Chapter Text
It’s obvious that Marleau doesn’t mean to hit Shane so hard, but that doesn’t make the crunch of two bodies colliding any less brutal. Shane doesn’t just fall: he crumples. Like he’s made of balsa instead of layers of muscle stacked on top of a familiar, solid core.
Pike gets to his teammate first, but Ilya is only a second behind. They’re the first two to hear the noise Shane makes before he’s even opened his eyes.
There’s a word in Russian that has no English translation. The word is khnykat. It describes a sound. It is not a sound that Ilya has ever heard before, but he knows the word. Everyone knows the word. In English they call it a whine, or a whimper, but Ilya has heard people make those sounds before. He’s quite proud of the whines and whimpers he can pull from Shane, when they have time and they’re alone in a hotel room and he has Shane all to himself.
The sound Shane makes now is not a whine or a whimper. It is a khnykat. The Russian word is more descriptive, more plaintive. It has connotations of loss and pleading. It has connotations of desperation. It describes the sound someone makes when they’re in pain, and seeking their alpha.
It’s the sound of an omega. It’s the sound of an omega in distress.
Ilya stops so fast he might have skated into a brick wall. Pike doesn’t fare any better, tripping over nothing at all and sprawling onto the ice.
“Did he just—” someone says from behind him.
“Shit, Marleau, did you just bitch Shane Hollander?”
It’s not the wording that gets Ilya moving forward again. It’s the way he says it. The emphasis on bitch.
“Hollander,” he breathes, too quiet for anyone to hear, especially not Shane, who twitches and rolls onto his belly, still mostly out of it. That had actually been the first thing Ilya had been going to check—that Shane could still move. That the damage wasn’t to his spine, or his head. He doesn’t know if this is any better.
“Traumatic designation chain reaction,” Pike is saying, and Ilya doesn’t exactly know the translation of the words, but he understands the meaning. Enough damage to an alpha’s internal reproductive system will trigger a flood of hormones and start an irreversible process which will only end in an emergency room.
Shane is dying.
Shane is going into heat.
Ilya doesn’t say anything. He doesn’t think he can. He’s just standing there, staring dumbly at Shane’s body. Which means he hears it plainly the second time. The whine, or the whimper, or whatever-the-fuck these North Americans call it. It’s so loud the cameras parked on the side of the rink can probably pick it up. And Ilya doesn’t know if the stadium has been roaring this whole time or if he’s tuning into it just now, but the bellowing gets immeasurably louder in response, like the crowd hears the khnykat, too.
“Get him up,” Pike is yelling at one of his teammates. Berkes, maybe. “Get him upright, get him up!” But Shane does the khnykat again, and Berkes twitches like the sound is hitting him at centre mass. His lips part and he spits out his mouthguard and Ilya sees the white point of an alpha canine and then he’s hefting his hockey stick without even realising it. He swings it into Berkes’ helmet, just as Berkes is leaning down over Shane’s prone body. Berkes tumbles backward, shaking his head like he’s trying to clear it.
Pike is yelling something which Ilya doesn’t bother trying to understand. He crouches beside Shane, who doesn’t appear to be fully conscious as he whines again and jerks against the ice.
“It’s starting,” Ilya tells Pike, muffled, voice coming from across an ocean. He spits out his own mouthguard. “Hollander,” he whispers. Shane’s jerking gets worse, and Ilya chances a glance at the sidelines, where the medic is supposed to be coming from. He wishes he hadn’t looked. There’s pandemonium on the benches. People are yelling. It’s only been a few seconds since Marleau and Shane collided, and Ilya doesn’t think help is going to get here in time. Shane’s body twitches even harder, then flops limp, then twitches again. His helmet cracks into the ice. There’s no time for waiting. Ilya puts hands under Shane’s armpits and hoists him up, praying that Marleau’s hit didn’t damage anything that isn’t supposed to be moved. Shane needs to be upright. They teach basic first aid in Russia, too. There had been an acronym and everything, though Ilya can’t remember what the acronym had been. He only knows that you’re not supposed to move people with injuries, except for when they do the khnykat, because the khnykat means that everything on the inside is reconfiguring, or exploding, or something equally horrific, and being vertical is the only way to stop the organs from crushing themselves through what’s happening.
