Chapter Text
The scent of sweat and aggression clung to the Boston Raiders gym like a second skin—Alpha musk thick enough to choke on, but all Ilya Rozanov could smell was him. The phantom sweetness of Shane Hollander’s omega pheromones looped around his brain like a taunt, sticky and insistent, even as his thighs burned under the punishing rhythm of the stationary bike.
"Yebat," Ilya hissed through clenched teeth, the metal cross biting into his lips as he pedaled harder, faster, as if he could outrun the memory of Hollander’s body arching above him—the way his taut stomach flexed with every roll of his hips, sweat glazing his freckled skin like honey under the dim hotel lights. How his thighs trembled when Ilya’s cock bottomed out inside him, how his breath hitched, high and desperate, before he’d snarled, "Harder, Rozanov, or is that everything you got?"
Across the room, his teammate Ivanov tossed a towel at his head. "You look like you’re trying to murder that bike, not ride it."
Ilya didn’t answer. He couldn’t. Not when his pulse was a drumbeat synced to the ghost of Hollander’s voice, when every ragged inhale carried the imagined weight of his scent—vanilla and citrus, stupidly bright for someone who fought like a feral thing in bed. The collective Alphas’ musky scent that permeated in the air should’ve drowned it out, should’ve scraped Hollander’s presence clean from his bones. But it didn’t.
And that was the problem.
Ilya didn’t know when he started to realize that he lo—No. He shook his head, fingers tightening around the handlebars until the plastic groaned. He wouldn’t go there. Instead, he tried to pinpoint the exact moment his obsession with Hollander had metastasized—was it that fucking interview after Metros had beaten their ass in the playoffs?
The way Hollander had blinked, bemused, when some beta journalist asked how he managed to control his alpha aggression and remained calm on the ice. "Why would I need to control something that I don't have?" Hollander had replied, voice honeyed with confusion. "I’m an omega you know." Simple. Devastating. Like tossing a lit match into a room soaked in gasoline. The silence that followed had been palpable, the interviewer’s mic picking up the Montreal Metros coach's sharp inhale before the stadium erupted into chaotic murmurs. Hockey was alpha territory—everyone knew that. There were no rules banning omegas, but there didn’t need to be. It was common sense
The bike screeched as Ilya slammed the resistance up another notch, muscles screaming. Common sense. As if Shane Hollander gave a single fuck about common sense.
That was the thing about Hollander—he didn’t play by the rules, didn’t care about them. Didn’t care that his existence in the league was a middle finger to every alpha who thought their biology made them superior. Didn’t care that his scent—warm vanilla and citrus, stupidly inviting—lingered in locker rooms long after he’d left and how it was making anyone crazy, clinging to the benches, the showers, Ilya’s fucking jersey after he’d shoved Shane against the boards hard enough to taste it.
"You're so deep, Rozanov."
The memory of Shane’s voice, breathless, curled low in Ilya’s gut. His teeth ached with the need to bite, to mark, to claim—but that was the problem, wasn’t it? Shane didn’t belong to him. Never would. And yet here Ilya was, fucking himself raw on a bike at midnight because he couldn’t get the smell of him out of his goddamn head.
A rough hand clamped down on his shoulder, and Ilya snarled, spinning with bared teeth before recognizing Dmitri’s grinning face. "Jesus, Rozanov," his teammate laughed, raising his hands in mock surrender. "Did Jane stop texting you again?"
The entire gym erupted in knowing whistles—Jane, the imaginary beta they’d all conjured to explain Ilya’s mood swings, his disappearing acts during away games. Ilya would like to see how they would react if they found out that Jane and Hollander were just the same person. "Fuck off," Ilya growled.
Dmitri just smirked, nudging him toward the lounge. "Metros called a press conference. Big announcement."
Ilya was off the bike before the words finished landing, his pulse a jackhammer against his ribs. Hollander. It had to be about Hollander. He burst into the lounge just in time to see Hollander’s face fill the screen—sharp-jawed, golden, fucking devastating in a suit that clung to his shoulders like it was tailored by the goddess Mokosh herself.
"Ugh," Marleau groaned, fanning his nose dramatically. "Rozanov, you reek of sexual frustration."
Ilya flipped him off without looking, his eyes locked on the screen. "Shut the fuck up," he growled. "This is important you bastard."
Hollander adjusted his tie with a sigh, the overhead fluorescents catching the gold threads woven into the navy fabric—like veins of sunlight trapped in deep water. "Good evening," he said, voice smooth as whiskey over ice. "Honestly? I don’t know why they dragged me out here for this. It’s not exactly headline-worthy." The room erupted in laughter, reporters chuckling at his trademark dry delivery, but Hollander’s expression didn’t shift—dead serious, like he’d just stated the sky was blue.
Ilya huffed a laugh despite himself, rubbing his thumb over the phantom ache in his palm where he held Hollander’s hip last time. Then Hollander shrugged, hands sliding into his pockets. "Alright. I won’t waste your time—I’m stepping away from hockey for a year."
The silence was immediate, suffocating—then came the cacophony, microphones thrust forward like spears, voices overlapping—"Shane, is this about the league’s new omega regulations?" "Are you retiring?" "Are you injured?" Ilya’s lungs seized. What the fuck?
