Chapter 30 Sweet Revenge #2
Renzo smirked from the desk. The expression carrying the delighted, playful energy of a man who had just heard a phrase he wanted to practice.
“Damn. That does sound nice.” His dark eyes sparkled with the clean-zesty-mint brightness that characterized his moments of genuine pleasure. “Our Omega. We actually have an Omega in our midst who can moderate these two catastrophic arguers. Grand.”
“We don’t argue,” Kael and Luka said.
In unison.
Simultaneously. The same three words, the same defensive inflection, the same how-dare-you-suggest-our-dynamic-is-combative energy delivered in perfect, unrehearsed, stereo synchronization that contradicted the claim at the molecular level—because men who didn’t argue did not possess the shared vocal timing that could only be developed through extensive, repeated practice at disagreeing with each other in the same room.
Maddox looked at me from the armchair. His near-black eyes carrying the quiet, amused, you-see-what-I-deal-with expression of a man who had been managing this particular dynamic for years and who was now, for the first time, in the presence of someone who might share the burden.
“So,” he said, his cedar-and-embers voice grounding the room’s escalating banter energy the way a bass note grounded a chord, “think you can put together a strategy that keeps them from being at each other’s throats within thirty minutes?”
I smirked.
“I already have a game plan.” I tapped the notepad on my lap.
The pages dense with annotations, timelines, contingency branches.
“But it’s vigorous. On all of us. The training component is demanding, the public strategy requires discipline, and the execution window is tight.
But if we commit—fully, as a unit, with no half-assing and no solo missions and no sulking in upstairs bedrooms while the rest of the pack is working”—a pointed glance at Kael, who huffed but didn’t contest the reference—“it’ll put us in a position where we’re not just competing.
We’re dominating. The ice, the media, and Garrison’s entire narrative. ”
Kael pushed off the wall. His arms uncrossing. The posture transitioning from casual to engaged—the captain’s body recognizing a briefing when he heard one and adjusting its configuration accordingly.
“Why do you think they’ll speculate we’re faking the pack?”
I recrossed my legs on the couch. Settled the notepad against my thigh.
Crossed my arms. The posture of a woman transitioning from preliminary banter to operational briefing—the specific, composed, you-asked-so-listen configuration that I adopted when the subject matter required the room’s full, undivided attention.
“Garrison and his pack are pathologically self-interested,” I began.
“Every action they take is filtered through a single question: does this benefit us? Not the sport. Not the competitors. Not the integrity of the Games. Us. Their decisions are transactional. Their loyalty is conditional. Their strategy is built on the assumption that everyone else operates with the same moral flexibility, which makes them both predictable and dangerous—predictable because self-interest follows consistent patterns, dangerous because the patterns include sabotage as a standard tool.”
I looked at them. Four pairs of eyes. Each one carrying a different frequency of attention but all four converging on the same point with the unified, pack-level focus that was becoming, with each meeting, less a novelty and more a configuration my nervous system recognized as correct.
“If they took it upon themselves five years ago to orchestrate the destruction of my career and my connections with Luka and Kael by ensuring you couldn’t contact me through any available channel, they’re not going to stop now that the stakes are higher.
The Winter Games aren’t a federation event.
They’re the global stage. The audience is hundreds of millions.
The sponsorship implications, the media exposure, the career trajectory that a medal performance produces—the incentive structure for sabotage is exponentially larger than it was at Nationals. ”
A breath. The room was still. The four scent signatures holding their ambient positions in the air like instruments sustaining a chord between movements.
“They’ll try again. Different methodology.
Different vectors. But the same objective: dismantle the threat.
Because we are a threat.” I held Kael’s gaze specifically.
“Your hockey team just secured top seed. My figure skating qualification is the highest score in the Olympia cycle. Luka is performing dual-discipline at a level that makes the athletic establishment uncomfortable because it challenges the institutional assumption that specialization is the only path to excellence. And the pack itself—assembled in four minutes, surviving a heat, producing a qualifying victory from a three-goal deficit—is a narrative that the media is going to find irresistible.”
