Chapter Text
When Shane was four, all he wanted was a pair of skates and the kind of cold that burned his lungs. At eight, it was to be with the older boys, the faster drills, the bruises he wore like proof he belonged. At fifteen, it was to have anything but the word omega clinging to him like a label he could not peel off, the way people’s noses would wrinkle before they even looked him in the eye. At sixteen, his dreams were of going pro and winning the International Prospect Cup, so no one could ever doubt him again, no matter what his designation was. At eighteen, it was going first overall, and when he did, it felt like the world finally agreed he was worth something. At twenty, he was captaining his team and hauling the Cup back to Montreal on trembling arms. At twenty-five, it was another Cup, another MVP, another reason to keep pushing through the ache.
At thirty, he thought he wanted forever, someone to love, someone to be there when he came home from games with a smile waiting.
At thirty-one, he wanted his body to stop betraying him. To stop the clock from ticking forward when all he wanted was to live in the moment just a little longer, to avoid the aches and signs of his prime moving past him with every season.
And at thirty-four, with the arenas behind him and the roar gone quiet, Shane Hollander wanted only one thing.
A family.
“Come on, come on.” He peeked at the plastic on the counter and sighed at the empty window. He checked the time again—forty more seconds. The bathroom smelled like steam and soap and underneath it all, his own scent, crisp ice shavings edged with seaweed and ginger, faintly sour with nerves. Shane looked in the mirror, wincing at the desperation in his own eyes reflecting back on him. This wasn’t the first time he stood in his ensuite, wondering where he went wrong.
Was having a child always so hard? Hayden didn’t seem to have any trouble. Shane shakes his head away from that train of thought before it gets ugly. He’s not jealous, not exactly. It’s only been in recent times that he’s wanted this; he knows from all his late-night reading that it’s normal, what he’s feeling. But is it really?
The timer on his phone buzzes, and Shane reaches for the test, flipping it over in his hands and feeling his eyes burn on instinct.
Negative.
He tosses the test in the waste basket by the sink and sits down on the edge of the tub, pushing balled-up fists into his eyes to keep the tears from falling. This wasn’t his first failure, but with every negative result, it gets harder to get back up and not feel like he’s done something wrong.
He’s done everything right. He's been off suppressants for months. He keeps his body healthy, takes his vitamins, counts his steps, reads parenting and pregnancy blogs and forums late at night until the words blur. He tracks every heat like it is a game schedule, like precision will earn him a win, as it always did before.
And still, countless tests are negative. The same reaction almost every time. The little window on the plastic goes blank in his hand, over and over, and each one hits harder than the last.
Shane breaks a little more each time, cracking in places nobody can see, and Ben barely seems to notice.
Right on cue, there’s a knock on the bathroom door. His husband’s voice, bright and effortless, like Shane isn’t sitting in pieces on the other side. “Hey, Shaney. I was thinking we could try that new Greek place that opened up by my office. What do you say?”
Shane loves his husband. He has to. He repeats it like a mantra, like saying it enough times will make it feel true in his bones.
But Ben’s cheer scrapes over Shane’s raw nerves, too loud in the growingly small tiled room, too casual in the face of everything Shane is trying not to fall apart about.
He swallows hard, tasting salt, and forces his voice into something that won’t crack. “Uh… now’s not a good time.” Shane clears his throat, staring up at the white ceiling in a failing attempt to keep his eyes dry.
Ben makes a sound, and when he speaks again, his voice is closer. Ben’s scent leaks under the door with him, green tea sweetened with coconut, clean and controlled, like the kind of alpha who never sweats unless it’s on purpose. “Oh… like, stomach problems?”
Shane’s gaze snaps to the door. He sneers. “No. That’s the problem.”
Ben goes quiet.
The silence stretches long enough that Shane almost feels bad. Almost.
He drags in a breath through his nose, tries to make it steady, to make it normal. Like, he isn’t one more negative test away from splintering.
“Shane,” Ben says at last, and the way he says it is careful, like he’s approaching a dog that might bite. “Okay. Sorry. I didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” Shane’s laugh comes out thin. “Didn’t mean to sound like you’re asking me if I have diarrhea while I’m sitting here looking at another negative pregnancy test?”
There’s a pause.
“Oh.” Ben clears his throat. “I thought we weren’t doing those this month. I thought you said—”
“I didn’t say that.” Shane squeezes his eyes shut, tries to tamp down the heat of anger, the humiliation, the ache. “I said I was trying not to make myself crazy. That’s different.”
