Chapter Text
PROLOGUE
"See you at the draft."
That was what Rozanov had said on the ice, after the second World Juniors' tournament Shane had played against him. He was cocky and confident then, all shit-eating grins and bright blue eyes. Russia had won that year, after facing defeat the year before.
It had been a hard pill to swallow. The Canadian team had faced too many upsets that season, and many of them came to a head during the finals. Last-minute presenting in some of the younger guys, a couple of first-time ruts hitting early for a few of the older ones, and an overall disconnect between the entire team that simply hadn't been there the year before.
Shane hated it. He just wanted to play hockey — good hockey — but stupid fucking hormones and biology had other ideas. His well-oiled machine of a team from the year before had broken down and spun out right when it mattered most.
He could at least take pride in knowing his individual effort had been strong. He had presented over the summer as an alpha, and was incredibly mindful of the changes that had on his moods and his mindset. He worked incredibly hard to keep himself in check and to stay focused on his game. Where others were distracted and agitated and throwing fists both on and off the ice, Shane had stayed the course. He kept his head down. He played the best game he could possibly play. The scouts were still watching, no matter what his hormones were up to, and he made sure to give them something to write home about every time he took a shift on the ice.
The Russian team was, by comparison, perfect. Almost abnormally so.
Their guys didn't fight. They didn't scream and yell and argue with the refs every ten seconds. They moved smoothly, a unit rather than disconnected pieces, and they were rewarded for their cohesion with easy goals and a decisive victory. The testosterone-fueled implosions that kept tripping up the Canadian team just didn't seem to exist within Russia's ranks.
As Shane gripped and shook Rozanov's hand in the line, he tried to catch his scent, just a little. For all the hours he spent over the past two years studying (and practically stalking) him, Shane had no idea what he had presented as. His nostrils flared as he tried to catch something, anything that might give him a clue, but there was nothing but the stink of his own team's spite and disappointment.
As far as scent went, it was as if the Russians weren't even there.
"See you at the draft," Shane mumbled back, nearly forgetting to respond.
Rozanov grinned and winked at him, and then he was gone.
The news broke two weeks before the NHL draft.
The Russian Youth Hockey Organization had just been busted for a doping scandal — except it wasn't performance enhancing drugs they had been slipping their prospects to keep their competitive edge. Evidence had surfaced that they had been suppressing the presentation of their athletes' second genders with an altered form of puberty blockers. Almost all of the Russian team that Shane had faced were pre-presentation, and he had no idea until the articles came flooding out.
It explained the lack of scent on the ice. The effortless way the Russian team was able to work together and avoid penalties and conflicts. Their win at the last World Juniors championship was voided, and all of the athletes involved in the scandal were rendered ineligible for any professional draft, both in Russia and the west.
Which was how Shane Hollander became the number one first round pick, chosen by the Boston Raiders. He smiled and held up his new black and gold jersey, all while his mother held her nose in disgust that he would be playing for Montreal's most bitter rival.
He knew Rozanov was still in Russia. That he might have even been arrested for his involvement in the scandal. But even so, Shane spent the rest of the day waiting to hear his name and number called. He kept scanning the room, hoping to see that familiar head of dark blonde curls and those witty blue-green eyes looking back at him.
He had said so, after all. It had almost felt like a promise. See you at the draft.
But he didn't.
He wouldn't see Ilya Rozanov again for another five years.
1.
"Uh oh. I know that look."
Shane braces for the inevitable impact on his shoulders — and there it is, predictable as a sunrise. Cliff Marleau's heavy, broad hand slaps between his shoulder blades, a solid one-two thumping that demands all of Shane's attention be turned onto his alternate captain.
"No idea what you're talking about, Marley," Shane deflects uselessly.
"Bullshit. You've got that 'I'm-about-to-go-into-rut-and-I-wanna-kill-myself' look going on. Don't think I don't know what it looks like on you by now, brother." Cliff says it casually, grinning through it, as if it's a joke and not a very real, very painful fact.
Shane shrugs him off. "It's not a big deal," he mutters. "I'll only be out for a couple of games. You guys will be okay."
He had talked to the trainers and coaches as soon as he got to the rink that morning and let them know what was going on with him. He honestly wouldn't have minded disclosing the information if it didn't always come with the same thing: pity. The way everyone looked at him whenever he told them he was going into his rut made him want to tear his hair out. The sympathetic little pouts and sighs and glances at his neck and bare ring finger always made him feel the need to puff out his chest and tell them to fuck off.
Poor Hollander, they said without saying it. Unbonded, unmarried, about to endure up to a week of fucking nothing but his hands or a whore. Couldn't have happened to a nicer guy, really. Such a shame.