“Which means Garrison will notice.” My voice dropped.
The briefing register shifting from analytical to personal, the temperature of the words changing as they approached the territory where strategy and emotion intersected.
“The moment the opening ceremonies air and the cameras find me on the ice, the narrative from five years ago resurfaces. The fall. The injury. The blood. The announcers will reference it because trauma is content and my trauma is their highest-performing archive footage. And Garrison’s team will push that narrative from behind the scenes—anonymous tips, strategically timed social media activity, leaked ‘insider perspectives’ designed to frame my comeback as unstable, emotional, a liability rather than an asset. ”
Renzo’s jaw tightened. The clean-zesty-mint scent sharpening at its peppermint edge—the olfactory indicator that the playboy’s usually relaxed pheromone profile was registering a protective response.
I continued.
“Or—and this is the scenario I consider more likely—he’ll pivot.
” My fingers drummed against the notepad.
The rhythm unconscious, the body processing the strategic calculation through percussive output while the mouth delivered it.
“Garrison is the jealous type. Controlling. The kind of Alpha who doesn’t want a thing until someone else has it, and then wants it desperately.
When he sees me performing at Olympic level with a pack he didn’t build and Alphas he can’t manipulate, his instinct won’t be to destroy.
It’ll be to reclaim. To ditch whatever Omega he’s parading around as his current partner—who is almost certainly a tactical accessory rather than a genuine bond—and attempt to reinsert himself into my orbit under the guise of reconciliation, nostalgia, or the specific, calculated vulnerability that sociopaths deploy when they want access to someone they’ve already proven they’re willing to harm. ”
They nodded. Each one processing the analysis through the filter of their individual experience—Kael through the strategic, captain’s lens; Luka through the protective, goaltender’s read; Maddox through the enforcer’s threat assessment; Renzo through the forward’s instinct for identifying the play before it developed.
“If he makes advances,” I said, “I pretend I’m not fazed.
Don’t confront him. Don’t reveal that I know about the letters or the intercepted communications or the deliberate sabotage of the throw.
Let him believe the narrative he constructed—that I think the silence was genuine, that I hold the Alphas who didn’t reach me responsible rather than the man who ensured they couldn’t.
The ignorance is my armor. The moment he thinks I’m unaware, he underestimates me.
And underestimation is the most valuable currency a competitor can hold. ”
Renzo raised his hand.
The gesture was earnest, almost academic—the raised-palm, waiting-to-be-called-on posture of a man who had been following the briefing with engaged attention and who had reached the section of the narrative where the required background exceeded his available context.
“If it’s okay,” he said, his voice carrying the specific, respectful, I-recognize-this-is-sensitive register that I’d come to associate with Renzo at his most genuine—the tone beneath the playboy, the one that emerged when the subject matter warranted sincerity rather than charm.
“Can the newer members of this pack get the full lore? Because Maddox and I are operating on approximately thirty percent of the available intelligence, and I’d rather strategize with a complete picture than patch the gaps with assumptions. ”
Maddox nodded. The enforcer’s near-black eyes moving from me to Kael to Luka with the quiet, thorough, I-have-been-patient-but-the-patience-has-reached-its-productive-limit focus of a man who had been observing the dynamics between the three of us—the charged glances, the loaded references, the specific, encrypted, we-share-a-history-you-don’t-have-access-to frequency of our interactions—and who was now, with characteristic directness, requesting the decryption key.
He looked specifically at Kael. His deep voice quiet but carrying the weight of a man whose loyalty had been demonstrated through sprinting across campus in hockey gear and who was now requesting reciprocal trust.
“And what’s this about you being on blockers?”
The room’s ambient tension recalibrated.
Kael’s eyebrow arched—the reflexive, who-told-you elevation that preceded his standard response to unauthorized disclosures about his private medical status.
The frosted-pine scent sharpened at its steel edge—not aggressively but defensively, the pheromone equivalent of a man whose hand had moved to a wall he’d built and was testing its structural integrity before deciding whether to open the door.
Luka frowned. “Who’s spreading that?”