Page 20 of False Catch

"We're too stressed to row properly," Tyler translates. "Fight or flight is canceling out trained responses."

"So what do we do?" Zane asks. "Tomorrow morning, Carmine's going to be watching every stroke. If we row like this..."

He doesn't need to finish. We all know what happens if we can't perform.

"We stop fighting," Reese says quietly.

Everyone turns to look at her.

"Stop fighting what?" Gray demands.

She slides off the mats, moving to stand in the center of our rough semicircle. "Each other. Ourselves. What we're becoming."

"Reese—" Gray starts, warning in his tone.

"No." She cuts him off. "Listen. When did we row best? When did everything click?"

"Before Riverside," Cameron says, surprising everyone by speaking up.

"Wrong," Reese counters. "We rowed best AT Riverside. During the race. When my suppressants were failing and you could all smell exactly what I was."

Uncomfortable silence greets this truth.

"We won because the boat was balanced," Gray argues. "Training kicked in despite the... distractions."

"Bullshit." The bluntness cuts through the room. "We won because for those six minutes, we stopped pretending. We were eight Alphas and an Omega moving as one unit. A pack."

"We can't be a pack," Jackson says, his first words since practice started. "Packs form around bonds. We're not bonded."

"Aren't we?" Reese challenges. "Maybe not officially. Maybe not permanently. But something happened at Riverside. Something that connected us whether we wanted it or not."

She's right. I've felt it all week - this invisible thread pulling us together, making us hyperaware of each other. It's why we can't row. We're fighting the very thing that could make us stronger.

"So what are you suggesting?" Gray asks, voice carefully controlled.

"I'm suggesting we stop pretending we're just teammates." She looks at each of us in turn. "Stop fighting the instincts. Stop maintaining distance. Stop acting like what's happening between us is wrong."

"The administration—" Tyler starts.

"Isn't here," Reese interrupts. "Right now, it's just us. Nine people who have to figure out how to move as one by tomorrow morning."

"And how do we do that?" I ask, genuinely curious where she's going with this.

She takes a breath, and I can see her gathering courage. "We trust each other. Completely. No walls, no distance, no pretense."

"That's not..." Gray pauses, struggling. "That's not how teams work."

"Normal teams," Eli says quietly, speaking for the first time. "We stopped being normal the day Reese walked onto that dock."

Another silence, but this one feels different. Charged. Like we're standing on the edge of something.

"Fuck it," Beckett says suddenly. "She's right. We've been rowing like shit because we're all so twisted up about what we want versus what we're supposed to want." He looks directly at Reese. "I want you. Have since day one. There. Said it."

The whirling of pumps and water is nearly deafening in the silence between us.

"Get in line," Zane mutters, then flushes when everyone looks at him. "What? We're being honest, right? Every Alpha in this room has thought about it."

"Some more than others," Tyler says dryly, glancing at Gray.