Chapter Text
The scent of liniment, damp leather, and sweat was thick enough to chew on, but Cliff Marleau hardly paid it any mind. He was sitting on the wooden bench with his knees spread, methodically lacing his left skate while the dull, rhythmic clack of taping rattled through the locker room.
Across from him, Hammersmith was wrestling his shoulder pads over his head, his face flushed red from the effort, while St-Simon leaned back against his locker, absentmindedly tossing a roll of black stick tape from hand to hand. Two stalls over, Koslov sat with one skate propped on his knee, carefully tightening the laces before reaching for the other.
Everything about the room felt completely normal—except for the gaping, empty stall at the far end where the number 81 jersey usually hung.
"LeClaire said 'family emergency,' right?" Hammersmith puffed out, wrestling his shoulder pads into place before giving his hair a futile ruffle. "That's what he said at morning skate yesterday."
St-Simon caught the tape roll in a tight fist, his brow knotting. "Yeah, but since when does Rozzy have a family?"
"Everyone’s got a family, St," Hammersmith scoffed, though there was a distinct lack of bite in his tone. "He didn't just spawn out of a snowbank in Moscow with an eight-hundred-gram stick."
"You know what I mean," St-Simon shot back, gesturing vaguely toward the empty stall with the roll of tape. "We’ve skated on the same ice for six years, three whole seasons with him as our captain. But have you ever heard the guy drop a single name? A parent, a brother, a cousin, a girl? Hell, a dog?"
Silence settled over their corner for a brief heartbeat.
Cliff paused, his fingers lingering on the stiff leather laces of his right boot. He ran a mental inventory, mentally rewinding through four years of post-game dinners, long charter flights across the continent, and late-night hotel room debauches. St-Simon wasn't wrong.
Rozzy was always there. When they hit the bars after a big win, he was right in the middle of the booth, downing cheap shots with a dark, satisfied glint in his eye. He gave the pre-game speeches that made a man feel like he could skate through a brick wall. He paid for team dinners without blinking, led the stretch off the ice, and stood between any of them and a referee's bad call without a second thought.
But the moment the team bus dropped them back at the arena in Boston? He vanished.
Nobody had ever been to his place. Nobody knew if he lived in a penthouse on the water or a bare apartment with a mattress on the floor. He didn't bring dates to the team galas, didn't talk about home, and certainly never offered up details about whatever ghosts he’d left behind in Russia.
"Maybe he’s just private," Koslov offered quietly. The older Russian didn't look up from his skate blade, his voice smooth and measured. "In the motherland, you learn quickly that keeping your mouth shut about home keeps home safe. Not everything is a story for the locker room."
"Yeah, but for six years, Kos?" Hammersmith leaned back, resting his elbows on his knees, his broad face genuinely puzzled. "When he was a rookie, sure. I figured the guy was just adjusting to the States. His English was spotty, he was trying not to get overwhelmed, and he spent every off-day probably trying to translate American television. But he’s fluent now. He knows how to tell a ref to fuck off in three different accents."
"It's an Alpha thing," St-Simon chimed in, echoing the exact theory Cliff had laid out over beers a few years back when the team had first started asking questions. St-Simon pointed a finger at Cliff. "Right? Like you told us."
Cliff let out a soft huff through his nose, tying his other boot and pulling the tongue forward. "Some of us like a pack," Cliff said, offering a small, easy shrug. "Some of us want the noise, the crowd, the whole mess of people around all the time. But a guy like Rozzy? You back him into a corner about his personal space, or try to dig into his territory, and he won't give you an explanation—he’ll just tear your throat out."
Hammersmith grimaced slightly, nodding as if the image made terrifyingly clear sense. "Yeah. Fair enough. I like my windpipe right where it is."
"Still," St-Simon murmured, his eyes drifting back to the empty locker, the absence of their terrifying, indestructible captain hanging over the room like a sudden drop in barometric pressure. "A family emergency means someone had to call him. And whatever they said... it kept Ilya Rozanov off the ice."
It was then, that the sharp, heavy snap of the locker room door echoed off the concrete walls, instantly cutting through the low hum of conversation.
Ilya stepped into the room.
He didn't look like a man who’d just taken two days off for a family crisis. His hair was slicked back, wet from the rain outside, his leather jacket tailored impeccably, and his expression was as unreadable as polished granite. The sheer presence of him seemed to shrink the room by half a foot.
"Hey, Cap," Hammersmith called out, raising a hand.
