Prologue One Lucky Shot #2
The vocabulary of polite dismissal. The language coaches use when they want you to leave quietly and stop making them feel guilty about a system they benefit from and have no intention of dismantling.
I nod.
Not because I agree. Not because I accept his timeline or his optimism or his belief that patience will magically dissolve decades of institutional exclusion.
I nod because fighting with Coach Briggs is not going to change the outcome, and the energy I would spend arguing is better directed toward the ice.
Toward training. Toward the relentless, grinding, bone-deep work of becoming so undeniably good that they will eventually run out of excuses to say no.
"Thanks, Coach," I say, and the words taste like copper. Like biting down on the inside of your cheek hard enough to draw blood and swallowing the evidence.
He gives me a look that might be admiration. Might be pity. The two are so tangled together in the way people perceive me that I stopped trying to separate them years ago.
"Take care of yourself, Holloway. Stay sharp."
He skates back toward the bench, and I am left alone at center ice.
Just me, the empty net, and the silence of an arena that witnessed my best performance and still decided I was not worth documenting on a clipboard.
I stand there for longer than I should. Letting the cold seep through my pads and into my bones.
Letting the fluorescent lights buzz overhead in their mechanical monotone.
Letting the full weight of another rejection settle onto my shoulders alongside all the others, stacking up like sandbags against a flood that will never stop rising.
Fifteen years.
Fifteen years of lacing up skates before dawn.
Of running drills until my shins split and my fingers went numb and my body gave out so completely that I had to crawl off the ice on my hands and knees.
Of watching boys with half my skill and twice my privilege get scouted, signed, celebrated, while I got whispered about in hallways and laughed at behind clipboards.
And for what?
The laughter reaches me before I reach the tunnel.
I am skating toward the exit, my stick slung over my shoulder and my helmet hanging from my fingers, when the sound filters through the concrete corridor that connects the rink to the locker rooms. Male voices, loud and loose with the careless confidence of Alphas who have never questioned whether they deserve to take up space.
"Did you see her face when Briggs told her?"
"Fucking priceless. Like she actually thought they were going to draft her."
"Draft an Omega? In what universe? She would go into heat mid-game, and the entire roster would lose their minds."
Laughter. The sharp, barking kind that bounces off locker room tiles and amplifies until it sounds like an audience.
"Honestly, she is good, though. Like, credit where it is due, she can skate."
"Oh yeah, she is talented. Nobody is saying she is not talented. But talented does not mean she belongs here. My golden retriever is talented. Doesn't mean I'm putting him on the starting lineup."
More laughter. Louder this time.
I stop walking.
My hand tightens on the shaft of my stick until I can feel the wood grain pressing into the lines of my palms. The blisters protest. My knuckles whiten.
The old scars across my fingers stretch tight, each one a souvenir from a fight I started because someone said the wrong thing at the wrong time, and I chose violence over silence.
Walk away, Sage.
They are not worth it.
They are never worth it.
Their words are not new. Their cruelty is not original.
Every insult they throw has been thrown a thousand times by a thousand different mouths, and letting it land just gives them power they did not earn.
I keep walking.
Past the corridor…the laughter. Past the muffled conversations that dissolve into whispers as my footsteps announce my presence, and the Alphas go quiet with the guilty awareness of people who were just caught being exactly who they are.
I do not look at them.
Do not give them the satisfaction of seeing whatever is written on my face right now. Anger, probably. Hurt, definitely. The specific cocktail of rage and grief that has become my default emotional state after years of being told I am extraordinary and unacceptable in the same breath.
My gear bag is where I left it, shoved against the wall outside the women's changing room that doubles as a storage closet because no one bothered to build proper facilities for female players at this rink.
I strip my pads methodically, layering each piece into the bag with the practiced efficiency of someone who has packed and unpacked her hockey gear in parking lots, bathroom stalls, and the backseats of cars because changing rooms are for the boys, Sage, you understand, right?
I understand everything.
That is the fucking problem.
The cold hits my skin like a slap when I push through the arena's back exit, the November air biting through my damp compression shirt with teeth sharp enough to make me hiss.
