bishop
Istandattheedge of the deck with my clipboard tucked against my forearm and call the next threshold set without raising my voice. The team knows the drill. They know the pace clock, the order, the suffering, and the fact that I’m not moved by pleading unless someone is actively bleeding on tile.
“Lane one on the top. Lane two five seconds back. Lane three, Nelson, if you leave early again, I’m adding a fifty.”
Nelson lifts his head from the water, goggles fogged and mouth open like he’s preparing a retort. I point at the clockbefore he gets a word out, and he sinks back down with wounded dignity. The second hand hits twelve, and the first wave pushes off.
The pool breaks into motion as bodies cut under the surface, water slapping against the gutters. The ceiling throws every sound back twice as loud. By the third round, nobody is laughing anymore, which is exactly where I like a threshold set. Loud enough to keep them moving, miserable enough to make them honest.
I track the first few splits, make a note beside Reece’s lane because he’s pushing too hard too early and knows better, then shift my attention to the far side of the pool.
Jude is already there, standing near lane six with a stopwatch in one hand and a clipboard braced against his hip, swallowed in an oversized hoodie that makes him look smaller than he is. The sleeves cover most of his hands, but not the bitten nails or the pale grip he keeps on the pencil. His dark hair falls over his forehead in damp-looking pieces even though he hasn’t been in the water, the chlorine-faded ends catching the light every time he looks down.
The Omega’s name is still up there above the deep end, the ink faded under the school logo.Jude Morrison. Two hundred free.The record has survived a year without him, which is the kind of thing swimmers notice even when they pretend they don’t. Jude has turned ignoring it into a sport of its own. He crosses the deck at angles that keep it out of his line of sight and never stands too close to the gutter, as if the water might get ideas.
“Nelson,” Jude calls, sharp enough to cut through the splash. “Your elbow’s dropping.”
Nelson pops up mid-lane, already exhausted and offended. “I’m trying.”
“Try higher.”
Jude lifts his own arm to show the angle, the motion full of irritation in a way that somehow works better than encouragement. Nelson stares for half a second, then pushes off again and fixes it just enough to keep Jude from saying anything worse.
“There,” Jude says, making a note. “Look at you. Almost coachable.”
Nelson’s grin nearly ruins his next breath.
I lower my gaze before Jude catches me watching. He notices everything, including attention people think they’re hiding.Especiallyattention people think they’re hiding.
I still don’t truly understand what happened last year other than Jude’s scent blockers failed in the middle of a meet. Too many Alphas reacted, things got out of control, and Jude got suspended from the team. He was nearly expelled, and the administration got to pretend the problem started and ended with one Omega’s body doing what Omega bodies do when medication fails.
The team’s version is worse because college athletes shouldn’t be trusted with gossip and free time. I know enough to hate the way people step around him now. He used to be someone they cheered for. Now conversations thin when he gets close, and everyone acts like the space they leave around him is accidental.
Jude acts like he doesn’t see it and I fucking hate that.
A hand breaks the surface at the wall in front of me, followed by Hollis, breathing hard with his goggles shoved crooked into his wet hair. My Alpha grips the gutter on either side of my shoes and looks up at me from the water, his mouth curved like he’s already decided being half a second off pace is going to be my fault.
I crouch before he can climb any higher, sliding two fingers beneath the twisted strap. Chlorine flattens everything on deck, sharp enough to mute even an Alpha’s scent, but this close Icatch the faintest trace of him under it, warm cedar and clean water against heated skin.
Hollis tilts into my hand immediately.
Three years, and he still does it like instinct. The team sees a six foot five Alpha distance swimmer withshoulders that block doorways if he forgets to turn sideways. I get this. My fingers in his wet hair, his eyes going soft, his body settling under my touch like he’s been waiting the entire set to be handled.
“Your times are sliding,” I tell him, smoothing the strap into place.
His hands stay on the gutter, caging my shoes without trapping me. “Maybe stop distracting me.”
I let my thumb drag once over his temple. “Maybe stop looking distractible.”
That gets me the smile, right before his mouth brushes the inside of my wrist, dragging across my bond mark. I didn’t understand why he put it there until the first time I bent down like this.‘So, I can reach it,’he had told me and I’ve never loved the placement more.
His lips linger there, heat racing through me as my fingers tighten in his hair, my gaze dipping to my own version of a mark on his neck. As a Beta, my bite wouldn’t last but Hollis had me bite him anyway and then tattooed it into his neck.‘Everyone needs to know who I belong to, Bishop’.
I brush my thumb over it as my hand drops to his shoulder, and the sound that leaves him almost disappears under the noise of the pool.
“Back in,” I say.
Hollis' eyes lift to mine, still too pleased with himself. “Kiss for pace?”
