Knot My Fault (Knotlocke Academy #6)

Chapter 1

bishop

I stand at the edge of the deck with my clipboard tucked against my forearm and call the next threshold set without raising my voice.

The team knows the drill. They know the pace clock, the order, the suffering, and the fact that I’m not moved by pleading unless someone is actively bleeding on tile.

“Lane one on the top. Lane two five seconds back. Lane three, Nelson, if you leave early again, I’m adding a fifty.”

Nelson lifts his head from the water, goggles fogged and mouth open like he’s preparing a retort. I point at the clock before he gets a word out, and he sinks back down with wounded dignity. The second hand hits twelve, and the first wave pushes off.

The pool breaks into motion as bodies cut under the surface, water slapping against the gutters.

The ceiling throws every sound back twice as loud.

By the third round, nobody is laughing anymore, which is exactly where I like a threshold set.

Loud enough to keep them moving, miserable enough to make them honest.

I track the first few splits, make a note beside Reece’s lane because he’s pushing too hard too early and knows better, then shift my attention to the far side of the pool.

Jude is already there, standing near lane six with a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard braced against his hip, swallowed in an oversized hoodie that makes him look smaller than he is.

The sleeves cover most of his hands, but not the bitten nails or the pale grip he keeps on the pencil.

His dark hair falls over his forehead in damp-looking pieces even though he hasn’t been in the water, the chlorine-faded ends catching the light every time he looks down.

The Omega’s name is still up there above the deep end, the ink faded under the school logo.

Jude Morrison. Two hundred free. The record has survived a year without him, which is the kind of thing swimmers notice even when they pretend they don’t.

Jude has turned ignoring it into a sport of its own.

He crosses the deck at angles that keep it out of his line of sight and never stands too close to the gutter, as if the water might get ideas.

“Nelson,” Jude calls, sharp enough to cut through the splash. “Your elbow’s dropping.”

Nelson pops up mid-lane, already exhausted and offended. “I’m trying.”

“Try higher.”

Jude lifts his own arm to show the angle, the motion full of irritation in a way that somehow works better than encouragement. Nelson stares for half a second, then pushes off again and fixes it just enough to keep Jude from saying anything worse.

“There,” Jude says, making a note. “Look at you. Almost coachable.”

Nelson’s grin nearly ruins his next breath.

I lower my gaze before Jude catches me watching. He notices everything, including attention people think they’re hiding. Especially attention people think they’re hiding.

I still don’t truly understand what happened last year other than Jude’s scent blockers failed in the middle of a meet.

Too many Alphas reacted, things got out of control, and Jude got suspended from the team.

He was nearly expelled, and the administration got to pretend the problem started and ended with one Omega’s body doing what Omega bodies do when medication fails.

The team’s version is worse because college athletes shouldn’t be trusted with gossip and free time.

I know enough to hate the way people step around him now.

He used to be someone they cheered for. Now conversations thin when he gets close, and everyone acts like the space they leave around him is accidental.

Jude acts like he doesn’t see it and I fucking hate that.

A hand breaks the surface at the wall in front of me, followed by Hollis, breathing hard with his goggles shoved crooked into his wet hair.

My Alpha grips the gutter on either side of my shoes and looks up at me from the water, his mouth curved like he’s already decided being half a second off pace is going to be my fault.

I crouch before he can climb any higher, sliding two fingers beneath the twisted strap. Chlorine flattens everything on deck, sharp enough to mute even an Alpha’s scent, but this close I catch the faintest trace of him under it, warm cedar and clean water against heated skin.

Hollis tilts into my hand immediately.

Three years, and he still does it like instinct.

The team sees a six foot five Alpha distance swimmer withshoulders that block doorways if he forgets to turn sideways.

I get this. My fingers in his wet hair, his eyes going soft, his body settling under my touch like he’s been waiting the entire set to be handled.

“Your times are sliding,” I tell him, smoothing the strap into place.

His hands stay on the gutter, caging my shoes without trapping me. “Maybe stop distracting me.”

I let my thumb drag once over his temple. “Maybe stop looking distractible.”

That gets me the smile, right before his mouth brushes the inside of my wrist, dragging across my bond mark. I didn’t understand why he put it there until the first time I bent down like this. ‘So, I can reach it,’ he had told me and I’ve never loved the placement more.

His lips linger there, heat racing through me as my fingers tighten in his hair, my gaze dipping to my own version of a mark on his neck. As a Beta, my bite wouldn’t last but Hollis had me bite him anyway and then tattooed it into his neck. ‘Everyone needs to know who I belong to, Bishop’.

I brush my thumb over it as my hand drops to his shoulder, and the sound that leaves him almost disappears under the noise of the pool.

“Back in,” I say.

Hollis' eyes lift to mine, still too pleased with himself. “Kiss for pace?”