They don't treat Cliff that way, and it pisses Shane off to no end. Cliff is the most notorious bachelor on the team, always hounding after girls in bars and clubs but refusing to ever settle down. His throat is also free of a bonding scar, his ring finger unburdened by a wedding band.
Maybe it's because Cliff is so raunchy and free-wheeling that people don't think to pity him. Obviously, he's not hard-up for pussy when it's time for his rut. He can score without even trying. A guy like Cliff Marleau is only ever alone because he wants to be. As soon as he no longer wants to be, he can snap his fingers and company will materialize in his bed, just like that.
Shane does not share this ease. He never has. Even after winning the Cup last season, he had gone home alone.
It isn't as if he never has offers. Gorgeous, heady-smelling omegas and funny, charming betas flock to him in droves. Youngest captain to ever bring home the Cup in Boston. First pick overall in his draft class. Good-looking, wealthy, free of the many hangups and addictions that plague so much of the NHL's dating pool. Shane is a catch, and he knows it, and it doesn't fucking matter because at the end of the day, he's broken. An aberration. A flaw in the system.
He's an alpha, and he's a professional hockey player, and he's gay.
He knows that, in an ideal world, he could be two of those three things with relative ease. Gay alphas exist. Gay hockey players probably exist — albeit in secret, he's sure. And while it might have affected his stats somewhat, he still could have been at a competitive level like he is today even as a beta. He might not have ever made the top line, but there's nothing wrong with being a second-stringer, either.
But to be all three at the same time is to constantly be at war with himself. He is a study of contradictions, a myriad of incompatible features. He cannot hide the fact that he is an alpha. He cannot change the fact that he is gay. He refuses to give up the career he fought so hard to secure for himself in this sport that he loves so fiercely. So he lets one aspect of himself do the talking for the other two, and hopes no one interrogates it too deeply when push comes to shove.
His goddamn rut is one of those times when push comes to shove.
He could do what so many of his teammates do (or did) when going through their ruts without a mate. He could find a sex worker and shack up in a hotel for a week and fuck his problems away. But that would require him to solicit a male omega in his area, and that was a risk he simply can't take. Word could get out. He could be recognized. He just can't afford the scrutiny or the potential outing.
It would be so much easier if his rut would just do him a favor and hit during the offseason, but it never, ever does. It's always sometime between December and February, the world's worst Christmas present, and it causes him to miss his games and practices until it is finally over.
It is, in short, a giant pain in the ass.
"Jesus, Marley wasn't kidding," Feller chuckles as Shane tugs on his pads in his stall. "You really do look like you wanna kill yourself. Is it that bad?"
Shane sighs, shaking his head. He does not want to discuss this with his team. He wants to get on the ice and focus on practice. He wants to work on shaping up their penalty kill. He wants to help Dubek with his edgework. He wants to play hockey and not have to manage the slowly-building crisis of his impending rut.
"It's just annoying," Shane replies curtly.
"Yeah, I don't miss spending it alone. Christy was a godsend." Feller pauses, sizing Shane up for a moment. Shane braces for the same tired speech everyone has already given him about the benefits of settling down or another run-through the same exhausted list of brothels and hookup apps they've used in the past.
But that's not what he gets. Instead, Feller drops his voice and leans over into Shane's stall. "Listen, Cap, I know you don't do hookups and shit like that. I got a buddy down in the AHL that found somebody online. Real convenient, real confidential. Whatever it is you're looking for, you can probably find it on there. Want me to send you the website?"
Shane blinks at him. "I thought you just said that you know I don't do hookups," he says, confused.
"This isn't a dating site. This is… different. No hookups. This is a play-for-keeps kinda thing. You interested?"
Shane frowns, his mind working a mile a minute. He doesn't completely understand what Feller's getting at — which means it's probably nothing to worry about. It likely won't be the solution Shane needs, but something about the way he phrased it tickles in Shane's mind. Real convenient, real confidential. Two things he definitely wouldn't mind when it comes to his rut.
"Okay, sure," he finally replies. "Text it to me, I'll check it out later."
Feller winks at him and reaches for his phone. Shane leaves his in his stall, pulling on his practice jersey and lacing up his skates. The conversation is forgotten as he heads out of the locker room and onto the ice, where all thoughts of ruts and omegas and hookups fall away. Shane moves through the drills and practice maneuvers and plays like a fish through water. His body thrums with energy, vital and strong, as he glides over the frozen sheet.
He wishes, not for the first time, that his biology had understood that this was what he was truly made for.
It's not until late that night that Shane remembers his conversation with Feller.
He's at home, trying to wind down for the night, but the background of noise of his impending rut is keeping him too keyed up to relax. It'll be on him in two, maybe three days, and it's making him anxious. His skin feels too hot, too tight. He feels like he needs to run ten miles at a dead sprint. Like he needs to go five rounds in the ring with a heavyweight boxer. Like he needs to do anything to burn off this energy and tension coiling in his body.
