Shane Hollander arrived at the practice facility at 6:47 AM, earlier than necessary but not early enough to seem strange. The parking lot was nearly empty—just the overnight security guard's sedan and Coach Thibault's truck. Shane parked in his usual spot in the far corner, away from where the rest of the team would cluster later, and grabbed his gear bag from the passenger seat.
The building was quiet. That was the point.
He scanned his keycard and stepped inside, and the smell hit him immediately. It was always worse in the morning, before the ventilation system really got going, before the building filled with people and movement and the dozens of other scents that would layer over it. Ice and rubber and the sharp tang of cleaning solution. Underneath it, faint but unmistakable: the smell of other people. Sweat and skin and something else, something he didn't have words for. Something he shouldn't be able to detect at all.
The suppressants worked. They did. He'd been on them for nine years and they worked.
But they didn't make him beta. They just made him pass.
Shane breathed through his mouth and headed for the locker room.
It was empty, exactly as it should be. He dressed quickly in his stall—compression shorts, jock, cup, shin guards, hockey socks. His jersey hung above him, number 24, HOLLANDER across the shoulders. He pulled it on, then laced his skates with the same tension he always used, the same pattern of crossovers, the same double-knot at the top. Not because he'd timed it or measured it, but because this was how skates were supposed to feel. Anything else was wrong.
By seven, he was on the ice.
This was the best part. The only part that made sense.
The rink was empty and silent except for the sound of his edges cutting into the ice. Shane started with laps—long, smooth strides, building speed gradually. His body knew what to do. He didn't have to think. Thinking was for everything else, for the constant monitoring and measuring and managing. On the ice, he just moved.
He ran through his drills. Crossovers, transitions, backward skating. Edge work until his thighs burned. Then stickhandling—figure eights, tight turns, the puck an extension of his body. He'd done these drills ten thousand times. A hundred thousand. The repetition didn't bore him. The repetition was the point.
Hockey made sense. There were rules, patterns, plays that worked and plays that didn't. Cause and effect. If you did the work, you got the results. It wasn't like talking to people, where he could say the same thing twice and get completely different reactions for reasons he couldn't parse. It wasn't like trying to figure out if someone was joking or serious, if they wanted him to laugh or agree or argue back. On the ice, everything was clear.
At 7:23, he heard the door open. Footsteps on the rubber floor, then the sound of skates on ice.
"Jesus, Hollander. You ever sleep?"
Shane didn't stop moving. "Morning, Petey."
Marcus Peterson, one of their defensemen, skated a lazy circle around center ice. He wasn't wearing gloves yet, just holding his stick loosely in one hand. "You know practice doesn't start till 7:45, right?"
"I know what time practice starts."
Petey laughed. "Yeah, I bet you do."
Shane didn't know what that meant. He didn't ask.
By 7:50, the rest of the team had filtered in. The rink filled with noise—voices, laughter, the crack of pucks against boards. Shane felt the shift in his chest, the way his shoulders tensed without him meaning them to. Too many sounds at once, overlapping, and he couldn't track all of them. Someone's music was playing from a phone near the bench, something with too much bass. Someone else was yelling across the ice, and two guys were having a conversation right behind him, close enough that he could feel the vibration of their voices.
He focused on the puck. On his stick. On the drill.
Coach Thibault blew his whistle and they ran through the practice plan. Warm-up drills, breakout patterns, power play units. Shane skated harder than he needed to. He always skated harder than he needed to.
"Hollander, you're jumping the route," Coach called out during a zone entry drill. "Wait for the center to commit."
Shane nodded and ran it again. And again. And again, until his legs were shaking and his lungs burned and Coach finally said, "Good. That's good."
Good wasn't good enough. Good was what everyone else was.
They ran a scrimmage for the last thirty minutes of practice. Shane was on the second line—left wing, his natural position. He played his game: fast, relentless, always moving. He didn't have the raw skill of some of the guys on the first line, didn't have their hands or their vision. But he worked. He forechecked like his life depended on it, he backchecked, he went into the corners where no one wanted to go. He took the hits and got back up.
