from the sidelines of the rink. ‘It’s like trying to trap a hurricane inside of human skin. Impossible!’
It used to offend me as a child, but it has become my strength as an adult. While I may not have been skating since I was in diapers, I had what the dads liked to call a force while skating.
Lifting an arm over my head and slanting a glance down at the ice, creating a clean line of my body, I pointed the toe of one skate out as the first beats of Wait For It from the musical Hamilton began to fill the stadium.
I was off as Leslie Odom Jr. began to sing about his life, my mind already racing ahead to what I would need to do to make this the most perfect short program I’ve ever skated.
Four years ago the short program was the difference between my bronze and Chinese skater Fen Wú’s silver. Four points that would have put me just behind Brynn and her crazy ass gold medal performance.
If I closed my eyes I could see it behind my eyelids and hear the suck of breath from the crowd as my best friend made history as one of the few female skaters to attempt a triple axel at the Olympics and land it.
Speaking of an axel, I flipped around as the song ramped up to the first chorus. Sucking in a breath, my feet left the ice and I was in the air.
A double axel I could do in my sleep and the landing was clean, borne from the thousands of times I’d done it in practice.
Someone had once told me that a figure skating short program was like a sprint. Relentless and exhausting, a push to the finish line. If you flag or falter, you ruin your flow.
My breathing was already roughening, but I moved through the moves, the speed of the song spurring me along as my vision blurred.
There were so many things to do in a very short amount of time, so the next few requirements flowed from one to the other.
Two triple jumps to a camel spin that moved into a complicated step routine that had tripped me up more than once in practice when my feet tangled because I wasn’t focusing.
My body was covered in a thin sheen of sweat as I left the ice again in a flying spin, landing a little roughly for my taste.
Slow down, don’t get ahead of yourself,I heard Aurelia whisper in my mind. You’ll arrive at your destination no matter what Ciara, but if you run headlong you’ll miss the journey.
She was in the crowd tonight. The last Olympics she’d stayed inside of the cottage, but she was here today to watch me and Brynn because she’d finally started to move past her anxiety thanks to her pack.
I would be damned if I screwed this up because I let myself panic when Aurelia was here to watch me.
The end of the song was coming and I had one last jump to execute.
Without thinking, I let my eyes drift shut, blocking out everything else but my body and the ice beneath me.
Sucking in a deep breath, I spun to gain momentum and then I was up, my breath catching in my chest as I spun through the air and landed without a single wobble or hitch.
Elation filled me so potently that the warm smile that was supposed to be on my face as I posed for the crowd was definitely more on the feral side.
But none of that mattered.
I’d fucking done it and the cheers from the crowd told me that it looked as good as it felt.
With a wave to both sides of the stadium, I skated for the exit.
Eli was there still, waiting for me, his grin nearly splitting his face in half as he pulled me into a bear hug.
“What even just happened there? I’ve never seen you skate like that before,” he shouted over the roaring rush in my ears.
I didn’t answer him, my heart still threatening to beat right out of my chest as I slid my skate guards back on and we made our way past the pale-faced figure skater who was waiting to go next.
Eli didn’t seem to mind filling the air with his chatter, ignoring my silence as we made our way back toward the room that held all of the other skaters. “Way to set the fucking tone, these other girlies are going to be quaking in their skates after that. I wouldn’t be surprised if that was in the mid-eighties or close to the nineties.”
I sure as hell hoped so. It felt as if I’d left a part of my soul back on the ice, my brain feeling fuzzy from it all. So if that wasn’t enough to put me in the top scorers for the short program, then I didn’t know what would.
Eli opened the door just as the first strains of a pop song filled the stadium, only to be abruptly cut off by the soundproofed doors.
At the sound of the door shutting, about seventy sets of eyes turned to look at me. Prior to my set, no one had paid me much attention despite my bronze medal four years ago.
They’d written me off and I bet they were regretting it now.
I didn’t have time to give them my usual cocky grin, however, because a redheaded blur was nearly knocking me off of my feet.
“Holy shit, Ceer!” Brynn crowed, hopping up and down on stockinged feet as she hugged me. “You looked fucking superhuman out there!”
I basked in her praise, ignoring the sudden shakiness in my legs as I tucked the shorter woman under my chin and gave her as hard a squeeze as I dared.