He's trying to stretch out on his yoga mat, a tried and true method for easing him into restfulness, but it's not working. His muscles still feel too tight, no matter how much he contracts and relaxes them. It doesn't help that every pose that puts his hips higher than his head makes his blood simmer with anticipation. Every brush of his clothes against his groin serves to stroke him into an erection that, by the time he's done with his usual routine, is so hard it's bordering on painful.
Fuck.
He takes a cool shower, stroking himself under the spray, hoping the release and the water will settle him somewhat. He comes with a grunt against the tile and watches it wash away, but already, he feels his balls pulsing and twitching with the need to go again. He only softens halfway by the time he's done washing up and has toweled off, his cock all but begging to get fully hard again.
With a sigh, Shane reaches for his phone, planning to start pulling up his usual videos to get off to. Maybe he needs visual stimulation as well as physical to work this out of his system. Nothing will help when the rut is fully upon him, he knows, but at least for now it should scratch the itch, right?
It's only once he unlocks his phone that he sees the unread text from that morning's practice from Feller. It's just a link, along with a cryptic warning: don't open on ur phone, use ur computer only.
Okay. Well. He's curious now, despite his overly-warm skin and his overly-attentive dick. He heads to his desk and turns on his computer, pulling up his private browser and typing in the strangely phrased URL and hitting enter.
Immediately, he is prompted to install a VPN, which he already has, but this website wants another one before allowing him access. Cautious but still determined, Shane agrees to install the program. It has to translate from Russian, but that's the last hoop he seemingly has to jump through. His alarms are about to go off, he knows, but he doesn't run into any other obstacles, so he relaxes as the page finally loads.
At least, until he realizes what he's looking at.
At first glance, it looks like a dating website. Photos of women — all of them white — grace the screen in rows of three. They all stand in front of an identical blank background, their faces made up, their hair styled, their expressions oddly blank. Instead of names, though, each is labeled with a letter and a numerical code.
Upon clicking the first, Shane is brought to a page that details not personality and interests, but… statistics. Height in both inches and centimeters. Weight in pounds and kilos. Hair and eye color. Age. Languages spoken. Even measurements for things like hips and bust and wingspan.
And in big, bold font: A price.
"Oh my fucking God," Shane gasps, nausea gripping his gut like a fist. "This is human trafficking. This is literally human trafficking. What the fuck, Feller??"
He knows he's alone and no one is watching him, but he suddenly feels as if the police are going to throw open his door and take him into custody. His hand twitches his mouse cursor up into the right corner of the screen to close the page — but then a tab catches his eye.
Male Omegas.
And — Shane knows he shouldn't. He knows the longer he stays on this incredibly sketchy, gross website, the more he's opening himself up to a federal warrant for his arrest. But damn him, the hormones spike yet again when he reads those two words. He has less than a week until he is beset by his rut and won't be able to think about anything but sex. He's gotten through it with his hand and his fleshlight in the past, but God, something about not having another warm, willing body in the room with him seems to make it drag on even longer.
This would be so much easier. So much more fulfilling.
Real convenient. Real confidential.
Shane clicks on the tab. He tells himself it's just to look. It's probably not even real. It's probably just badly photoshopped pictures of people that don't even exist. It's —
It's him.
Top row, third photo on the right. He's older now, his face sharper, the shadow of stubble darker on his jaw and upper lip. His hair is relatively the same, thick and curly and combed back from his face to better display his profile. His shoulders and arms are huge, thickly muscled and on full display in his shirtless photo.
But it's his eyes that make Shane's breath catch.
Those mirthful blue-green eyes stare back at him from the webpage, and they look flat. Empty. Dead.
"Rozanov," Shane whispers. "What the fuck have they done to you?"
Shane clicks on the profile without deciding to do it. The page opens up, the photo larger, the eyes even more horrible up close. He is nameless here, but Shane would know him anywhere. His only identifier on this website is a simple tag: R-1919. His statistics are all laid out in terrifying detail. And the price…
The price is barely a fraction of what was listed on the woman's profile that Shane had closed out of. Shane has always wondered what Rozanov ended up presenting as, and now it would seem he has his answer. If this website can be believed, he's an omega, and judging from the price, male omegas from Russia are not in high demand.
Shane feels sick. He feels like he wants to cry or scream or throw up or all three. His hands are sweating and shaking. His heart is pounding behind his ribs. There's no way to tell how long this has been up for, but Shane feels like he needs to do something about it now. But what the fuck is he supposed to do? Call the police? In Boston? The website is clearly based overseas. They probably have several layers of protection to keep their source from being pinned down. As soon as anyone cries wolf, it will likely just go underground and he'll never be able to find Rozanov again.
