Page 10 of Knottingley Ever After
The other one snorts into his clipboard.
I don't move or give them the snarl my back teeth are grinding toward. I just look at the coffee one, very steadily, until his grin develops a hairline crack.
"This is your chance," he says, quieter now, the humor cooling into something flatter. "Walk away."
I let the silence stretch one full, deliberate beat.
"I wasformally invited." Every consonant clipped and placed. "I have an acceptance letter with this college's crest on it sitting in the front pocket of this bag. So I'm going to ask one more time, like the sane adult I came here as: move aside." I tilt my head, and let a little honey drip into it—because if reasonable gets me mocked, I might as well show them the other gear. "Or would you prefer I lean into my Omega gifts? I can do this the girlie way. I can summon a quivering lip, averyloud cry, dramatics that'll bring a department head running. I'm versatile. Your call, gentlemen. I just thought I'd offer, since asking nicely seems to be the funniest thing two grown Alphas have heard all season."
The grins are gone now.
We have officially graduated to scowls.
I'm aware—peripherally, the way a goalie is always aware—that we've drawn an audience. A clump of Alphas has slowed near the lobby's edge, gear bags over their shoulders, watching the corridor like it's a fight that hasn't been called yet.
One mutters a name.Brennan.
Another answers.And Voss.
I file them away on reflex:Coffee is Voss. Clipboard is Brennan.
You learn the names of the people standing between you and where you need to be.
Brennan recovers first, lifting the clipboard like a tiny shield. "Look. Even granting you got an acceptance letter, and I'm not granting it, it'd have to be a clerical error. League regs make it flat-out impossible for someone like you to take a roster spot."
"Especially," Voss adds, and the word arrives soft and surgical, "an Omega who's unbonded. No pack." He spreads his hands, all false sympathy. "No team's touching that liability. So whatever paper you've got, princess, it's not worth the crest it's printed on."
They laugh again.
And this time it costs me something.
Because the thing is—Iknew.Somewhere under the bravado, in the part of me that reads the play before it develops, I knew there'd be a clause.A catch.Some bonding regulation coiled in the fine print, waiting. You don't grow up an Omega in this sport without learning that the rulebook has a whole chapter that's really just about you.
But I was invited.
Personally. Hand-picked. Flown across an ocean.
Which means somebody at North Star Elite read every line of those regulations, looked at my unbonded, packless, pink-haired self…and sent the letter anyway.
So either it's the error they're so sure it is.
Or somebody knows something I don't.
I keep my face shut, my chin level, and my fists have curled tight enough that my taped wrists ache. I'm working very hard to make sure none of that reaches my expression, because these two are starving for it. They want the lip. They want the wobble. They want to be able to saysee, told you, Omega,and I would genuinely rather eat my own glove than feed them.
I'm still hunting for my next move when a voice cuts down the corridor from somewhere behind me.
"Move. Aside."
Two words. Low. Unhurried. Carrying the kind of authority that doesn't need volume because it has never, in its life, been ignored.
"She's clearly not the least bit intimidated by either of you fuckers playing tough. So quit embarrassing yourselves and let her through."
The floor drops out of my stomach.
I know that voice.
I know it the way I know my own glove hand. I have heard that voice count me through wall drills until my legs gave out. I have heard it sayagain, O'Shea,andeverything is fine.I have heard it pitched low against my temple in a loud arena, telling me to hold.
