Chapter 33 #3
Not delicately. Not the single-tear-rolling-down-the-cheek variety that looks elegant in movies.
I cry with my whole body, the sobs erupting from a place so deep inside me that they carry the accumulated weight of years.
Years of being told I was not enough. Years of watching my dreams dissolve into the mundane architecture of survival.
Years of walking past ice rinks and feeling the phantom pull of blades I had convinced myself I was not allowed to wear.
Sage holds me tighter. Archie rubs my back. Jace keeps his hand on my shoulder, steady and anchoring, the three of them forming a barrier around my grief and my joy and the messy, indistinguishable place where the two collide.
The lead judge presses a folder into my hands once the tears subside enough for me to function.
Inside is the registration information, the team schedule, the competition timeline, and a welcome letter that I will read seventeen times tonight before I fall asleep clutching it like a child with a stuffed animal.
"We will be in touch with further details," she says warmly. "Go celebrate. You have earned it."
I thank them with a voice that is wrecked and watery and carries zero composure but one hundred percent sincerity, and they skate away with the satisfied energy of judges who just discovered a competitor they are genuinely excited to watch develop.
Etienne and Cal appear.
They emerge from the tunnel entrance where the team parts to let them through, still in their practice clothes, their hair damp and their faces flushed from the training session that ended an hour ago.
Etienne's cedar and pine scent reaches me before he does, warm and grounding, and Cal's ocean salt fragrance follows immediately behind, the two of them approaching across the ice with the purposeful strides of men who have been waiting in the wings and are now allowed to take the stage.
"Fuck yes!" Cal announces, his grin splitting his face as he raises both fists in triumph.
"The plan worked! I told you! I told Etienne in the locker room, I said Raph's plan is either going to be genius or a disaster, and look!
Genius! The man is a genius and I will deny ever saying that if asked directly! "
I gawk at them.
"You were in on this?" My voice cracks on the question, the disbelief layered over the tears still drying on my cheeks. "Both of you? The entire time? The routine, the judges, the empty rink, all of it?"
Etienne nods, his dark eyes soft with the particular tenderness that he reserves for moments when words are insufficient and presence is the better language.
"We helped coordinate the schedule," he says.
"Made sure the rink would be clear at the right time.
Cal distracted you with the phone tutorial and the baking plans so you would not question why Raphael was being vague about tonight's timeline.
Sage, Archie, and Jace kept the team in the tunnel so no one would interrupt your performance. "
Cal nods.
"Team effort. Literally. Everyone in that tunnel knew what was happening except you, and keeping that secret from a woman who can read a room faster than a speed camera was the most stressful covert operation I have ever participated in. My poker face was working overtime."
They each pull me into a hug.
Etienne first, his arms enveloping me with the gentle thoroughness of a man who holds people like he is afraid they will dissolve if he lets go.
His cedar and pine scent fills my lungs, and I press my forehead against his chest and let the last tremors of emotion pass through me into the steady rhythm of his heartbeat.
Cal next, his embrace broader and warmer, his chin resting on top of my head as he mutters into my hair, "Sometimes you have to support from the sidelines so the person who gives everyone their all can enjoy the spotlight for once.
You spend so much time taking care of this team and this pack that you forget to let someone take care of you. That is our job, Mae. Let us do it."
My throat closes around a fresh wave of tears.
"Thank you," I whisper, the words carrying everything I cannot articulate.
Every year of loneliness. Every night in communal housing staring at a ceiling and wondering if anyone would ever see me as more than a designation.
Every morning I woke up and chose to keep going despite the persistent, gnawing suspicion that keeping going was all I would ever do.
"Thank you for supporting my dream. For believing in it when I forgot how to believe in it myself. "
Etienne pulls back enough to meet my eyes.
"We are your Alphas, Mae," he says, the claim spoken with the quiet certainty that I have come to recognize as the cornerstone of everything Etienne Laurent says and means. "Supporting your dream is not a favor. It is the point."
Cal nods.
"We have to support our girl," he adds, his amber eyes bright behind the glasses he has started wearing more often since I told him they give him character.
"That is the whole deal. That is the pack.
Not just the living arrangement or the deadline or the contractual obligations.
It is showing up for each other in the ways that matter. The rest is logistics."
Our girl.
The words settle into my chest like a key fitting a lock that I did not know existed until the mechanism turned and the door opened to reveal a room I have been looking for my entire life.