"Welcome back, Rozzy," St-Simon added, leaning off his locker.
Ilya merely let out a low, guttural grunt in response—a sound that barely registered as acknowledgment—before sweeping past them toward his stall at the end of the bench. He set his duffel down without a sound, unbuttoned his coat, and began shedding his jacket with fluid, practiced efficiency.
Cliff didn't say anything immediately. He just leaned back against his stall, his jersey draped over his broad shoulders, watching his captain through carefully neutral eyes.
As Ilya peeled off his shirt, the pale expanse of his back and shoulders came into view, marked by the thick, corded muscle built from years of relentless training. But as he turned toward his locker, the fluorescent overhead lights caught the dark ink etched over his left chest, right above his heart.
Cliff’s gaze lingered on it for a beat longer than it should have.
Nearly half the guys in the room had ink in that exact spot. After they’d won the Cup back in 2014, half the roster had gotten plastered during the parade, stumbled into a local shop in South Boston, and gotten matching, aggressive outlines of a roaring grizzly bear to mark the title. Ilya had been there that night, downing shots alongside them—but when it came time to sit in the chair, he’d flatly refused the bear.
Instead, he’d gotten a single, delicately detailed lily, its stem curling tightly around the number 24.
It made zero sense whatsoever. If it had been the number 14, Cliff could have written it off as a subtle nod to the 2014 championship year. But 24? Ilya wore 81. He’d worn 81 since he was a kid in the Russian junior leagues. And a lily—a soft, fragile flower—looked entirely alien stamped across the chest of a six-foot-three powerhouse who broke opponent sticks for fun.
Cliff had never asked about it. Nobody had. You didn't push Ilya on things he didn't offer up, even when you were his alternate captain. Yet sitting there, watching Ilya calmly pull his practice shirt over his head, the contradiction of the man grated against Cliff’s instincts.
When the guys had started asking questions a while back, Cliff had protected his captain's privacy. He’d given Hammersmith and St-Simon the whole speech about Alphas—how some leaders were social, pack-oriented men, while others were territorial, silent guardians who kept their inner sanctums locked tight. It was a good story. It made sense to the rest of the locker room, and it gave Ilya the distance he clearly wanted.
But the truth was, even Cliff felt the wall.
It wasn't that Ilya was cold. On the ice, he’d throw his body in front of a hundred-mile-an-hour slapshot to protect his goalie. Off the ice, if a rookie was struggling with rent, Ilya quietly handled it. He came to the bars, he bought the round, he celebrated the wins, and he took the heat from the press whenever the team dropped an ugly game.
He did everything a great captain was supposed to do. But he did it with the precise, detached execution of an executive running a corporation. He treated the Boston Bears as his primary responsibility, and his teammates like high-performing colleagues he respected—never once letting them slip past the velvet rope into his actual life.
Coworkers don't down six shots of vodka with you at two in the morning after beating Montreal, Cliff thought, finally putting on his jersey. Coworkers don't carry themselves like they're protecting a secret that would ruin them if it got out.
Across the room, Ilya slammed his locker door shut with a sharp clack, turning to lace up his skates, completely unaware—or entirely uncaring—of the eyes on his back.
Connors, still carrying the bright, starry-eyed innocence of a rookie who hadn't learned the unspoken landmines of the locker room, broke the silence without a second thought.
"Hey, Cap," Connors called out from three stalls down, pulling a clean sock over his foot. "How’s the family situation? Coach LeClaire said yesterday you missed morning skate because of that."
The air in the room instantly curdled. St-Simon winced, Hammersmith froze mid-reach for his water bottle, and Cliff braced himself for the immediate fallout. Instead, something miraculous happened. The harsh line of Ilya's jaw relaxed, his posture unspooling just a fraction as his blue eyes landed on the young rookie.
"My daughter was ill," Ilya explained, his thick accent softening around the edges. "High fever. She is fine now, but she wanted her papa to stay home with her, so... I stayed."
The locker room went dead, terrifyingly silent.
Hammersmith dropped his water bottle, the plastic clattering against the concrete. Koslov, who had just finished tapping his stick, dropped it in shock, while St-Simon was staring at Ilya as if the captain had suddenly broken into fluent Mandarin.
Connors, blissfully immune to the collective heart attack happening around him, just nodded with sweet, oblivious sympathy. "Oh, man, that sucks, Cap. How is she doing now?"