During a board battle, Reeves—one of their bigger defensemen—pinned him against the glass. The contact was hard, his weight crushing into Shane's shoulder, his breath hot against the side of Shane's face. The smell of him flooded Shane's nose: sweat and deodorant and something sharper, more animal. Alpha. His brain supplied the word before he could stop it.
Shane shoved him off and skated away, chasing the puck.
He didn't think about it. He didn't think about any of it.
After practice, the locker room was chaos. Twenty guys stripping off gear, talking over each other, music playing from someone's phone. The smell was overwhelming—sweat and steam and too many bodies in too small a space. Shane could pick out individual scents if he wasn't careful: Petey's cologne, sharp and citrusy. The alpha musk rolling off Reeves and Kowalski and half the defense corps. The sweeter, lighter scent of the betas.
He kept his head down and undressed quickly. Gloves, elbow pads, shoulder pads, jersey. He didn't shower here. He never showered here. The thought of being naked in a room full of his teammates, water and steam and nowhere to look that wasn't another person's body—no. He told them he had a thing about athlete's foot. He told them his apartment was close. He told them whatever he needed to tell them.
"Yo, Hollander!" Someone threw a towel at him. He caught it on reflex, even though he didn't need it. "You coming to Mulligan's tonight?"
Shane hung the towel on the hook. "Can't. I have a thing."
"You always have a thing."
He didn't respond. After a second, whoever it was—he thought it was Jansen—gave up and turned back to his conversation.
Shane pulled on his street clothes and packed his bag. His hands were steady. They were always steady.
In the parking lot, he sat in his car for three minutes with the windows down, breathing in the cold October air. His heart rate was still elevated from practice. That was normal. The faint tremor in his hands was normal too—he'd pushed hard today, harder than usual. The vague sense of wrongness sitting at the base of his skull, the feeling that his skin didn't quite fit right, the hyperawareness of every scent on the breeze—
That was normal too. That was just what it was.
The suppressants worked. He took them every day, and they worked.
He started the car and drove.
Dr. Yeo's office was in a medical building forty minutes outside the city. Shane had been coming here every Wednesday at 1:00 PM for nine years. She wasn't a team doctor. She wasn't affiliated with the Centaurs or the league in any way. She was just a private physician who specialized in omega health and didn't ask questions he didn't want to answer.
The waiting room was always empty when he arrived. That was by design—he was her only 1:00 PM appointment, and she didn't schedule anyone before or after him. He checked in with the receptionist, who barely looked up, and took a seat.
At 1:03, the door opened. "Shane."
Dr. Yeo was in her fifties, small and efficient, with gray hair cut short. She was beta. That mattered. Shane didn't know if he could do this if she were anything else.
He followed her back to the exam room and sat on the paper-covered table. She washed her hands, pulled on gloves, and drew up the injection without preamble. They'd been doing this long enough that they didn't need to talk about it.
"How are you feeling?" she asked, swabbing the inside of his elbow.
"Fine."
"Any breakthrough symptoms? Cramping, temperature sensitivity, scent sensitivity?"
"No."
She gave him a look. "Shane."
"Nothing I can't manage."
She sighed but didn't push. The needle slid in, and Shane watched the clear liquid disappear into his vein. Testosterone cypionate, 200mg. The same dose he'd been on since he was sixteen years old.
"You're due for bloodwork," she said, withdrawing the needle and pressing a cotton ball to the injection site. "I want to check your levels."
Shane nodded. She took four vials, labeled them, and set them aside.
"Everything looks good," she said, stripping off her gloves. "But Shane—you know this isn't a permanent solution. At some point—"
"It's working."
"For now. But suppressants aren't meant to be used indefinitely. The long-term effects—"
"I know the risks."
She studied him for a long moment. "You're twenty-five years old. You've been on medical suppressants for nine years. That's longer than most omegas stay on them. At some point, your body is going to push back."