I lean close enough that his smile starts to win.

His scent is stronger at his neck, still muted by chlorine but there, cedar and clean water and my Alpha underneath all that chemical bite.

I let my mouth graze the side of his throat just above the tattoo, feel him go still for half a heartbeat, then press my palm to his forehead and shove him gently away from the wall.

“Earn it.”

He laughs as the water takes him, rolling onto his back for one lazy second before he turns and pushes into the lane. By the flags, his stroke is clean again. By the wall, he’s under pace, which proves he had energy left and has only been using his time at the wall to be a menace.

My attention catches across the pool to find Jude watching Hollis swim.

The look on the Omega’s face is different than how he watches everyone else.

Here, there’s almost a hunger in his expression, his gaze following the line of Hollis' body through the water, the reach, the roll, the clean turn at the wall.

For a moment, Jude forgets to look unimpressed.

Then his cheeks go pink.

He drops his eyes to the clipboard so fast it would be funny if it didn’t make my chest pull.

I file that reaction away and call the next send-off.

Cooldown finally comes with the usual mess of relief and noise.

Nelson drags himself onto the deck near Jude’s side, red-faced and panting, while Jude stops beside him with the clipboard tucked under one arm.

“Your pull got better,” Jude says.

Nelson looks up too fast. “Really?”

“A little. Don’t make it weird.”

Nelson immediately makes it weird by smiling like Jude handed him a medal. Jude’s mouth twitches once, there and gone, before he points the pencil toward the locker room and tells him to hydrate before he collapses.

Across the deck, Reece climbs out near the blocks with enough performance to make it clear he knows who’s looking. Two freshmen laugh at something he says before he claps Tate on the shoulder, and Tate smiles a second late, eyes flicking toward Jude before dropping away.

The Omega just brushes over the interaction as he moves toward the door, conversation breaking around him.

His hoodie slips off one shoulder when he bends to grab the gear bag, showing a narrow strip of pale neck before he yanks the fabric back into place.

One of the juniors near the lane lines mutters something under his breath, low enough that I don’t catch it over the water, but Jude does.

“If you’ve got something to say, say it louder,” he calls without turning around.

Jude waits just long enough to make silence do the work for him, then swings the gear bag over his shoulder and pushes out into the main hallway, missing the rush of the locker room.

When I turn back to the pool, Hollis is already at the wall, arms folded on the deck edge, staring after Jude.

The earlier flirtation is gone from his face, replaced by something softer and more serious, the expression he gets when he wants to fix something but knows his hands might be too big for the job.

I just move toward him, plopping onto the bench beside him.

Hollis immediately shifts closer, folding his wet arms over my thigh and resting his chin there like soaking my sweats is a reasonable thing to do after practice.

He’s heavy and warm even through the damp, his Alpha scent still mostly buried under chlorine until I slide my fingers into his hair and lean a little closer.

“You’re getting me wet,” I say.

His eyes stay on the doors. “You’re not moving so you must like it.”

I chuckle, reaching to card my fingers through his hair again, scratching lightly at his scalp until the low purr starts in his chest. The sound travels through my leg more than the air, quiet enough that the locker room chaos nearly swallows it.

Out here, Hollis stays tucked against me, still looking at the doors.

“So,” he says eventually.

“Yeah.”

That’s enough for a moment. It has to be, because if I let Hollis start picking apart every look Jude gave him, we’ll still be sitting here when Coach Marsh turns off the lights.

Hollis feels everything first and thinks about it afterward.

It’s one of the reasons I love him. It’s also why he needs me to keep him from walking up to Jude with an extra towel, a snack, and the emotional subtlety of a golden retriever.

“He looked at me,” Hollis says, softer now, like saying it too loudly might ruin whatever it was. “But, I don’t want to scare him,” he says.

I look down at the top of his wet head, at the broad line of his shoulders folded low against the deck. My Alpha, who once apologized to a freshman for blocking the hallway by existing in it. My Alpha, who purrs at scalp scratches and still worries the world will only ever see the size of him.

“You won’t,” I tell him.

Hollis presses his cheek more firmly against my thigh, dragging my attention fully to him. He looks ridiculous like this, half in the water and half draped over me, too big to be subtle and too soft to care. I tug gently at his hair.

“It’s time for a shower, babe.”

He finally looks up, brown eyes warm and a little too hopeful. “You always get bossy when you’re planning something.”

“I’m not planning anything and we’re not rushing him, okay?

” I tell him. “I promise we’ll figure out a way to approach him but it has to be on his terms, okay?

” I snort at the disappointed look on my Alpha’s face but I’m well aware that if I gave Hollis free reign, he’d have Jude curled up in his lap in the next fifteen minutes.

As intrigued as I am to see something like that, I don’t want to spook Jude. I want him to want us as much as we want him.