That’s happening inside Shane right now. In a place Ilya can’t even see. He’s—god, oh god—his organs. Ilya doesn’t know how to fix organs. It happened so fast. Ilya should’ve… he should’ve…
“Upright,” he says, repeating Pike from earlier, face feeling numb and limbs trembling with useless adrenaline. “Hollander. Up, up.” He puts both of his arms around Shane’s middle and tries to lean him against his own chest. Shane’s body is supposed to feel familiar against his own, but right now it’s just dead weight. His helmet and shoulder pads get in the way. His limp arms flop against Ilya’s sides. It’s not at all like carrying him across the hotel room to throw him on the bed. “Come on, Hollander,” he whispers, straining to his feet, trying to lock his skates in place as the added weight threatens to send him skidding sideways.
Pike maybe thinks that Ilya’s about to bare his canines as well, because he tries to pull Ilya away. But once he sees that Ilya isn’t about to do a Berkes, he gets with the program and supports Shane from the other side. His eyes are wide beneath his visor. They share a terrified glance over Shane’s twitching body. Where’s the damn doctor? Shane is meant to be an alpha. Ilya’s never really thought about the kind of injury that can spontaneously change someone’s designation, but it occurs to him now that it must be the hardest hit Shane’s ever taken. The hardest hit that anyone on this ice rink has ever taken. If he doesn’t get medical attention he won’t survive what’s happening to him.
Shane makes the sound again, except this time he’s ragdolled in Ilya’s arms and he makes the sound right in Ilya’s ear, like he’s begging all of Ilya’s alpha instincts to come and get him—to come and claim him—and Ilya feels like the urge to do exactly that is being yanked out of his intestines or something, his insides fighting to crawl up his throat. His teeth ache and there’s a wild moment where he thinks that maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, would it? To bite Shane right now. This is Shane’s first heat. Any alpha can claim him. It’s illegal to bite an omega without invitation but courts never prosecute if it happens when the omega is in heat, because alphas aren’t expected to be able to resist the khnykat. At least not legally. Omegas stay indoors while they’re heating for this exact reason.
He could bite Shane right now. He could claim him before anyone else even gets the chance. And no one would think twice about it. Shane would be his. People would judge and write their stupid articles, but people already judge and write their stupid articles.
And then Shane jerks in his arms, hard, still mostly unconscious, and Ilya grits his teeth and focuses.
“We need to…” he says, struggling to remember his English past the feral lump that’s growing in his chest. “To… hold.”
“Stabilise,” Pike agrees, and crowds in close. Ilya had meant that they needed to find a wall to press Shane into (god, he loves pressing Shane into walls, but focus, Rozanov, focus) but a quick glance around shows that there are no walls easily in reach. Barely a minute has passed but it’s chaos in every direction. Players are yelling. Fans are yelling. Fights are breaking out on the ice. Above him, the giant screen is showing his own face, staring out over the carnage. He looks calmer than he feels. And then he realises that they aren’t broadcasting him, they’re broadcasting Shane, slumped between him and Pike.
Players getting accidentally bitched during contact sports isn’t unheard of, but modern rules of play and improved padding means that it hasn’t happened in decades. Things like this are usually only on TV soap operas, or in freak accidents, like car crashes or war zones. This is going to be news. This is going to be global news. Shane Hollander had been Canada’s most eligible bachelor, and now every alpha in the world has a chance at making him theirs.
“Connors!” he bellows, because he needs someone with enough bulk to block the cameras, and Connors is a beta who isn’t about to get bitey the next time Shane does the omega whine. Pike sees what Ilya is doing and yells for his own goalie, and then they both start barking orders at their teams. It’s a testament to either the discipline of their players or just the craziness of this situation that everyone does exactly as directed, forming a perimeter around where Ilya and Pike are holding Shane upright.
Shane starts thrashing for real and Ilya has to grab Pike’s shoulder with one hand and throw off the glove on his other hand to clench fingers in the fabric at Pike’s waist. Pike does the same in reverse, like they’re about to start waltzing or something, and they hold on tight, crushing Shane between them as Shane jerks in their arms. Their helmets crack loudly against each other. Ilya leans in on his side and Pike does the same, so that Shane’s head is held—stabilised—between them. He isn’t trying to scent Shane but he can’t help it. Not with the way they’re pressed up like this. There’s so much padding in hockey that scents aren’t usually a problem during games, except in the locker room. But Ilya’s become so attuned to Shane’s body that these days he thinks he could find his scent through a full metre of reinforced Russian concrete. Like summer and open skies and swollen clouds right before they start to pour. Except Shane doesn’t smell familiar right now. Or else he does, but… sweeter. His scent glands are already reacting to the flood of hormones from his ruptured alpha system. He always smells delicious, but right now Ilya can’t think of a single thing he wants to do more than lick him, sink his teeth in, claim him, claim him.