"Then I'll deal with it then."
"Will you?"
Shane met her eyes. "I don't have a choice."
She didn't argue. She never did. She just made a note in his chart and told him she'd see him next week.
In the car, Shane sat with his hands on the steering wheel and felt the suppressant working its way through his system. It wasn't immediate—the shot took a few hours to reach full effect—but there was a psychological component too. Just knowing it was in him, knowing he had another week of protection, another week of passing.
Another week of being able to play hockey.
Because that was what it came down to. If anyone found out—if the team found out, if the league found out—it would be over. Not officially, maybe. They couldn't cut him just for being omega, not legally. But they wouldn't have to. They'd just stop playing him. They'd say he wasn't fast enough, wasn't strong enough, wasn't good enough. They'd say he was a liability, a distraction. They'd make it impossible to stay.
And even if they didn't, even if by some miracle they kept him on—he'd never be taken seriously again. He'd be the omega player. The novelty. The exception that proves the rule.
Omegas didn't play professional hockey. Omegas were too small, too weak, too emotional. Too distracted by their heats and their biology and their overwhelming urge to submit to the nearest alpha.
Never mind that Shane was 6'1" and 185 pounds. Never mind that he was faster than half the team and had better endurance than most. Never mind that he'd never missed a game, never been injured, never let his biology interfere with his performance.
It wouldn't matter. The second they knew, it would all be over.
And there was the other thing. The thing he didn't think about, the thing he'd never let himself examine.
Ninety-five percent of omegas were gay.
Shane didn't know if he was. He'd never—he didn't—
It didn't matter. Because even if he was part of the five percent, even if he was the statistical anomaly, no one would believe it. The second they found out he was omega, they'd assume. And then every interaction, every moment in the locker room, every accidental touch or shared hotel room would be recontextualized. He'd be the gay omega in a league full of alphas and betas, and it wouldn't matter what the truth was.
So he didn't think about it. He took his suppressants, he showed up early and stayed late, and he played hockey. That was all he'd ever wanted to do. That was all he needed.
Shane started the car and drove home, and he didn't let himself think about what would happen if the suppressants ever stopped working.
They wouldn't. They hadn't in nine years.
They wouldn't.
Coach ran intra-squad scrimmages every Friday—red team versus white team, thirty minutes of controlled intensity to keep everyone sharp. Shane had just finished his shift on the ice, his jersey damp with sweat, his breathing still elevated as he peeled off his gloves and moved into the handshake line. Standard protocol. Win or lose, you acknowledged the other team.
Shane's legs burned as he moved through the handshake line, his gloves already off, hand extended mechanically to each player from the other scrimmage team. Tap, shake, move. Tap, shake, move. The routine was simple, predictable. He'd done it hundreds of times—after practices, after intra-squad games, the same ritual of sportsmanship even when they were all teammates.
Then someone stepped in front of him, and the air changed.
The scent hit him first—before he even registered the face, before his hand made contact. It slammed into him like a physical force, rich and dark and impossibly present. Cedar and something else, something Shane had no word for. His suppressants had kept him insulated for nine years, kept the world muted and manageable, kept him safe in his carefully constructed beta existence. But this—this punched straight through every chemical barrier he'd built.
Shane's hand was already moving forward. Muscle memory. He couldn't stop it.
Their palms connected.
The touch sent a jolt up his arm, and his body responded with immediate, horrifying efficiency. Heat flooded his core. He felt the telltale slickness begin between his legs, his body producing something it hadn't made in nearly a decade. His cock stirred in his cup, starting to harden despite every mental command he threw at it to stop, stop, stop.
"Good game." The voice was accented, smooth. Russian, maybe. Shane's eyes finally focused on the face: sharp cheekbones, dark eyes that seemed to catch everything, a slight smile that looked genuine rather than perfunctory.
