Page 61 of Knot So Fast (Speedverse #1)
TRAINING TENSIONS
~ A UREN~
"TO WORK AS A TEAM, YOU NEED TO TRAIN AS ONE! ONE MORE LAP!"
Terek's voice carries across the track with the kind of authority that makes grown men whimper.
His military background shows in moments like this—when he transforms from slightly neurotic team manager into drill sergeant who probably ate nails for breakfast and washed them down with the tears of underperforming athletes.
We groan collectively, a symphony of suffering that would be comedic if we weren't all dying.
My legs feel like someone replaced my muscles with molten lead, each step sending shooting pains up through my calves and into my thighs.
The Spanish sun beats down mercilessly, turning the track surface into a griddle that I swear is cooking us from the feet up.
"Why am I here?" Katie pants beside me, her strawberry blonde hair plastered to her head with sweat, those perfect blue eyes looking absolutely murderous.
I laugh, though it comes out more like a wheeze. "Because Terek hates us all equally?"
Katie is a sight to behold even when she's suffering.
She's got that typical tomboy appearance down to an art form—cargo shorts that sit low on her hips, a tank top that shows off arms that could probably bench press me without breaking a sweat, and an expression that suggests she's calculating exactly how many ways she could murder Terek and make it look like an accident.
The Alpha energy pulses off her in waves, that particular brand of dominance that comes from being a woman in a designation typically associated with men.
She has to be twice as strong, twice as assertive, twice as everything just to be taken seriously.
And from what I've seen in the past week, she accomplishes all of that while making it look effortless.
"I didn't expect you to be joining today," I manage between gasps for air.
She grimaces, wiping sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand.
"I came to give you your press conference schedule.
Also, we need to discuss the social media tour they're planning—photoshoots that'll help create enough content backlog so you don't need to be 'present' online once we have sufficient material. "
"And Terek decided you needed team bonding?"
"Terek decided I 'deserved' to join the team effort," she says, putting air quotes around 'deserved' with enough sarcasm to kill small animals. "Apparently standing on the sidelines isn't conducive to understanding team dynamics."
"So here we are," I agree. "Suffering together."
"If I die," Katie pants, "I'm haunting his ass. I'll make every piece of technology he owns malfunction at crucial moments."
"That's oddly specific."
"I've had forty-five minutes to plan it in detail."
We're on the final stretch now, the finish line both tantalizingly close and impossibly far.
My lungs burn with each breath, the air too hot and too thin to provide actual oxygen.
But there's something about suffering alongside others that makes it bearable—that shared misery that bonds people faster than any team-building exercise.
"You know," Katie says, her breathing slightly more controlled than mine despite her complaints, "most celebrities just do Pilates."
I snort. "My mother would be so proud."
"Pilates is for people who want to look fit," she continues. "This is for people who want to be fit enough to survive a zombie apocalypse."
"Or a Formula One season."
"Same thing, really."
We finally— finally —cross the finish line, and I immediately bend over, hands on my knees, trying not to vomit. The relief of stopping is almost orgasmic, every muscle in my body screaming thank you even as they continue to burn.
Around us, the rest of the team is in various states of collapse.
Dex is lying flat on his back on the track, spread-eagle like he's making tarmac angels.
Caspian is walking in small circles, hands on his hips, muttering what sounds like mathematical equations—probably calculating exactly how many calories we just burned.
Kieran is stretching against the fence, his flexibility both impressive and slightly concerning.
And Lachlan... Lachlan looks like he just finished a light warm-up rather than the death march the rest of us experienced. His shirt is soaked with sweat, sure, but he's not gasping for air or looking like he's reconsidering all his life choices.
"I hate you," I tell him when he walks over with water bottles.
"No, you don't," he says with that insufferable confidence that would be annoying if it wasn't so accurate.
The organized chaos that follows is typical Titan Racing efficiency.
We move from the running torture to sector walks, where Caspian breaks down every meter of the upcoming Barcelona track with the kind of detail that makes my brain hurt.
He's got laminated cards with corner names, brake markers, gear selections, all of it color-coded and organized like we're planning a military invasion rather than a race.