Abruptly, he remembers that Pike is an alpha, too. Does he trust Shane’s teammate not to bite Shane? Pike must be thinking the same thing because Ilya feels his fingers clench tighter in Ilya’s clothes as Shane whines and jerks again. Ilya hates that past Shane’s sweetness he can smell Pike, too. Ocean breeze and saltwater, like the pure alpha archetype that he is. Disgusting. Ilya forces himself to grip him tighter as Shane’s jerking turns into thrashing. This is the most dangerous time for new omegas. Shane needs to be still during the seizures, while the first flush of released hormones goes through him.
The goalies and a few of the forwards tighten the circle they’ve formed around them. Some of them reach out to touch Shane’s shoulder or the side of his head. “Other way,” Ilya snaps, and they turn so they’re facing outward instead, hockey sticks raised. Most major league hockey players are alphas, but there are betas on both teams as well, and they form the majority of the blockade between Shane and the rest of the world. The rest of the alphas stay well clear, and Ilya doesn’t know if that’s because they don’t trust themselves near a heating omega, or if they just don’t care. Maybe they think it’ll be contagious. Ilya kind of wishes it was. He’d take a hit, too, if it meant Shane wouldn’t be alone in whatever’s about to happen.
“I don’t…” Shane murmurs, as the shaking eases.
“Hollander,” Ilya says, filled with relief. “You are okay?” What a stupid thing to ask. Shane mumbles something and his limbs keep flopping where he’s held in between Ilya and Pike, but he must be regaining consciousness, at least a bit, because he turns his head into Ilya’s neck and breathes in like they’re waking up in bed together.
“Ilya?”
“I’m here,” Pike interrupts, speaking loudly over the noise all around them. “I’ve got you, bud.” Then, “Rozanov, we need to turn him around, he’s going to freak out if he scents you.”
Or I could put puck through your eye, Ilya doesn’t say.
“No,” he says instead. “We need to get off ice.”
“Ilya?” Shane says again, clearer than before, and then he coughs and something warm spills across Ilya’s neck. He smells blood. Where’s the goddamn medic?
“You’re okay,” Pike is yelling. “Shane, I’m here, you’re okay, we’re not gonna let—you’re okay, you’re okay.”
Shane reaches a clumsy hand up to the strap of his helmet, moaning.
“Do not take off helmet,” Ilya says. “Hollander, can you hear me?”
“Ilya, what…?”
Ilya can’t see much past the bodies of their beta blockade, but he can tell it’s still chaos all around them. The noise is deafening. The medic isn’t coming.
“You got hit,” he says. “You are becoming omega.”
Shane tries to shake his head, but he’s still held firm between Ilya and Pike. “No,” he manages, and then he groans and arches, clutching at Ilya’s sides. This time, the khnykat is more of a yell. His face scrunches up, everything going tight except for his mouth, which is open wide. His teeth are stained red.
Behind Pike’s shoulder, Ilya sees that one of the news crew is braving the ice. She’ll be banned for life for coming onto the rink, probably, but she must think it’s worth it. She’s got a microphone in one hand and she’s mostly just slipping, but she’s coming toward them like she knows this is going to be the biggest story of the year, and she wants her name on it. Ilya bares his teeth but it’s too late. Shane makes the sound again, and the reporter is close enough that the microphone picks it up, and an omega khnykat is broadcast at top volume across the stadium.
The effect is instant. An alpha starts howling, and then another, and then another.
“Oh god,” Pike breathes. “They’re gonna frenzy.”
There’s a Russian word for this, too, but for once the English version is better. An alpha frenzy. People going ballistic in an attempt to get what they want. A whole stadium of spectators, who knows how many of them alphas, exposed to an omega khnykat. Most people agree that alphas are capable of keeping their heads around a heating omega, but there must be dozens—maybe hundreds—of people in the stands who won’t care about modern standards of behaviour, and won’t try to resist the frenzy at all.
Shane goes limp again, and Ilya doesn’t want to think about what kind of injury is causing him to seesaw in and out of consciousness, but it’s obvious that whatever it is, he won’t be able to protect himself.
“Frenzies don’t happen,” one of the betas in the blockade is saying. “This is America.”