Her typical omega scent faintly filled my nose, mixed so intrinsically with that of her two alphas that I sometimes forgot what it was originally.
“Thanks, I kinda blacked out there for a minute,” I told her honestly as I let her drag me back to the little corner where she and Dutch had posted up. The burly alpha gave me a nod, his eyes twinkling as he opened his arms for a hug.
Out of all of the men that my sisters had brought home over the past couple of years, I’d warmed up to Dutch the fastest.
He was like a giant teddy bear, ready to give the best hugs at any given moment.
“Good job, you killed it out there,” he murmured after releasing me from a back-cracking hug.
Brynn continued to chatter about my set while Eli talked on the phone with someone, probably one of the dads.
“Yeah, I know, I’ve never seen her like that either,” he was saying as he shot me yet another grin. “Yep, I’ll let Brynn know too. She’s got a bit before her turn but I’ll tell her. Maxi, are you really trying to give me, the figure skating coach, advice right now?”
There was a pause before Eli sighed and put his hand over the speaker. “Maxim says that you need to balance out your spins and that you’re tilting just a hair too much and that’s why you landed so roughly on that first set of spins.”
“There, happy?” Eli asked after uncovering the speaker again.
Leave it to Maxim to watch every single detail, even from way up in the stands. His twin counterpart Alexei was busy with the American hockey team, but I had a feeling he’d say the same when he watched the footage back later.
Eli stepped away to continue his conversation and I turned back to Brynn. “Are you ready for your set?”
Brynn’s pink lips pursed together and she wrinkled her freckled nose before shaking her head. “Not even a little bit.”
“You’ve got this,” I told her, giving her shoulders a gentle shake. “You did it once before, remember?”
Brynn shot me a sardonic smile at my joke. “I do, thank you, but it also happened before I pushed a pair of twins out of my vagina.”
Brynn’s voice was loud enough that a couple of passing skaters shot her a funny look that the redhead ignored.
Dutch huffed a rumbling laugh before putting his hand on Brynn’s lower back. “Speaking of pushing, sweetness, your turn is going to be up in a bit and if we don’t start getting ready that poor official over there is going to blow a gasket.”
The alpha nodded at the hovering man who was shifting nervously from one foot to the other, not quite wanting to interrupt our moment, but also clearly needing to.
“You all right?” I asked him as he finally stepped closer at Dutch’s acknowledgment.
“They want her lined up with the next skater because we’ve got to speed things along. We’re already behind and she still needs to get her skates on,” the man said in a soft accent that I couldn’t quite pick out. All of the athletes and officials were supposed to take scent blockers before stepping into an official zone, but the day had been so long that they were all starting to wear off so I could smell his faint beta scent that reminded me of a piece of bubblegum.
Releasing Brynn’s shoulders, I stepped back. “Well, far be it for me to get in the way of you sir, carry on.”
The man practically melted with relief. “Please come this way.”
“I’ll grab your skates,” Dutch said before disappearing through the crowd and back toward the corner where we’d posted up with all of our bags this morning.
Brynn shot me a nervous smile before turning and following the official toward the arena.
“That’s Brynn Peterson, yes?” an older woman asked in a posh British accent. She looked ancient, her pale skin wrinkled and her white hair pulled back into a low ponytail behind her head.
I frowned at her as Dutch hurried past me with Brynn’s skates in hand. “That is, yes, what of it?”
The old woman slanted a reproachful look at me. “I was just going to say I watched her routine four years ago. Yours too, though you were skating for Team Ireland at the time, weren’t you?”
My spine stiffened at the note of something akin to judgment in her voice. I wasn’t completely sure if it was even there, but it had reflected the questions from those on Team Ireland ever since we’d arrived in Scotland last week.
It had been my choice to skate for Team USA this time, but those from my home country weren’t taking it well as they’d expected me to skate with them again.
“Oh, don’t get so sensitive, dearie,” the woman finally cackled. “I don’t care what team you skate for, I don’t even have a female athlete at this Olympics. I just wanted to say that those people are probably quaking in their skates after that routine of yours. I smell gold in your future, love, as long as you can keep it up for your free skate.”
“Mama Burt, are you bullying this lovely lady?” a voice came from behind us and I turned to find that male figure skater that had gone last before me standing before us with a hand on his hip.
