Chapter 29 #2
“Oh, come on,” Voss says. “Everyone knows it. You dated a goalie. You have a small soft spot for female Omegas in the field. We have all read the same archive. Frankly, Coach, it is touching.”
Petrov, two bodies down from Voss, mutters — not under his breath, exactly, but in the small unmistakable carry of a man who, on the small inner accounting of his own dark sense of humor, genuinely thinks the thing he is about to say is, in fact, funny:
“Yeah. And look how that one turned out. She died.”
The locker room stops breathing.
Not figuratively. The fifteen-Alpha-and-one-Omega room of biological respiratory systems stops, in unison, breathing for the small precise count of two seconds.
I, on the bench, with my exit-strategy duffel still in my hand, turn my head, very slowly, toward Coach Declan O’Rourke.
He is going to say something.
He is going to. Say. Something.
Coach Declan says nothing.
His face has gone the precise unreadable register of a man whose entire body has, on the small inner accounting of the past four seconds, gone through approximately fourteen distinct grief states without permitting any of them visible expression.
His shoulders, against the small surgical professional control he has maintained in this locker room for the past nine minutes, are doing the small unmistakable thing of holding very, very still.
I look at him. He looks at me. The small grey-green of his eyes meets the small storm-grey of mine across the locker room.
Coach.
Coach, you are not going to say anything.
Why are you not going to say anything.
“Coach,” I say, slow, very even, my voice the precise low pitch of a goalie reading the shoulder of a shooter coming in on the high slot. “You ain’t. Going. To say anything.”
His mouth opens. The small uncomfortable thing of a man trying, in real time, to find the precise professional sentence to recover the moment. His brow scrunches in the small wonder-of-the-private-thought he is trying to read off my face.
He does not, in fact, find it fast enough.
Because I am, in the same heartbeat, off the bench.
Yorkshire.
Mr. Tanaka’s small basement dojo behind the chemist’s on Brigg Lane, four nights a week for ten years.
Sankukai. First dan at eighteen. Black belt.
The first lesson the man taught me, in the small careful unhurried Japanese-accented English of a man who had been teaching small angry English children to break themselves out of small angry English headlocks since the small private year nineteen-eighty-seven, was that the right strike is, in the small dry accounting of a fight, the strike you have already decided on before the body across from you has finished saying the small last sentence.
I have already decided on the strike.
Petrov’s nose, when my right hook connects with it, makes the small sharp wet wood-snap sound of cartilage giving along its long axis, and the entire small architecture of his face moves, for a precise half-inch, the wrong direction.
Blood. Immediate. The bright unmistakable cold-copper-iron blow of fresh arterial blood released from a recently disassembled facial structure, the entire small radius of the bench in front of him going a small unhurried scarlet.
Nobody moves.
Of course nobody moves. They have not, in their entire lives, seen a five-foot-five pink-haired Omega launch a Sankukai right hook into the face of a six-foot-two senior-collegiate Alpha who outweighs her by sixty pounds. The information set is, in this room, unprecedented.
Petrov, in the small belated wounded-bear-on-his-back-foot register, comes back up.
He swings.
I duck. Of course I duck. The strike at his elbow comes wide and high and I, with the precise small footwork I have been drilling four nights a week in a basement on Brigg Lane since I was nine, slip under it, hook a leg behind his ankle in the precise small inside-arc trip that Mr. Tanaka used to call the small unfair leverage of a small woman against a man who has not, in fact, been trained to expect the small unfair leverage, and Petrov goes down.
Loud.
The locker-room floor, on his shoulder, makes the small unsubtle noise of one hundred and ninety-eight pounds of senior-collegiate Alpha colliding with linoleum-over-concrete.
I am on him.
My right knee in the small bracket of his right hip.
My left arm folded around the front of his throat.
My right hand against the back of my own left wrist, in the precise small clean rear-naked-choke geometry that has, for ten years, been the precise small lever I am, on the small inner ledger, more comfortable with than any other lever in my martial repertoire.
My body weight on the small bracket of his clavicle on his right side, the small unintended structural compression of which produces, against my own better judgment but for the small fair accounting of his next-to-immediate misery, the precise unmistakable wet wood-snap of a clavicle going under load.
Petrov screams.