“We’re in Canada, idiot,” someone else says.
“This doesn’t fucking happen,” the guy insists. “This ain’t the Dark Ages, we got civilization now.”
Ilya looks out at the sea of swarming bodies and thinks that civilization must be a fragile word indeed.
“Hollander,” he says, voice barely audible over the sounds all around them. He feels numb and paralysed with indecision. He knows how to skate. He knows how to whack a stupid disc with a stupid stick and score his stupid points. He doesn’t know how to fight off a frenzy. “Hollander, wake up, we must go.”
“Ilya Rozanov!” the reporter yells over the bedlam. Her microphone is still in front of her. “Rozanov! Did you tell Cliff Marleau to hit your rival like that? Were you purposefully trying to bitch your—”
One of the betas breaks formation to shove the reporter back and then hits the microphone hard enough to smash it. In the gap he’s left in the barricade Ilya catches glimpses of the sidelines. People in the stands are pressed up against the panels at the edge of the rink and are spilling over the dasher boards onto the ice. Most of them fall too hard to get back up, but as Ilya watches one of them gets to his feet. He’s barely keeping upright but his teeth are bared and he’s staring at the knot of players—he’s staring at Shane—like he can smell him already.
Shane does the khnykat again, and coughs up more blood, and the man staggers toward them, yelling incomprehensibly.
One of the alpha Metros body slams the guy before Ilya can even snarl.
But there are more alphas coming.
“Go,” Ilya says. Shane’s first seizures have mostly stopped. They have to leave. He tugs Shane and Pike toward him, moving backward. “Go, go!”
They move awkwardly, barricade and all. Way too slow, bumping into each other and trying not to let too much of a gap form in their ranks. They’re going in the wrong direction. The medic is stationed on the other side of the rink, but that’s where all the alphas from the stands are coming from. The first alpha started the wave, and now they’re flooding onto the ice. The alphas on both teams start running interference, shoving at the horde. But no one here is a trained fighter. The beta huddle breaks ranks to whack anyone who gets too close. It’s like a scene from a zombie movie. Ilya wishes that big dude, Ryan Price, were still on the team. He’s never been so fucking afraid in his life. An alpha frenzy. They’re so fucking fucked. He needs to get Shane out of here. Occasionally, it’s their own teammates they have to defend against, but a quick knock to the helmet usually shakes them out of the haze that Shane’s khnykat keeps triggering. Ilya has no idea how he’s keeping himself in check. He has no idea how Pike’s doing it either.
“I’m not…” Shane gasps, struggling back to consciousness. “I need a doctor. It’s… it’s just an injury. It’s just an injury!”
“Yes,” Ilya agrees wildly. “You need doctor.”
“I’m not an omega,” Shane urges. “Ilya, I’m not an omega!”
Ilya wants to shake him. Can’t you hear yourself? Can’t you smell yourself? But instead he knocks his skates into the dasher board at the edge of the rink as the betas split apart to let him through. “Okay,” he says. He lets go of Pike to grip the back of Shane’s neck with one hand, looping the other arm around his waist. He hauls Shane over the wall backwards, trying to keep him as upright as possible. Shane yells, an agonised sound that reminds Ilya that there might be other injuries apart from the ruined alpha organs. He yanks his own helmet off and tugs Shane’s face into his neck. Shane’s visor is in the way but he can’t do anything about that right now.
Pike scrambles over the wall after them, yelling at the betas to form up, yelling at the alphas to go ahead and clear a path. Ilya’s got no idea where they’re meant to be going. This isn’t his home turf. But Shane starts shaking again so Ilya holds him as tight as he knows how, taking his weight as best as he can with the stupid padding in the way. Pike tries to take Shane off him and Ilya snarls at him. No one pauses to remove their skates, they just clomp away from the rink, as fast as they can, down into the bowels of the stadium. It sets Ilya’s teeth on edge. His instinct is to go up. Get somewhere high, where he can see all the threats at once. Get somewhere defensible. Behind them, he hears half a dozen thuds as snarling alphas collide with the dasher boards where they had just been standing. They’re going to be penned in down here. They’re going to be crushed.
Shane wakes up again, long enough to repeat that he’s not an omega, and that there’s been some kind of mistake. And then he tries to take some of his own weight, almost tripping Ilya up as their legs get tangled. Pike stabilises both of them as Shane yells and goes limp again, shaking and whining and gripping Ilya’s hair and the collar of his uniform, even in unconsciousness.