Ben exhales loudly, the sound of someone who thinks they’re being patient. “Okay. Well. Maybe… don’t take it so hard. Stress isn’t good for that fertility stuff. Karen at the office mentioned it once, omega gossip.”
Shane’s eyes open. The words land like a slap, clean and stinging.
“Don’t take it so hard,” he repeats, voice flat.
“Babe.” Ben’s tone turns soothing, practiced. “I’m just saying, you spiral, and then you make yourself sick. We have time, we’re still young. It’ll happen.”
It’ll happen.
Like time is the only ingredient missing. Like Shane’s body is a stubborn machine that just needs to be left alone until it cooperates.
He stares at the door, at the shadow of Ben’s feet on the tile. The man on the other side is his husband. The man on the other side is supposed to want this, too.
Shane swallows. “I’m going to shower,” he says.
“Okay, cool,” Ben answers too quickly, relief immediate. “I’ll make reservations. You’ll feel better once you eat.”
Shane waits until Ben’s footsteps fade down the hall. Then he leans forward, elbows on his knees, and lets the first sob tear out of him like a confession.
His phone is on the counter, screen dimmed, the alarm still open from earlier. Three minutes—as if a timer can decide the rest of your life.
Shane wipes his face with the heel of his hand, furious at the wetness and at himself for needing anything at all.
He thinks about Hayden’s newborn, the way the baby’s tiny fist wrapped around Shane’s finger like it was the most natural thing in the world. The way Shane had smiled until his cheeks hurt, and then gone home and sat in the dark like he’d been hit by a wave of pucks until he was sprawled on the ice with no teeth left.
He thinks about Ben’s hands, always on Shane’s waist in public, always warm for other people. How, at home, the touch slides away the minute Shane wants something real. Even now, the air between them feels wrong, Ben’s alpha-sure scent unruffled while Shane’s omega scent goes sharp with distress.
His eyes move to the drawer beside the sink.
The ovulation strips. The supplements. The tiny plastic syringes for children's medicine the clinic gave him last month, “just in case,” because Shane had asked questions and the nurse had smiled like she was proud of him for being prepared.
Prepared for what, to keep failing?
Shane gets up on unsteady legs and turns on the shower. The water hisses and steam fills the ensuite with white noise while he strips out of his clothes like he’s shedding skin that doesn’t fit anymore.
Under the spray, he tips his head back and lets the hot water pound against his face until he can’t tell which is which. He presses his palm to his lower stomach. Nothing. No flutter of possibility, no secret warmth. Just his own body, stubborn and empty.
Then Shane steps out, he swipes a clear line through the steam and stares at himself, watching the almost surreal reflection in the fogged mirror. His eyes are red. His mouth is set like he’s bracing for a hit.
But it’s the shoulders that give him away—squared on instinct, stubborn as ever—and the grim line of his mouth, the worn captain’s grimace of someone who’s taken too many hits and still expects to get back up.
It may not feel like it, but he still looks like a captain. The man people used to follow, someone who should be able to fix this.
He can’t fix anything though. The thought arrives calm, almost gentle. He can’t do this alone anymore.
By the time he’s dressed, Ben is already calling from the kitchen, voice bright again, like they didn’t just have a crack-open moment on the other side of a bathroom door. Shane pauses with his hand on the bedroom doorknob.
The appointment card in his wallet feels heavier than it should. He hasn’t shown Ben yet because he didn’t want another argument, another excuse, or another promise that would dissolve into nothing.
A name on white cardstock: Doctor Ilya Rozanov. Shane’s pulse jumps for no reason he can justify, like his body already knows something his mind hasn’t admitted.
“Hey!” Ben’s cheerful, but it feels disingenuous. “I got us a table for eight. Are you ready?”
Shane takes a breath, smooths his expression into something that will pass. “Yeah,” he calls back. “Give me a minute.”
Like dinner can distract him. As if a crowded restaurant can fill the hollow he feels deep and is trying not to let it crack him open from the inside out.
—
After around half a dozen negative tests were tossed in the garbage, Shane finally did something he had never been good at. He asked for help.
He spent nights with his phone burning in his palm, scrolling through forums and Reddit threads and parenting blogs until the words started to swim. Strangers’ advice blurred together. Try this. Don’t do that. Relax. Stop thinking about it. None of it made the emptiness in his chest feel any smaller.
None of it made the emptiness in his chest feel any smaller. But buried in the noise, one name kept surfacing.
Doctor Ilya Rozanov—a fertility specialist, one of the best in Canada and someone who worked with elite athletes.
Shane wasn’t a current athlete anymore, not officially, but his body still ran on discipline and routine. He trained like it mattered. He treated every heat like a schedule he could perfect, as if effort could force his body to cooperate.