Shane's hand was still in his. He needed to let go. He needed to move. His body was betraying him with every passing second, slick gathering, arousal building, his heart rate spiking in a way that had nothing to do with the game he'd just played.
He yanked his hand back.
"You played well," the man continued. His smile widened slightly. Number ...Shane's brain scrambled for the information. Ilya Rozanov. Left wing. Twenty-three goals this season. "That breakaway in the second period—very fast, very smart."
The words registered as sounds first, then meaning. A compliment. Social lubrication. The thing people said to each other in handshake lines to demonstrate sportsmanship and mutual respect.
Shane stared at him.
His body was screaming. More slick, enough that he could feel it now, the wet warmth that shouldn't exist, that couldn't exist, not here, not now. His cock was definitely hard, straining against his cup. The scent was everywhere, filling his nose, his lungs, seeping into his brain and scrambling his thoughts.
"I didn't score," Shane said.
It was true. He'd been stopped by the goalie. The breakaway had failed. The compliment made no sense.
Rozanov blinked. His smile faltered, just slightly, confusion flickering across his features. "Yes, but the attempt was—"
"I need to go."
Shane didn't wait for a response. He moved past Rozanov, past the remaining players in line, his legs carrying him with mechanical precision even as his body continued its revolt. Every step produced more slick. His cock throbbed. The scent clung to him, or maybe it was following him, or maybe it had embedded itself in his sinuses and would never leave.
The tunnel. He needed the tunnel. The locker room. Somewhere private where he could lock himself in a bathroom stall and figure out what the fuck was happening to his body.
Behind him, he heard someone say something in Russian. Rozanov's voice. Shane didn't turn around.
His hands were shaking. He clenched them into fists, nails biting into his palms. The pain helped. It gave him something concrete to focus on besides the liquid heat between his legs and the persistent hardness in his cup and the scent that had somehow rewired his entire nervous system in the span of thirty seconds.
Nine years. Nine years of suppressants, of careful management, of passing as beta without a single slip.
Thirty seconds with Ilya Rozanov, and his body had tried to give away everything.
Shane pushed through the locker room door and headed straight for the bathroom stalls, not making eye contact with any of his teammates. He locked himself in the furthest one and leaned against the cool metal wall, breathing hard.
His body was still producing slick. His cock was still hard. And that scent—cedar and something unnamed, something that had reached inside him and flipped switches that were supposed to stay off—lingered in his memory like a brand.
He didn't understand what had happened.
He didn't understand why his body had responded to one specific person when it had remained dormant, obedient, controlled for nearly a decade.
He didn't understand the panic that was now crawling up his throat, or the way his chest felt tight, or why his hands wouldn't stop shaking.
Shane closed his eyes and started counting his breaths. One. Two. Three. Four.
The physical sensations would pass. They had to pass. He would wait here until his body returned to normal, until the slick stopped and the arousal faded and he could walk back out into the locker room without anyone noticing that something had gone catastrophically wrong.
He would avoid Ilya Rozanov.
He would never let that happen again.
Four hundred and seventy-three breaths later, Shane's body finally began to cooperate. The slickness slowed, then stopped. His erection faded. His heart rate dropped back toward baseline.
He cleaned himself up with toilet paper, flushed the evidence, and emerged from the stall.
In the mirror, his face looked exactly the same as always. Neutral. Unremarkable. No indication that his entire world had just tilted on its axis.
Good.
Shane returned to his locker and began the familiar routine of undressing, showering, redressing. No one asked where he'd been. No one looked at him strangely.
He'd held it together. Barely, but he'd done it.
As he pulled his shirt over his head, he caught a faint trace of that scent again—cedar and unnamed things—and realized with creeping horror that it was on his skin, absorbed through that single handshake.
Shane grabbed his bag and left the locker room without saying goodbye to anyone.
He needed to get home. He needed to take his suppressants. He needed to research whether nine years of continuous use could cause sudden failure, and if so, what the fuck he was supposed to do about it.
And he needed to never, ever shake Ilya Rozanov's hand again.