"Turn three is where most people lose time," he explains, pointing at a diagram that looks like something NASA would use. "The entry is deceptive—it looks faster than it is. Brake five meters earlier than your instinct tells you."
Then come the hands-on aero briefs, which basically means standing in a wind tunnel while engineers explain how air moves over the car at different speeds.
They've got smoke machines and everything, creating visible airflow patterns that are supposedly crucial to understanding downforce but mostly just make me feel like I'm in a very expensive nightclub.
The reaction drills with light boards are where things get properly sadistic.
Random lights flash in sequence, and we have to tap them as quickly as possible, training our peripheral vision and hand-eye coordination.
It sounds simple until you're thirty minutes in and your calves are screaming from constantly shifting position and your arms feel like they're going to fall off.
"Faster, Vale!" Terek shouts. "In a real race, that delay would cost you three positions!"
"In a real race, I'm sitting down!" I shout back, which earns me a laugh from Dex and another set of lights to chase.
Through it all, Dex is multitasking like a champion, chirping promo lines into a handheld recorder for upcoming broadcasts. His commentary voice is completely different from his normal speaking voice—deeper, more polished, with that particular cadence that makes even grocery lists sound exciting.
"The Spanish Grand Prix promises to be a thriller," he practices, then stops and frowns. "No, that's cliché. The Barcelona circuit will test every driver's limits? Ugh, worse."
"How about 'Watch as twenty drivers slowly cook to death in carbon fiber ovens'?" I suggest.
"Accurate but probably not sponsor-friendly."
Meanwhile, Caspian is hunched over his laptop, diagramming what he calls "Operation Phoenix"—a strategy that involves either one or two pit stops depending on tire degradation that he's calculated down to the molecular level.
"If we maintain track position through turn one," he mutters, fingers flying across the keyboard, "and the temperature stays below thirty-two degrees, we can extend the first stint by three laps, which would give us a four-second advantage for the undercut?—"
"English, please," Katie interrupts, having wandered over to observe the organized chaos.
"We go fast, change tires at the right time, hopefully win," Kieran translates.
"Why didn't he just say that?"
"Because then he wouldn't get to use his fancy engineering degree."
Katie looks around at all of us—sweaty, exhausted, still somehow bickering and planning and pushing forward—and shakes her head. "I better find a male Omega outside of this field because I ain't doing all this training shit regularly."
I laugh, which turns into a cough because my throat is still raw from the run. "What, you don't want to join our suffering club?"
"Hard pass. I'll stick to making sure nobody kills you off-track. The on-track death wish is your own problem."
Terek finally takes mercy on us, walking over with the closest thing to approval I've ever seen on his face. "Good job today. We'll do it again tomorrow."
The collective groan that follows probably registers on seismographs.
Katie starts to dismiss herself, already pulling out her phone to no doubt continue managing my digital existence, but then pauses. "Oh, heads up—Lucius the trouble twin may be around."
That gets everyone's attention. The relaxed post-workout atmosphere suddenly has an edge to it, like someone just mentioned there might be a bomb in the building but they're not sure where.
"Why?" I ask as Kieran comes to stand beside me, close enough that I can feel the protective energy radiating off him.
Katie shrugs, scrolling through something on her phone. "Three teams are fighting for his participation, but instead of just choosing like a normal person, he's drawing it out. Keeps coming to these headquarters to give off the impression you guys are gonna sign him unexpectedly."
Terek sighs, the sound containing years of exhaustion. "Well, he had his chance and blew it once. He's not getting a second shot."
I frown, another gap in my memory making itself known. "What chance?"
Kieran explains quickly, his voice carefully neutral like he's reciting facts rather than drama.
"Lucius was actually originally hired to race before Lachlan.
Had a contract and everything. But he fucked up in the trials—crashed the car showing off, then tried to blame the engineers for a mechanical failure that didn't exist."
"Terek found out about Lachlan by accident," Caspian adds. "He was just coming to watch his brother fail, basically. But Terek convinced him to do a test run to show what was supposedly wrong with the car."