"Much better," Ilya replied, pulling his jersey over his head. "Just a small flu. It is going around. The nanny took her to the playground last weekend, and well... she must have caught it there."
"What's her name?" Connors asked easily.
"Yuri," Ilya answered softly. "Her name is Yuri."
Behind Cliff, St-Simon let out a low, breathless French curse under his breath, while Koslov let out a bewildered, muffled, "What the fuck?"
Cliff sat glued to his bench, unable to process the words coming out of his captain's mouth. He stared at the man he had considered his closest confidant on the team—the man whose back he’d covered in every brutal brawl, whose territory he had defended from gossiping teammates—as if he were looking at a complete stranger.
Ilya pulled his arms through his sleeves, finally noticing the suffocating silence hanging over the stalls. He looked around, his brow furrowing in genuine confusion. "What?"
Cliff couldn't hold it back anymore. "You... you have a daughter?"
"Yeah. I do,” Ilya blinked at him, completely unbothered. “What about it?"
"Since when?!" Cliff demanded, his voice cracking slightly under the sheer absurdity of the moment.
"Since rookie season," Ilya replied nonchalantly, adjusting his collar.
The room exploded into a chorus of stunned exclamations.
Koslov pointed a trembling finger at their captain. "Is that why you always vanished back then?! Every time we didn't have training or a game, you were completely unaccounted for!"
"Of course," Ilya scoffed, as if state secrets were as simple as basic math. "My mate was pregnant, and later he gave birth. I had to be there for them."
St-Simon’s head snapped up, his jaw practically hitting the floor. "He?! You mated a male Omega?!"
Cliff’s stomach plummeted. Omegas were already a rarity, but male Omegas? They were practically mythic. The kind of biological marvel people read about in textbooks, guarded with insane, ferocious possessiveness by their Alphas.
Ilya just raised a single, arrogant eyebrow, looking at St-Simon like he was an idiot. "Duh."
"But—but wait!" Hammersmith stammered, his face twisting in utter confusion as he pointed at Ilya. "After your rookie year, you started coming out to the bars with us! You picked up thousands of girls! Were you... were you fucking cheating on your mate?!"
The temperature in the room plummeted to absolute zero.
In a fraction of a second, the amused captain vanished. Ilya snapped around, his eyes flashing with a lethal, terrifying rage that made even six-foot-four Hammersmith flinch back against his locker.
"Don't you fucking dare to say that," Ilya growled, his voice dropping into a guttural, terrifying register that vibrated through the floorboards. "Or even insinuate it. Ever since I was seventeen years old, there has only ever been one person for me, and that is my Shanya. Do you understand me?"
Cliff sat paralyzed on his bench, staring at the man in front of him as if he were looking through a tear in the fabric of reality. He had spent years defending this guy's honor, convincing the rest of the room that Ilya was just a private Alpha with a thick shell.
But it seems like Cliff didn't know Ilya at all.
The blond Alpha swept a cold, contemptuous glance across the room, completely ignoring their stunned silence as he tapped his stick. "Why would you even think I was picking up girls? Or anyone else?"
Koslov cleared his throat, looking unusually small as he shifted his weight. "Well... on the road, you would always leave the bar early. And when we saw you back at the hotel, you always had this... satisfied look on your face. So, we assumed you got laid."
"I left early because I had to call my daughter and read her a bedtime story over the phone because she missed me," Ilya replied flatly. "And I looked satisfied because sexting, phone sex, and actual video calls exist. If all of you choose to forget your partners the second you step onto a team charter and decide to have a little fun on the side, that is on you. Not me. Do not bring that bullshit into my marriage."
A suffocating weight settled right in the pit of Cliff's stomach. A hot wave of guilt washed over him. He’d left a trail of casual, meaningless hookups in hotel rooms across half the cities in the league, never giving a second thought to the people waiting back home. Sitting there under Ilya’s searing, disgusted gaze, Cliff felt like absolute trash.
But right behind that shame came a flare of raw anger. The Alpha in Cliff surged to the surface, his chest tightening, his jaw grinding until a low, harsh growl scraped past his teeth.
"Why wouldn't you tell us?!" Cliff barked, stepping forward, his voice echoing off the concrete walls. "We are your friends, Ilya! Why keep all of this hidden?!"
Ilya let out a laugh—a sharp, mean, mocking sound that he usually reserved for riling up opposing centers during a heated face-off. "Friends?" he mocked, tilting his head with dark amusement. "You are my teammates. My coworkers. Not my friends. I decided that a long time ago. Ever since my rookie season, when I walked into this exact locker room for the first time and all I heard was slurs about fags, racist shit, and endless, disgusting talk about Omegas."
