Page 183 of Altius
Kelsey rolled her eyes and started gathering our plates.
My smile bled into my tone. “Who says I haven’t?”
“Wait, wait!” Jacobi’s exaggerated gasp of delight ricocheted off every corner of the kitchen. “Beaufeather’s is a go?”
I turned the phone in her direction and raised a brow.
“Yes,” Kelsey said, radiating muted joy. “It’s a go.”
Jacobi’s enthusiastic babbling lasted for fifteen solid minutes. I stopped trying to get a word in edgewise after seven.
The more he talked, the more my golden goddess of a sister seemed to glow.
When Kelsey finally managed to take advantage of a pause, it was to share her surprisingly well-developed vision for the space, including installing a series of test nests on the second floor that could be rented by the hour, allowing omegas to try out various configurations and design themes before committing to such a monumental purchase as a nest makeover.
I sat at the kitchen island while they talked, pretending to check my email on my tablet while I soaked in their rapid back and forth—simultaneously proud of her for taking the leap and excited to see what Beaufeather’s would grow to become in a year or two.
A roaring success, no doubt.
If only I could be so certain about my own career prospects.
Kelsey unexpectedly slid my phone across the island, displaying a new text…from Wyatt.
Desperate times call for desperate measures. Listening to your dragon rider book. Why don’t any of these people have normal names?
And with that, a tentative, rose-hued checkmark flickered to life beside lifelong goal number three.
Maybe someday, it would mature into a bright, vibrant red. Even now, despite everything, it was still my favorite color.
My lucky color.
The color of love.
***
The crowd in the Rhine Fieldhouse was on their feet chanting, “Ten, ten, ten!”
A handful of Northport gymnasts crowded around Nika, who had just completed a powerful yet poetic routine on the uneven bars, anxiously staring at the scoreboard, hoping to see a perfect score from the judges.
“Looked pretty good to me,” Cal mused, sitting beside me in the press box allotted for PheroPass monitoring—and my refuge for the evening. I was as far from Wyatt as possible without risking dereliction of duty.
Owen shot a sly glance in my direction. “You don’t look that impressed.”
“It’ll be a high score, but it won’t be perfect.” I winced as the crowd noise went up a notch, aggravating the band of pressure that had ensnared my head last night and refused to budge. “She didn’t get enough height on the dismount.”
Thankfully, Dr. Flemming hadn’t asked too many questions when Cal and Owen decided to monitor tonight’s competition in person, or why my presence was necessary to help interpret PheroPass data, so long as I paid attention and hightailed it to the floor in the event of an injury.
Wyatt stood beside the uneven bars, trying to get his squad to move off the pads since they still had two gymnasts to compete. His behavior clued some girls in that a perfect score wasn’t coming, and they moved back to the waiting area.
A few boos erupted from the crowd as the scoreboard flashed a 9.950 next to Nika’s name.
“She’s the one who had the weird spike the other week, right?” Cal asked, searching for her name in the system.
“Yes.”
When he pulled up her pheromone exposure panel, there was an almost identical spike at the start of her routine. Cal tabbed to her emissions record, which hadn’t exceeded her baseline reading.
“It’s not from Wyatt,” Owen said, turning his laptop towards us.