Properly. The full unmanaged primal scream of a six-foot-two senior-tier Alpha discovering, in real time, that the small pink-haired Omega he had a small bad-taste joke about ninety seconds ago has him in a small inarguable mechanical hold that is, on the small inner accounting of his own body, currently transmitting game over to every part of his nervous system simultaneously.
“YOU,” I say, into the small wet ear of him, in the precise calm even voice of a goalie running a power-play penalty kill, “want to bash our coach’s Omega, who had the fucking balls to actually try to change this industry and who got fucking murdered for the small inconvenience of trying, and you want to make it sound, in the small dry locker-room dark humor of your small dry locker-room career, like he fucked up for fucking loving her and supporting her right up to the small moment she was fucking killed? ”
Petrov is sobbing now. Properly. The full broken-clavicle sob of a man begging.
“Iris —”
“Beg, motherfucker,” I tell him, calm, the small private inner ledger of an Omega running on five years of cumulative archive-level rage. “And then you fucking apologize.”
Black belt.
Pinky’s a black belt.
Matteo, somewhere in the small frozen-room periphery of my awareness, has, in the past three seconds, taken in the small precise unmistakable Sankukai geometry of the hold I am running, and the small unmistakable conclusion has, on the small inner ledger of his own brain, surfaced.
“OH FUCKING SHIT,” Matteo yells, brightly, from the bench, “PINKY’S A BLACK BELT.”
Whether it is the announcement of the credential, or the small belated synthesis on every other adult-Alpha face in this room of the precise data point that, in fact, the small pink Omega in their locker room is, on the small inner accounting of a Yorkshire basement dojo, currently approximately nine pounds of body-weight-pressure away from killing the man on the floor, the small thick-necked locker-room atmosphere, in unison, breaks.
Everyone moves.
Three of my men move first. Matteo. Rémi.
Jude. The precise small unhurried captain-and-pack triangle of Alphas closing on me with the small careful hands of men who are not, in fact, going to compromise the small private chamber of my rage but are, on the small inner accounting of the small wet broken clavicle on the floor, going to extract me from the small mechanical hold before the small wet broken clavicle becomes the small wet broken everything else.
Coach Declan moves at the same time.
Four pairs of large adult-Alpha hands. The small careful peel.
Matteo at my right elbow. Rémi at the small bracket of my upper back.
Jude at the small clean angle of my left wrist, gently breaking the lock.
Coach Declan, very quietly, under my right shoulder, sliding one steady hand between my ribcage and Petrov’s clavicle, and lifting.
They peel me off.
I do not, in the small dry accounting of how this becomes the small private bench of the empty assistant-coaching change room across the hall, fully understand the connecting transit between the small wet wood-snap of a clavicle and the small precise plastic bench on which Rémi has just deposited me.
Outside the door, through the small smoked-glass panel, the locker room behind us is going through the precise unhurried small ambient pandemonium of a roster discovering that the small post-OT-loss debrief is, in fact, now also the small wounded-collegiate-Alpha medical event.
Voices. The crackle of a small first-aid radio. The small assistant-coach voice of Coach Whitlock asking for a clean towel, three times, in three different timbres.
Coach Declan walks into our change room. His eyes flick, fast, over me. He turns to the three men around me.
“Damage control,” he says, level. “All three of you. Now.”
They nod, in unison.
Then they all turn and look at me with the precise small inner-pack worry of three adult Alphas who are, frankly, not certain I am, in the present tense, mentally stable.
I roll my eyes.
“I,” I announce, with the small dignified posture of a small bloody-knuckled Omega whose right-hand wraps are, in fact, currently soaking through with the precise small coppery iron of another man’s nose blood, “will be, for the duration of this damage-control window, a perfectly behaved Omega on the small bench Rémi has just deposited me on. I will not, structurally, move. I will not, structurally, escalate further. I will simply sit. However.”
“However,” Jude says, mild, his own small uplifted captain corner-mouth visibly fighting the small uplifted captain corner-mouth.
“I,” I declare, into the cold air of the assistant-coaching change room, “REGRET. NOTHING.”
Rémi’s mouth, against every visible defenseman professional restraint of the man, smirks.
“Iris,” Rémi observes, mildly, “I knew. The Tanaka certificate is on the wall of your nest.”
Of course you knew. You built the wall.