Chapter 11
GRACE
My phone’s shrill alarm pierces through the veil of sleep.
I manage to kill it on the second try, a personal best, but the victory is fleeting as the hangover of last night’s rehearsal rolls over me.
It’s been a few days since my fall, but my hip still aches enough to make mornings rough.
Hip aside, Reverie is the best exhaustion I’ve ever been grateful to have.
I roll out of bed and shuffle to the kitchen for a glass of water.
A knock sounds at the door. Three short, one long. Charlotte’s knock.
I fish a sports bra from my hamper, step into cleanish leggings, and swing the door open.
Charlotte stands there in full warm-up gear and her hair pulled into a ponytail. “Did you see it?”
“My face? Yeah, it’s rough. Let me get coffee and then you can—”
“No, Grace.” She pushes past me into the living room, clutching her phone like it’s a crime scene photo. “Did you look at your phone?”
My stomach sinks. “I just woke up. I haven’t looked at anything.”
Charlotte’s thumb skitters across her screen. “Just… here.” She passes me the phone.
I brace myself for a meme about figure-skating. Instead, it’s the home page for Old Harbor University’s news site.
The headline is all-caps, like someone is yelling directly into my cornea: REVERIE ICE SHOW: THIS YEAR’S PRINCESS TAKES A FALL, BUT CAPTURES HEARTS.
I snort. “They can’t possibly mean—”
“They do.” She’s pacing now across my cheap linoleum floor. “Scroll down.”
The article starts with a typical fluff paragraph—The annual Reverie Ice Show opened this weekend to a packed house, dazzling audiences with high-level skating, fairy-tale magic, and some of the most ambitious choreography in recent memory—and then goes straight for the jugular:
But the real magic of the night came not from the sets or the precision of the ensemble, but from the raw vulnerability of the show’s new Princess, Grace Davis, who, despite a highly publicized fall during the signature jump, won a standing ovation.
I can’t breathe. I read it again. And again. It’s like those middle school nightmares where you’re on stage and everyone is staring, waiting for you to do something wrong—and then you do, in the loudest, most public way possible.
Charlotte’s voice cuts through. “It’s not that bad, right? I mean, at least they mention the ovation.”
“I don’t care about the ovation,” I mutter. My hands are shaking. “That jump was supposed to be easy.”
Charlotte’s lips press into a tight line. She takes the phone, scrolls further, and wordlessly points to a block of bolded text near the end. “There’s more.”
Rumors are already swirling about the show’s leads—Davis and her on-ice Prince, Connor Jones.
Sources say the chemistry is real, but so is the drama: Jones and Davis, both top of their class, reportedly share more than a professional relationship, with whispers of a turbulent alpha-omega dynamic behind the scenes.
“Are you kidding me?” It comes out shrill, desperate. “I skate one program with him, and suddenly I’m the cautionary tale of desperate omegas everywhere? How do these reporters even know?”
Charlotte’s face hardens. “It’s not fair.”
I flop onto the couch and cradle my head. “Is it ever?”
She kneels beside me and rests her warm hand on my forearm. “Don’t read the comments.”
Too late for that. Why not just keep piling it on?
Another omega skating her way to a ring instead of a medal.
Typical alpha, wants all the glory, leaves the princess to take the fall.
LMAO, they’re not even dating, he already rejected her during camp, it’s all just pheromone games.
My ears burn. “What the hell!”
Charlotte reads the comments over my shoulder. The tension has made her voice get two octaves higher. “This is so, so wrong. It had to be one of them. Zev, Fowler, or Connor. Maybe one of their friends.”
“It’s fine,” I mutter. It’s not fine. Especially when my phone starts going off. I fish it from nearby and check the lock screen. Nine missed texts, all variations on “URGENT—MEETING AT TEN, GRACE. Not optional.” There are also three missed calls from my best friend, Briar.
Charlotte packs her phone into her sleeve pocket. “Want me to walk you over?”
“I’m not going to the guillotine,” I say, but my voice shakes. “I’ll meet you at the rink later.”
She looks like she might argue, then reconsiders and hugs me so tight my ribs creak. “Don’t let them get to you. Or Director Hannah. You can’t control what people publish online.”
No, but I can control who to keep in my life.
If Zev, Connor, or Fowler had a hand in this, Reverie is the last time the three of them will see me ever again.
Every step down from my third-floor apartment is a count of heartbeats and a reminder that I could turn back and just let Director Hannah deal with this whole mess.
I don’t. Not because I’m brave, but because I don’t want to be the rumor.
I want to face it, squash it, and keep skating.
That’s what good omegas do, right? Show up, even when the world is about to turn them into a meme.
I check my phone twice for the right apartment number. Connor’s door is the last on the end.
I knock. No answer.
I knock again with a consideration that I might need to bang on the door to get his attention.
Then it swings open. Connor stands there, shirtless, with sleep-mashed hair and the unmistakable scent of an alpha just waking up.
Peppermint envelopes me, sending me listing sideways until I regain myself.
I did not just swoon for Connor.
Absolutely not.
“What time is it?” he asks, eyes still half-lidded, voice coated in gravel.
I don’t answer but rather thrust my phone toward his face. “Did you see it?”
He takes the phone, squinting at the screen, then lets his eyes run over the headline and the next few lines. I watch his mouth go slack, then downturned in a way I haven’t seen since prep camp.