My tears fall.
Freely. Without apology. Without the instinct to hide them that has governed my emotional displays since childhood, the learned behavior of a girl who understood that visible feelings were liabilities in a world that punished vulnerability.
I let them fall because I am surrounded by people who see my tears as evidence of courage rather than weakness, and the freedom of that is so enormous it takes my breath away.
Sage appears at my side, vibrating with an energy that could power a small city.
"We HAVE to celebrate!" she declares, her hands gripping my arm with an excitement that registers on the Richter scale.
"Everyone freshen up! Showers! Deodorant!
Presentable clothing! We are celebrating our girl getting the golden buzzer into the most hyped, prestigious figure skating competition this university has hosted in a decade! EEEEP!"
The squeal she produces at the end of her sentence is pitched at a frequency that makes Cal wince and Etienne blink rapidly.
"I KNEW SHE WOULD GET IN! AHH!"
The voice booms from the stands, and I look up to see Miss Lizzy, the assistant coach, standing in the upper tier with her hands cupped around her mouth, her red hair blazing under the fluorescent lights, her entire body committed to the act of yelling with the enthusiasm of a woman who has a single volume setting and it is maximum.
"I TOLD EVERYONE! I SAID THAT GIRL HAS MAGIC ON THE ICE AND NOBODY BELIEVED ME! WELL, LOOK AT HER NOW! GOLDEN BUZZER! IN YOUR FACES!"
Miss Phillips, the head figure skating coordinator, sighs from the seat beside her with the bone-deep exhaustion of a woman who has been tolerating Lizzy's volume for what I can only assume is years of professional coexistence.
"You are so dramatic," she says, pinching the bridge of her nose. "Could you be less loud? We are in an enclosed arena. There are acoustics. Your voice is bouncing off surfaces it was never designed to reach."
"NEVER!"
Coach Mercer, standing near the tunnel entrance, laughs with the easy amusement of a man who has witnessed this dynamic play out a hundred times and finds it entertaining every single iteration.
"Liz will never be quiet," he observes. "I have known her for nine years and she has maintained a consistent decibel level that violates municipal noise ordinances. It is her defining characteristic. Accept it."
"Fuck off, Mercer!" Lizzy shouts cheerfully.
"See?" He gestures toward her. "Consistent."
The bickering continues, escalating into a three-way exchange between coaches that involves Miss Phillips threatening to file a noise complaint, Lizzy claiming constitutional protection for her volume, and Mercer refereeing with the disinterested competence of a man who has been mediating staff disputes since before these two were hired.
Everyone is laughing.
The team in the tunnel. Sage and Archie and Jace on the ice beside me.
Cal, whose grin has not dimmed since he arrived.
Etienne, whose quiet smile carries more warmth than most people's laughter.
And Raphael, standing a few feet behind me, his gray eyes fixed on the scene with the satisfied calm of a man who built this moment piece by piece, string by string, and is now watching it hold the weight of a woman's reclaimed future without buckling.
I look around this rink.
At the ice beneath my blades that has been my foundation since before I could spell my own name.
At the friends who rushed across a slippery surface in sneakers to celebrate me.
At the coaches arguing about noise ordinances while an entire hockey team waves towels in a tunnel.
At the three Alphas who conspired in secret to give me the one thing I stopped asking the universe for because I had been refused so many times the asking started to feel like a cruelty I was inflicting on myself.
A chance.
A real, tangible, official chance to chase the dream I buried beneath years of survival and conformity and the quiet, corrosive belief that wanting things was a luxury reserved for people whose biology did not come with an expiration date and a mandatory pack requirement.
I got my spark back.
Not because someone handed it to me. Not because the universe decided to be kind after years of indifference.
Because I stopped running from the change I was afraid of and started skating toward the version of myself I wanted to become.
Because three Alphas saw the fire before I remembered it was there and built a shelter around it until I was ready to let it burn.
And now I am going to enjoy my first pucking Valentine.
The phrase makes me smile. A wide, tearstained, glowing, ridiculously happy smile that aches in my cheeks and burns in my eyes and radiates from a center that has been reignited after years of dormancy.
My first Valentine's Day with a pack. My first competition entry.
My first time being called our girl by people who mean it in every direction the word can travel.
I could never be happier.
F.I.N