Ilya stepped right into Cliff’s space, his towering presence filling the corridor between the lockers.
"Why would I ever bring my Shanya around you?" Ilya sneered, his voice dropping into a dangerous, low rumble. "When all you do is talk about Omegas so rudely? So, crude?"
The shame in the room turned toxic. St-Simon stared at his own skates, his face burning red, while Koslov looked like he’d been slapped.
"Cap, come on..." Hammersmith stammered out, holding his hands up defensively, his voice weak. "That's—that's just locker room talk."
Ilya’s eyes snapped to Hammersmith like two burning ice cubes. "Is that so? Have you ever heard me use that kind of language for chirps? I am known as the most annoying player in this league. The chirping king. Yet I do not lower myself to insulting people like that, because that kind of language does not pass through my lips."
Silence slammed back down over the room, heavy and absolute. Nobody had a counter to that. Because it was true. Ilya tore opponents apart on the ice using their stat lines, their weak backhands, or their terrible positioning—he never used slurs.
Koslov swallowed hard, looking genuinely confused. "Then... why go out with us? Why come to the bars for drinks after games if you hated us that much?"
Ilya raised a single, unbothered eyebrow as he reached for his gloves. "My mate is half-Japanese, half-Canadian. We visit his family in Japan every off-season. His grandfather speaks to me often, teaching me how to be a proper leader and a good captain. In Japan, going out with your colleagues after work for drinks is a crucial part of building group cohesion."
He pulled his right glove on, flexing his fingers with a leather-tight snap.
"Shanya’s family has never led me astray," Ilya continued coldly, meeting Cliff’s wide, stunned eyes one last time. "So of course I followed their advice. It has worked well for this team so far. But those outings are business. Not friendship."
Cliff felt completely destroyed. Shame, guilt, and a bitter, hollow heartbreak slammed into him all at once, leaving him standing there feeling like an utter piece of shit.
“That’s just locker room talk.” What a pathetic, spineless excuse.
For years, Cliff had convinced himself he was one of the good guys—a solid leader, a respectable Alpha, and a good teammate. But looking back through Ilya’s eyes, the truth was sickening. Ilya had arrived in Boston as an eighteen-year-old kid—alone in a foreign country, struggling with a new language, carrying the terrifying, incredible secret that he was about to become a father with his male Omega mate. He had probably walked into that room eager, expectant, maybe even hoping to find a brotherhood to lean on.
And what had they given him? A toxic wall of crude, racist bullshit, casual slurs, and men talking about Omegas like they were nothing more than disposable sex toys. Ilya hadn't kept his life secret because he was cold or arrogant. He had hidden his half-Japanese mate away to protect him from them.
"I'm... I'm so sorry, Cap," a small voice broke through the thick awkwardness.
Connors was standing near his stall, looking up at Ilya with wide, devastated eyes. The rookie looked genuinely sickened, his shoulders slumped in genuine remorse for the room he'd inherited.
Ilya stopped. He turned back, and in a split second, the sharp, lethal edge in his posture melted away. His blue eyes softened as he looked down at the young Alpha pup.
"Not you, rook," Ilya said, his tone shockingly gentle compared to the ice he’d just poured over the rest of them. "You are one of the good ones. I have not heard you say any shit like that."
Ilya reached out, tossing an arm over Connors' shoulders and pulling the kid easily against his side. He turned toward the double doors, slinging his helmet into his other hand without looking back.
"Move it, boys," Ilya called out coldly over his shoulder, his voice returning to its sharp, commanding rattle. "Get on the ice. If you are not on the rink in five minutes, I will make you skate suicides until you vomit."
Neither the threat nor the slamming of the heavy locker room doors made anyone flinch.
No one moved. Nobody rushed to pull on their gloves or reach for their helmets. The remaining men stood frozen in their stalls, staring at the empty doorway like men who had just watched a bomb go off in the center of the room.
Koslov slowly lowered himself onto the wooden bench, running two trembling hands over his face before letting out a long, shuddering breath. "We fucked up," he whispered into the dead silence, his voice raspy and devoid of any fight. "God... we really fucked up."
Cliff swallowed the bitter lump in his throat, his heart aching as he stared at the spot where his captain had just been standing. "Yeah," he managed to choke out, the word feeling like ash on his tongue. "We did."