Almost like when he first scented me and realized exactly how he’d play that out.
He passes the phone back as his eyebrows crease together. “What the hell is this?”
I cross my arms. “That’s what I was going to ask you. Did you or one of your friends write it?”
“Why would I do that?” There’s no heat in his question, only hurt.
“Because it paints me like a joke and a desperate omega, just like the three of you told me I was.” The bitterness in my voice is stronger than I intended but no less true.
He rubs his face. “Grace, I didn’t even know this was up. I was out cold all night after rehearsal.”
“Maybe Zev or Fowler?”
He shakes his head. “Zev’s with his high schoolers in morning practice until noon. Fowler is on shift at the station.” He glances at me. “Look, I get it. We made a mess of things back during prep camp. But nobody from my end would leak shit like this—or make up and post something this hurtful.”
But the ache in my stomach doesn’t let me or my desire to believe him off that easy. “It’s a convenient story, though. Alpha rejects omega, omega gets sad, show gets drama, tickets sell.”
He actually flinches. “We never meant to humiliate you, you know.”
“Well, you did.” I hold up the article again. “Enough of the cast knows what happened between us during prep camp. And now anyone who reads this article does. And despite my otherwise flawless performances, all anyone will remember is my fall on night one and my designation.”
Connor leans against the door frame as his expression grows dark. He stands there, silently watching me. “I get why you’re pissed.”
“Good.”
“But I promise, we didn’t do this.”
There’s something about his face—earnest, a little haunted—that says he’s telling the truth. It doesn’t make it less humiliating, just shifts the weight.
I clear my throat. “Regardless of who wrote it, we’re stuck with it now. So what are we going to do about it?”
He blinks in surprise when I say ‘we’. “We? What do you want us to do?”
“Not apologize or explain.” I swallow. “No more of that. We show up as professionals for ourselves and the show, and that’s it.”
“Okay.” He looks away. “I was scared, you know. Not of you. Of the bond. The way it makes everything feel huge and permanent, even when you’re just trying to skate to a fairytale.”
It’s like our bodies can’t tell the difference between a performance of fairytale love and happily ever after, and what we should be having together as a pack.
I understand Connor now. But before I can say as much, he straightens. His shoulders go stiff. “I can give you professionalism, Grace. If that’s what you want.”
Suddenly, I’m not so sure. “Thank you. I have to get ready to meet Hannah at ten. Will you practice the jump with me after?”
He nods earnestly. “Of course, Grace.”
When I step back into the hall, I feel lighter. I’ve got some time before needing to meet with Hannah so once I’m back in my apartment, I call Briar back.
She answers on the first ring. Her voice is a warm memory from a simpler time. “Girl, are you okay? The article was all over my newsfeed this morning.”
“Not dead yet.” Three little words that don’t say nearly enough.
Briar clearly sees through it all. “Tell me everything.”
And I do. By the time I’m finished, we’re both crying and I’m worried that when I go to meet Director Hannah my face will still be puffy and red. But I don’t care.
Some wounds only a best friend can fix. And this is one of them.
Director Hannah’s office is at the far end of the ice complex. I’ve never seen her wear anything except black, like a stagehand or an undertaker. She’s standing by the big windows overlooking the empty rink with her arms crossed and her foot tapping in triple-time.
She doesn’t look up as I enter. “Sit.”
I do. My chair is cold and hard. It feels like an interrogation lamp is about to swing down from the ceiling. I look up to double-check it’s not up there waiting for me.
Hannah finally turns. She has the kind of presence that makes even alphas sit up straight. “Well. You’ve seen the article, I hope.”
“Yes.”
“And the comments?”
I nod.
She pinches the bridge of her nose. “Grace, this is not just about you. The show’s reputation, the sponsors—all of them read that site. All the sites.”
“I know.”
Her eyes narrow. “Do you?”
I take a breath and steady myself. “I’m not going to let this get in the way of the performance.”
She regards me with pursed lips. “Your chemistry with Connor Jones is undeniable. It makes sense in hindsight that an alpha-omega bond is what’s happening there. But I can’t have this impacting anything.”
I shake my head. “It won’t impact the show. We’re not even together.”
“Is that so?” Her tone is flat. “Because according to multiple sources, you were scent-matched, then rejected, and now forced to work together. That kind of situation rarely ends well.”
I let the silence stretch. “If by ‘sources’ you mean news articles, then sure. And to be honest, there is truth to them. We scent-matched, not that that’s anyone’s business. But that’s non-factor now. It didn’t work out. I promise this won’t affect the show on our part.”
She leans forward. Her eyes bore into mine. “Do you believe that?”
I hold her gaze. “I have to. I want Reverie more than I want anything. I’m not going to sabotage myself or the program just because some troll wrote a spicy article.”
She nods, once, brisk. “That’s what I wanted to hear. Still, if there’s trouble—”
“I’ll come to you first.”
She stands. “Good. Now go practice that jump. I need the Princess to land it for the rest of the show.”
I rise and pull my bag over my shoulder. “Yes, ma’am.”
I leave her office and head straight for the rink, which is freezing. I lace up and step onto the ice. My blades leave thin, neat tracks behind me—evidence that I was here, that I moved forward even when every rumor said I’d break.
Connor waits near the center circle stretching. I skate over, shoulders squared.
He smirks, but there’s something softer behind it. “Are you ready?”
I meet his eyes. “Let’s show them how it’s done.”