The parking lot stretches out before me, mostly empty except for the stragglers loading equipment into trucks and SUVs with university logos plastered on the doors.
My ride is waiting at the very back of the lot.
The black Cadillac Escalade gleams under the parking lot's industrial lights like a polished obsidian monument to wealth I did not earn, comfort I did not ask for, and expectations I will never satisfy.
Jeffrey is behind the wheel, his posture military-straight even while idling, his salt-and-pepper hair visible through the tinted windshield.
I throw my gear bag into the trunk with more force than necessary, the satisfying thud of canvas hitting carpeted interior doing absolutely nothing to ease the pressure building behind my sternum. The cold air burns in my lungs as I round the vehicle and reach for the rear passenger door.
Pulling it open, I duck inside with the automatic greeting that Jeffrey and I have perfected over a decade of car rides.
"Hey, Jeffrey. Sorry for the wait."
"No trouble at all, Miss Holloway."
His voice is warm. Familiar.
The voice of the one person in my family's orbit who has never once made me feel like an inconvenience.
Who drives me to tryouts and waits in parking lots for hours without complaint, who keeps protein bars in the glove compartment because he knows I forget to eat after practice, who has perfected the art of comfortable silence during the drives home when the rejections hit too hard for conversation.
I slide onto the leather seat, exhaling a breath that fogs in the Escalade's interior before the climate control catches up.
And freeze.
Because the seat beside me is not empty.
My mother occupies the opposite side of the backseat like a queen surveying a kingdom that perpetually disappoints her.
Her legs are crossed at the ankle with surgical precision, one Louboutin heel bobbing in a rhythm that communicates impatience more effectively than any words.
A tablet rests in her lap, its screen casting a cold blue glow across features that belong on the cover of a magazine and carry the warmth of a walk-in freezer.
Eleanora Ashford-Holloway.
Alpha. Socialite. CEO of Ashford Industries.
And the woman responsible for approximately eighty percent of my emotional baggage.
Her scent fills the enclosed space with white orchids, champagne, and cold steel.
Expensive. Immaculate. Utterly devoid of anything resembling maternal warmth.
The kind of fragrance that announces I am in control of this room and every person in it, and your comfort is not a factor in my calculations.
"Finally," she says without looking up from her tablet, her manicured fingers scrolling through emails with the speed and disinterest of someone who considers human interaction a scheduling conflict. "Making me wait as if I don't have things to attend to."
"Mother." The word exits my mouth with the enthusiasm of a prisoner greeting a parole officer. "I didn't know you were coming."
"Clearly." Her gaze lifts from the screen long enough to sweep over me in a single, devastating assessment.
Damp compression shirt. Sweaty hair escaping its messy bun.
The reddened lines across my palms, where blisters have started weeping through torn tape.
Her upper lip curls with a distaste so refined it could pass for a smile to anyone who did not grow up on the receiving end of it.
"You look like you lost a fight with a gymnasium. "
"I was on the ice for two hours."
"Mmm." She returns to her tablet, the syllable carrying the conversational weight of an entire argument she has decided is beneath her to articulate. "Let me guess. Only to be rejected. Again."
I say nothing.
My silence is the loudest possible confirmation, and we both know it.
She shakes her head, the motion small and controlled, not a single strand of her honey-blonde chignon shifting from its architecturally precise position. Her perfume sharpens with irritation, the white orchid notes turning brittle.
"I could arrange your placement in an elite pack within the week, Sage.
Seven days. One phone call to the Beaumonts, another to the Castellano estate, and you would be bonded, secured, and positioned in a lifestyle that most Omegas would commit felonies for.
" She taps something on her tablet, dismissing the idea of my autonomy with the same casual efficiency she uses to dismiss quarterly earnings reports.
"Instead, you insist on this charade. Pretending you were born Alpha instead of Omega.
Chasing a sport that does not want you, will never want you, and has made that abundantly clear through every rejection letter and every turned back and every scout who cannot be bothered to write your name on a clipboard. "