Hollander raised a hand, and for once, the press obeyed instantly. "Let me finish," he said, jaw tightening. "I need to do this... to keep my baby safe."
The words hit Ilya like a blindside check—his vision swimming, ribs suddenly too tight for his heart. Baby. The scent of vanilla and citrus, the press of Shane’s body against his—had there been a roundness to his stomach last time? Had Ilya missed it? He swallowed bile, fingers digging into his thighs hard enough to bruise.
Meanwhile, Hollander was still talking, calm as ever—something about "health considerations" and "temporary hiatus," but Ilya wasn’t listening. His ears roared with static, his brain stuck on one gnawing, clawing question: Why did Hollander didn't tell him that he's going to be a father? The answer was obvious—because Shane Hollander didn’t need him, never had. The realization burned like cheap vodka in his throat, bitter and suffocating.
Then—like fate twisting the knife—some alpha reporter with slicked-back hair and a smirk dripping condescension leaned forward, microphone poised like a weapon. "Shane, what happened to all that talk about never bending for an alpha? Seems like someone finally put you on your back."
The press pool erupted in nervous laughter, but Ilya saw red, his fists clenching so tight his nails bit crescents into his palms. He wanted to lunge through the screen, grab that smirking bastard by his throat and—
"And how are you so sure I'm the one who bent?" Hollander's voice cut through the noise like a blade, smooth and lethal. The room fell silent instantly. Hollander arched one eyebrow, lips curling in a smile so cold it could freeze hell over. "Not that it's your business, but for the record—it was me who rode my sperm donor’s dick to get myself pregnant."
Ilya froze. Sperm donor? The unfamiliar English phrase buzzed in his skull like a trapped wasp. Behind him, Connors snorted into his protein shake. "Oh Jesus fucking Christ," he muttered, wiping his mouth. "He just called his baby daddy a walking ATM for cum."
The explanation hit like a slap—his gut twisting with something hot and jagged. He understood why Hollander would keep his name out of it, understood the necessity of secrecy in their fucked-up, subterranean relationship. But to reduce him to... to that? A breeding stud? A fucking tool? Ilya’s vision blurred at the edges, jaw locking so tight his molars screamed. He wanted to storm out, wanted to wreck something, wanted to pin Hollander against the nearest surface and make him take back every fucking word—but the screen flickered back to Hollander’s face, his expression unreadable as he turned away from the microphone.
The press conference dissolved into chaos, reporters shouting over each other, but Hollander was already gone, slipping through the back exit with the same effortless grace he used to dodge checks on the ice. Ilya barely registered Connors’ elbow jabbing into his ribs, barely heard the locker room’s crude speculation about who the real alpha was—some speculated it was Hollander’s teammate Hayden Pike, others whispered about the possibility of Rose having a second gender, Hollander's rumoured girlfriend. None of them guessed him. None of them even looked his way.
He exhaled through his nose, slow and controlled, and stared at the empty space on the screen where Hollander had stood. The truth was worse than any rumor—because Shane had bent. For him. And now, in typical Hollander fashion, he’d spun it into a power move so sharp it left Ilya bleeding internally.
Somewhere behind him, Marleau wolf-whistled. "Jesus, can you imagine the balls of whoever knocked him up?"
Connors snorted, wiping sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. "Nah, man—didn’t you listen? Hollander’s the one with the balls." His grin widened, sharp-edged and crude. "Heard him loud and clear—used that poor bastard just to knock himself up. Like ordering sperm off fuckin’ Doordash." The locker room erupted in laughter, the sound grating against Ilya’s skin like sandpaper.
Beside Connors, Greyser—a rookie alpha with too much mouth and not enough sense—grinned and cracked his knuckles. "Fuck, I’d submit to Shane if he asked me to." He waggled his eyebrows, tongue running over his canine. "Bet he rides like a—"
The sound of crumpling metal cut him off mid-sentence as Ilya’s fist slammed through the side of the locker room table, the aluminum buckling like wet cardboard under his knuckles. The room fell silent instantly, the air thick with the scent of startled alpha pheromones—sharp, acrid. Ilya didn’t look up, didn’t blink. His voice came out low, lethal. "You have other things to do than gossiping like betas at a fucking salon." The threat hung unspoken in the air: Or I will remind you why I’m captain.
For a heartbeat, no one moved—then Greyser swallowed hard, muttering a quick "Yeah, sorry, Cap," before scurrying toward the showers. The others followed suit, scattering like roaches under light, but Ilya didn’t relax. His hand throbbed where the metal had bitten into his skin, the pain a dull counterpoint to the acid churning in his gut.
Ilya yanked his phone from his pocket, thumbs hovering over Hollander’s contact—Jane—before snarling and hitting call instead. He wasn’t in the mood for typing. The line rang once, twice, then went to voicemail. "Fuck," he hissed, redialing immediately. Same result. On the third attempt, he waited for the beep, his accent thickening with rage. "Hollander," he growled, knuckles white around the phone. "You don’t call back, I have press conference too. Tell everyone name of your sperm donor." He punctuated the last words with a vicious jab at the disconnect button.
The silence that followed was deafening. Ilya stared at his reflection in the cracked screen—wild-eyed, sweat-slicked, pathetic—and wondered if Shane would laugh when he heard it. The thought made his teeth ache.