He’d pulled on his Team Great Britain sweatsuit over his sparkly outfit, but I could still see it peeking from underneath his parka.
“Artem, I would never,” the woman said, aghast. “I was just congratulating her on her wonderful short program.”
The man, Artem, turned to me with an easy, dimpled smile. He was adorable. All creamy skin and bright blue eyes that looked ever so slightly cloudy, not to mention the blond hair that seemed to stick on end like the duckling pin feathers.
When he’d been on the ice it had laid flat, but now it bounced as he approached and offered me a hand.
He was also, very clearly, an omega. It was usually easy to tell by the way an individual carried themselves, and with Artem it was no different. The soft roll of his shoulders, not to mention the silvery scars peeking out from the neckline of his sweatsuit were dead giveaways. This was an omega, and a bonded one at that.
“I heard about how good you were,” he said, his accent clearly British with a hint of something a little bit more Slavic underneath. “I’m Artem Kostyk, but everyone I like calls me Artie.”
He was flirting, I realized as I gripped his hand, sucking in a breath when some kind of static electricity seemed to pass in between us. Artie frowned down at our joined hands, his blond brows pulling together with confusion.
“You heard?” I asked, quickly changing the subject and pulling my hand from his. The urge to lift my fingers to my nose to try and catch any trace of what the omega smelled like filled me. I clenched my fist at my side ignoring it.
Artie gestured to his eyes and suddenly the milkiness of the blue made sense. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be, so watching something on a tiny television is nigh impossible for me.”
Surprise filled me. When I’d watched him on the ice earlier there had been nothing in the way he skated to show that his vision was impaired.
I wanted to ask a million and one questions about it, a knee jerk habit that I’d never quite grown out of, but Eli called my name from where he was standing next to what I’d affectionately dubbed the hell bench.
It was where I would sit and wait for the judges to finish my scoring and where the cameras would be trained on my face waiting for any sort of reaction from me. They didn’t do it for every skater, but it was clear that after my short program they wanted to do it for me.
A sigh left me and I turned back to the pair next to me. “It was really nice speaking with you both, good luck with the rest of your events.”
“You too, love,” the older woman said and began to herd Artie away.
The omega turned to look at me once more and then they were out of sight. With a sigh I finally gave in to my instinctual alpha urge and brought my fingers up to my nose, inhaling his scent deeply.
It was faint, thanks to the scent blockers, but even still I could pick up hints of fresh orange, cranberries, and apples. I wasn’t sure which scent belonged to the omega, but it didn’t seem to matter to my instincts.
Those scents were better than anything else I’d ever had the pleasure of smelling before and my lashes fluttered as I lost myself to it for a moment.
“Ciara?” Eli’s voice broke me out of the haze of my inner alpha threatening to take over.
My coach gestured impatiently to the bench.
“Do I have to?” I asked with a grimace.
Eli just pointed at the bench again.
With a sigh, I plopped down and glanced over at the timer that told me when my scores would be out.
I felt good about what I’d just done on the ice, but as I sat and stared at the red clock counting down, a thread of anxiety and doubt started to gather in my chest.
I turned to Eli, letting him see the trepidation in my face. “What if it wasn’t good enough?”
Eli quirked a thick, bushy brow at me. “Do you really think you didn’t absolutely make the ice your bitch back there? Really?”
I knew I had. I wasn’t sure I’d ever skated a better short program in my life.
That was precisely why the little anxiety goblin in my head was poking at the inside of my skull with a pitchfork.
“Scores in ten…” the camera operator said, pointing at the timer.
“It’s just…” I turned to Eli to reply.
“Face the camera,” the operator called and I flopped forward with a sigh.
“What if it isn’t high enough and I don’t make it?”
“Five… four…” the man said, counting down on his fingers.
“Just watch.” Was all Eli would give me as the timer counted down to zero and the screen in front of me flashed with my score.
I blinked, trying to give my brain a moment to catch up with my eyes.
Eli made a noise behind me and I turned to find my coach looking at the score with open-mouthed shock.
Turning back, I grinned as the score seemed to finally register in my mind.
“That’ll do quite nicely,” I whispered to myself as I stared up at the screen. “That’ll definitely do.”