This doctor could understand that and could help him in a way the average specialist couldn’t.
Maybe—finally—Shane wouldn’t have to keep failing alone.
“Mr. Hollander?” A voice carries into the waiting room, bright enough to cut through the stale hush. Shane looks up to find a beta nurse in cheerful pink scrubs, smiling like this is any other Tuesday. The clinic is scrubbed clean, but there’s still a quiet undercurrent of designation, suppressants, antiseptic layered over faint traces of pheromones the ventilation can’t fully erase. “We’re ready for you.” She holds the door open.
“Thank you,” Shane manages, rising on legs that feel a half-second behind the rest of him. He follows her down a corridor that twists like a maze, walls lined with modern art: soft curves, abstract bodies. Swirls of color that are supposed to be calming. They make his stomach tighten instead, like the building itself knows what he’s here to ask for.
At the last door, she taps a screen outside it. His name pops up with his appointment time, clinical and undeniable. “Let’s get you seated and we’ll do your vitals,” she says, already efficient. “Do you mind answering a few questions while I do that?”
Shane shakes his head. He’s done this his whole life: show up, hold still, give them what they need.
He offers his arm for the blood pressure cuff.
“Any pain today?”
He opens his mouth obediently for the thermometer.
“What brings you in?”
A pulse ox clips onto his finger. The red light pulses, counting him like he’s a machine.
“When was your last heat? Was it medically assisted?”
He answers, one after another, the same words he’s rehearsed in his head. Calm. Reasonable. Like he isn’t walking around with want lodged under his ribs and the low-grade shame of an omega who can’t give an alpha what the world says should come easy.
He tries for a small smile, but it doesn’t reach far.
“All right,” she says more gently, like she can see the cracks even if she doesn’t name them. “The doctor will be in shortly. Go ahead and change into this gown and have a seat on the exam table. You can keep your socks on, but everything else needs to come off. I’m going to step out while you change. If you need anything, just call out.” Then she’s gone.
The room feels too quiet without her voice in it. Shane exhales shakily, fingers worrying the thin paper of the gown, and starts to undress.
The paper on the table crinkles every time Shane shifts, too loud in the hush of the room. It’s flimsy beneath him, but it feels like it’s announcing every breath, every ounce of nerves he’s trying to swallow. He shuts his eyes and forces himself to remember why he’s here. A family. A plan. A fix.
A couple of minutes drag by before his phone buzzes from the pile of clothes he left on the chair. Shane pushes off the exam table and checks the screen.
Ben: Sorry, can’t make it today
Ben: Lunch meeting ran long. See you at home!
Something in Shane goes oddly still. No flash of anger, no sting of surprise. Just that familiar, hollow drop, like his body has learned to brace before his mind can catch up. He stares at the messages until the words blur, then sets the phone facedown again.
Shane climbs back onto the table and folds his hands in his lap, willing himself to be composed. He tells himself it’s fine, that it shouldn’t hurt.
It does.
He’s cataloging the diagrams and models on the long counter when there’s a firm knock at the door.
It opens, and Shane holds his breath, struck right there on the flimsy paper sheet. The alpha—the doctor—is not what Shane pictured when he booked the appointment online. .
Doctor Rozanov is older than Shane expected, tall and solid under his white lab coat and scrubs, like someone built for collision and stillness in equal measure. His dark-gold curls sit in a soft halo, unruly enough to fall into his eyes. His skin is clear except for the scatter of moles across his cheeks, as if the sun once tried to map him, and his mouth—pink, sharply bowed—looks like it was made for smiles that could cut.
And then there’s his scent.
It rolls into the room a half-second after him, deep and earthy tobacco threaded with cinnamon and a sharp, clean slice of bergamot that makes Shane’s omega instincts sit up like they’ve been yanked by a leash. It’s controlled, contained, professional—an alpha who knows how to keep a lid on it—but it still fills the space in a way the antiseptic can’t.
Shane’s pulse stutters. His throat tightens around a breath that won’t go down. This is the man Shane is supposed to trust with the most fragile, aching thing he’s ever wanted.
“Hello, Mr. Hollander.” His accent is unmistakably Russian, each word careful and weighted. “I am Doctor Rozanov. I will be your physician for your fertility journey. It is nice to meet you.”
He extends his hand. Shane takes it, and for a heartbeat something warm flares between their palms before it’s gone, like a spark caught between skin and scent and too much want. Shane’s cheeks heat; he clears his throat and gives his name, trying to sound steadier than he feels.
Breathtaking doesn’t even cover it.