“Please!” someone yells from a side corridor, and Ilya turns automatically. There’s a young woman, wearing a blue jersey with Hollander’s number on the front, which is not where the number is meant to go. “Please,” she says again. “I can help him!”
“You are doctor?” Ilya yells over the noise coming from… everywhere.
“No,” she says, pushing through the throngs. “I’m his. I’ll be good for him, I’m his soul mate, I’ll be the best he’s ever—”
Ilya staggers backward. She’s not even frenzied, just insane. Where is his hockey stick? He must have dropped it on the ice.
“Pike!” he yells, but someone else is already shoving her back down the corridor. Ilya goes in the other direction, hauling Shane back up into his arms as he slips down. The players from both teams are doing their best to keep everyone away but there’s just going to be more and more alphas trying to get at them. He’s not going to be able to stop someone from getting close. He’s not going to be able to protect his… Shane. “Pike,” he says again.
“Almost there,” Pike pants, and Ilya realises that they’re headed for the locker room. The layout is a mirror image of the away team’s side of the stadium.
“Wrong,” he snarls, unable to figure out the words he needs to explain that the whole point of the locker rooms is to be easily accessible in multiple directions. It’s not defensible. It’s not safe. It’s the wrong place. But they round a corner and there’s a dozen alphas coming to meet them, yelling and snapping their teeth, and half the players break away to deal with that while the rest of them backtrack, going as fast as they can in their stupid skates. Pike takes off his helmet and pegs it at an oncoming alpha. His hair is sticking up in stupid sweaty spikes. Without his helmet he smells overwhelmingly like the enemy: like a rival alpha, here to take something that doesn’t belong to him. Ilya tries to ignore the instinct to snarl at him. As long as he’s not frenzying, Ilya will take all the help he can get. Even if it smells like the motherfucking ocean.
“It’s a mistake,” Shane is telling the side of Ilya’s face, slurring dreadfully. “It’s just a mistake, it’s just a mistake.”
God, Ilya wishes.
He gets a better grip around Shane. His arms are shaking. He trains every single day, but he will not be able to run forever. “Hold on, Hollander!”
“Here,” Pike says suddenly, and yanks open a side door. It’s some sort of storage room. There are shelves and an unplugged monitor to one side, and a desk with pamphlets and a box of lanyards. Ilya hustles inside and Pike yells something at the remaining players and follows Ilya in, and then slams the door shut. It has a lock, but it’s the kind of lock that needs a key card to activate. They’ve just stranded themselves in a room that they can’t even lock. Pike starts piling things against the door, swearing. Ilya props Shane against a shelf and uses one hand to shove the equipment off the desk.
“You can’t put him on that,” Pike says. “He’s gotta stay upright.”
“I know,” Ilya snaps. “Is not to lie on.” He sits on the cleared desk and hauls Shane against him, getting a thigh between Shane’s legs to take some of the weight so Shane can slump against his chest. Shane doesn’t seem to think anything of the position they’re in, or else he’s still too out of it to notice. He grips Ilya’s hair, and he reaches again for the strap of his helmet. Ilya slaps his hand away. “Leave on, Hollander,” he says. He can’t bear the thought of Shane removing even a single layer of protection right now.
“Ilya,” Shane mumbles. “What time ‘s it?” Ilya tries to hush him, but Shane wriggles a bit against his thigh.
“Don’t move. Hollander, stop the moving.”
“You smell nice. S’different.”
Ilya doesn’t know how to tell him that it’s Shane who’s different. What if Shane doesn’t want him, after this? What if he wakes up in his new omega body and Ilya is suddenly repulsive to him? What if Shane only likes people who are the same as he is?
It occurs to him, painfully, that Rose Landry is an omega.
Shane’s breath rattles, and he coughs to clear his throat. Blood speckles the front of Ilya’s shirt.
“Pike, he needs doctor.”
Pike doesn’t reply. There’s yelling from outside, and something crashes into the door. The doorknob rattles, and Pike puts his shoulder against the wood, bracing hard. There’s another crash, and some muffled yelling, but it doesn’t rattle again. Neither of them say the obvious: they’re not going to be able to leave this room to look for help.
Except they might not have any choice. Shane is in the first stages of heat. He’s in the first stages of firstheat. The medics would have been able to dose him up, but without a doctor there’s only one way for an omega to survive a trauma-initiated firstheat. He needs a huge dose of alpha hormones.
He needs a knot.