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“You’ve got this,” I told her, giving her shoulders a gentle shake. “You did it once before, remember?”
Brynn shot me a sardonic smile at my joke. “I do, thank you, but it also happened before I pushed a pair of twins out of my vagina.”
Brynn’s voice was loud enough that a couple of passing skaters shot her a funny look that the redhead ignored.
Dutch huffed a rumbling laugh before putting his hand on Brynn’s lower back. “Speaking of pushing, sweetness, your turn is going to be up in a bit and if we don’t start getting ready that poor official over there is going to blow a gasket.”
The alpha nodded at the hovering man who was shifting nervously from one foot to the other, not quite wanting to interrupt our moment, but also clearly needing to.
“You all right?” I asked him as he finally stepped closer at Dutch’s acknowledgment.
“They want her lined up with the next skater because we’ve got to speed things along. We’re already behind and she still needs to get her skates on,” the man said in a soft accent that I couldn’t quite pick out. All of the athletes and officials were supposed to take scent blockers before stepping into an official zone, but the day had been so long that they were all starting to wear off so I could smell his faint beta scent that reminded me of a piece of bubblegum.
Releasing Brynn’s shoulders, I stepped back. “Well, far be it for me to get in the way of you sir, carry on.”
The man practically melted with relief. “Please come this way.”
“I’ll grab your skates,” Dutch said before disappearing through the crowd and back toward the corner where we’d posted up with all of our bags this morning.
Brynn shot me a nervous smile before turning and following the official toward the arena.
“That’s Brynn Peterson, yes?” an older woman asked in a posh British accent. She looked ancient, her pale skin wrinkled and her white hair pulled back into a low ponytail behind her head.
I frowned at her as Dutch hurried past me with Brynn’s skates in hand. “That is, yes, what of it?”
The old woman slanted a reproachful look at me. “I was just going to say I watched her routine four years ago. Yours too, though you were skating for Team Ireland at the time, weren’t you?”
My spine stiffened at the note of something akin to judgment in her voice. I wasn’t completely sure if it was even there, but it had reflected the questions from those on Team Ireland ever since we’d arrived in Scotland last week.
It had been my choice to skate for Team USA this time, but those from my home country weren’t taking it well as they’d expected me to skate with them again.
“Oh, don’t get so sensitive, dearie,” the woman finally cackled. “I don’t care what team you skate for, I don’t even have a female athlete at this Olympics. I just wanted to say that those people are probably quaking in their skates after that routine of yours. I smell gold in your future, love, as long as you can keep it up for your free skate.”
“Mama Burt, are you bullying this lovely lady?” a voice came from behind us and I turned to find that male figure skater that had gone last before me standing before us with a hand on his hip.
He’d pulled on his Team Great Britain sweatsuit over his sparkly outfit, but I could still see it peeking from underneath his parka.
“Artem, I would never,” the woman said, aghast. “I was just congratulating her on her wonderful short program.”
The man, Artem, turned to me with an easy, dimpled smile. He was adorable. All creamy skin and bright blue eyes that looked ever so slightly cloudy, not to mention the blond hair that seemed to stick on end like the duckling pin feathers.
When he’d been on the ice it had laid flat, but now it bounced as he approached and offered me a hand.
He was also, very clearly, an omega. It was usually easy to tell by the way an individual carried themselves, and with Artem it was no different. The soft roll of his shoulders, not to mention the silvery scars peeking out from the neckline of his sweatsuit were dead giveaways. This was an omega, and a bonded one at that.
“I heard about how good you were,” he said, his accent clearly British with a hint of something a little bit more Slavic underneath. “I’m Artem Kostyk, but everyone I like calls me Artie.”
He was flirting, I realized as I gripped his hand, sucking in a breath when some kind of static electricity seemed to pass in between us. Artie frowned down at our joined hands, his blond brows pulling together with confusion.
“You heard?” I asked, quickly changing the subject and pulling my hand from his. The urge to lift my fingers to my nose to try and catch any trace of what the omega smelled like filled me. I clenched my fist at my side ignoring it.
Artie gestured to his eyes and suddenly the milkiness of the blue made sense. “My eyes aren’t what they used to be, so watching something on a tiny television is nigh impossible for me.”
Surprise filled me. When I’d watched him on the ice earlier there had been nothing in the way he skated to show that his vision was impaired.
I wanted to ask a million and one questions about it, a knee jerk habit that I’d never quite grown out of, but Eli called my name from where he was standing next to what I’d affectionately dubbed the hell bench.
It was where I would sit and wait for the judges to finish my scoring and where the cameras would be trained on my face waiting for any sort of reaction from me. They didn’t do it for every skater, but it was clear that after my short program they wanted to do it for me.