He decides, right then and there, that he can't take that risk.
The website wants a credit card, his personal contact information, and a copy of his ID. As Shane grabs his wallet, all he can think is My mom is going to fucking kill me. Every common sense warning he has ever been taught about internet safety goes flying out the window. It's entirely possible, he knows, that this is just going to result in a nightmare for his bank and a very expensive lesson in not getting his identity stolen on the dark web.
But it's also possible that this is all real. That Ilya Rozanov is being kept in a fucking car trunk somewhere in Russia, waiting for a fucking buyer to purchase him and get him out. And if that's true, then it's only a matter of time before someone else makes that purchase… or something worse happens when whoever these people are decide that Ilya isn't worth the upkeep anymore.
What happens to trafficked people when their handlers decide that their shelf life has expired?
It's too horrible for Shane to bear. He has to believe this is real, and that he can make a difference for this one person. He has never considered himself a brave person, but just this once, he wants to be brave for someone else. For the boy with pretty eyes and an easy grin who had challenged him on the ice in a way that Shane had never been challenged before and has never been challenged again since.
Once he finishes typing in his information and uploading the requested documents, Shane pauses. His hand hovers over his mouse, which is locked on the "confirm and pay" button. He grabs his phone before he clicks it and opens his camera, taking a grainy photo of the screen. The embarrassing truth of his transaction is captured, yes, but more importantly, the photo of Rozanov is as well. If nothing else, should this turn out to be a scam, Shane can try to reverse image search it and see where the picture originally came from. Maybe he can figure out what Rozanov has been doing since juniors.
The photo taken, Shane takes a deep breath and clicks the button to confirm the worst purchase of his life.
The screen goes blank, save for a thin line of text. "Thank you for your purchase. You will be contacted shortly with your next steps. This page will now redirect."
In the time it takes Shane to read and register the words, the screen goes white, refreshing, and suddenly the tab closes itself. He's dumped back to his home screen, browser open, the new VPN nowhere to be found. He opens his browser history and finds it completely blank. Paranoid, he runs a scan with his antivirus program, but nothing is flagged as suspicious. There's not even a damn cookie to report.
He types in the URL again from Feller's text. When he hits enter, the page comes up with a 404 error. Page not found.
It's like the website never existed.
"Fuck," Shane hisses through his teeth, slumping back in his chair.
At the very least, his boner is truly, officially dead.
The phone call arrives at 4:15 in the morning.
Shane jerks awake, his already fitful sleep shredded to pieces by the angry vibrating of his phone on his nightstand. The number is unknown, formatted in an unfamiliar way, and Shane finally realizes that it's an out-of-country area code.
You will be contacted shortly with your next steps.
He answers the call. "Hello?"
"Mister Hollander," says a thickly accented voice on the other line. It's a woman's voice, deep and stern and commanding. "Thank you for your purchase. Please take notes. Your package will be shipped to you in two days. It will arrive at Boston Logan International Airport at approximately 6:15 PM local time. You will be required to come in person to pick up the package. Custody will not be transferred to any third party. Do you understand?"
Shane can hear his heartbeat in his eardrums. His pulse feels like it's crawling out of his throat and into his mouth like a giant, rebellious toad. "I understand," he replies, his voice sounding strangled.
"Once secured, your package will be your responsibility. The task of securing permanent legal status and residence falls to you. A spouses-and-bondmates visa will be the most efficient method for you to achieve this. You are encouraged to bond with your package as soon as possible to solidify this claim. Failure to do so may result in your package being seized and returned to the country of origin. We are not responsible for any personal injury or loss associated with the package once custody is transferred. Do you understand?"
Shane feels certain he's about to pass out. "I understand."
"You will also be responsible for explaining the origins of your package. The avenue through which your package has been procured is not legal in your country. To avoid legal repercussions, you will need to conceal any and all details of this transaction from the general public. All necessary steps to remove your digital trail have already been performed on our end. Do you understand?"
"I understand."
"Thank you for your business."
Beep. Beep. Beep.
Shane stares at his phone until the screen goes blank. He knows, without needing to be told, that if he tries to call the number back, it will be disconnected. He knows, without needing to check, that a flight from Europe is going to arrive in two days at 6:15 in the evening, and Ilya Rozanov is going to be on it, and the only person he will be allowed to leave the airport with will be Shane himself.
He knows, with a bone-deep, ice-cold certainty, that this is real. This is happening. He has officially purchased a mail-order-omega. He has bought a human fucking being.
Shane puts his head in his hands and, at the ripe hour of 4:30 in the morning, has the worst panic attack of his entire life.
Then he gets up and goes to practice and resolutely does not think about where he will be at 6:15 PM in two days' time.