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He could never give up on Ilya.
Not since that moment in Saskatchewan when he’d first approached him before their rookie season.
Not since that moment when he’d felt those palms grounding him by his sides, shoving him hard against the wall.
Not since that moment he’d felt warm lips pressing into the hollow of his collarbone.
Oh, he knew he was fucked. And he couldn’t help but feel thrilled by the realization.
Something about Rozanov excited him for no reason at all. It was an intense, gravitational need to crumble under his weight, his blood pounding in his ears until his world narrowed to Rozanov and nothing else.
He was an Alpha, but for Rozanov, he felt this overpowering want to be bent. To be put in his place.
Which was impossible, because Ilya was a Beta. And anyway, Shane didn't think succumbing to that voice in his head would do him any good.
Still, in the privacy of locked rooms, he could allow himself a little freedom in that regard.
It seemed even Rozanov didn't expect him to obey every silent command.
His own fangs craved to mark every part of Ilya's body. A heated, irrational possessiveness would overcome him in the blissful, post-orgasmic haze, his guard down just a fraction more than usual.
That’s how he found himself here. Mounting Ilya. His teeth already bared against the skin where a scent gland would be.
But strong arms wrapped around his throat, cutting off his air just slightly.
The daze shattered completely when the hold became truly cage-like. His own arms flew up to fight the pressure, panic cutting through the fog in his mind.
The grip tightened, powerful and undeniable, before finally releasing him.
His lungs seized oxygen, his blood pressure spiked, and his brain cleared just enough to realize his position.
He was met with an amused Ilya, on whose lap he still sat. A wicked gleam in his eyes and mischief twisting his grin.
“Big Alpha wanted to claim me? Like a bitch in heat, huh?” Rozanov said, his tone dangerously playful.
Realization struck Shane like a physical blow.
“I’m sorry! I-I… I don’t… I don’t understand what got into me. I just blacked out. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to hurt you.” Guilt pulled taut on his heartstrings.
“No need to apologize. That’s just instincts. I guess I fucked you so good your Alpha brain short-circuited and tried to fight for dominance or some shit. I get it, okay?”
But he’d never wanted to fight Ilya for dominance. He was sure of it. He wanted the exact opposite.
He wanted to bare his throat in a sign of trust, of submission. It felt right.
“Yeah, okay. I’m still sorry.”
“But don’t ever pull that stunt again. We might actually draw blood if you lose control like that. Understood?” Ilya’s hand came up to graze his cheek, the touch deceptively soft.
“Yeah. Got it.” He was just glad Ilya wasn’t furious.
He would never let it happen again. He swore it.
He swore it right up until the moment he broke that promise.
It was another post-game “hang out.” Calling it a “hook-up,” like Rozanov did, felt gross on his tongue.
This time, everything was tenser, hotter. Their bodies moved with a frantic edge, their tongues clashing in a messy mix of spit and frustration.
It was a mess. But then, so had the game before been.
From the first period, Ilya’s scent had been off. Wrong. A musky, foreign odor lingered beneath the familiar, calm Beta scent Shane knew.
Ilya reeked of another Alpha. A male Alpha.
A surge of pure adrenaline, hot and bitter, shot through Shane’s gut. Someone had been with Ilya before the game. Had scented him, even if only lightly.
To Shane, Ilya now smelled like another Alpha’s claim, and it drove him madder with every second of play.
He played aggressively, all power and no finesse.
He haunted Rozanov across the ice, slamming him into the boards with a frequency that bordered on targeted harassment.
He was so consumed by a rage he couldn't name that he took it all out on Rozanov, rendering them both useless.
Shane was too busy stalking Ilya to play his position, and Ilya was too busy being slammed off the puck every time he touched it .
After the game, in the sterile quiet of the shower, the adrenaline bled away, leaving only cold shame for his unprofessionalism.
The highlight reels will be brutal tomorrow, he thought miserably. He’d already glimpsed a clip on Hayden’s phone.
Fuck.
He texted Ilya an address, a plea to talk in person. He was left on read.
I guess we’re not seeing each other tonight, Shane thought, just as the doorbell rang - a long, insistent buzz, as if someone was leaning on the button.
Cautious steps carried him to the door. He peered through the peephole.
It was Rozanov.
He yanked the door open, pulled him inside by the jacket, and shoved it shut, all in one frantic motion.
He was immediately pressed back against the door, his wrists captured and forced behind his back in the unbreakable lock of Ilya’s hand before he could even register the move.
“Care to explain what that actual shit show was today, Hollander?” Ilya hissed the words into his left ear, the hot breath raising goosebumps across his whole body.
“I’m sorry, please, forgive me. I’m so sorry, I don’t know what got into me, I just…” His knees trembled, threatening to buckle.
“Please, Rozy, I don’t know what happened. I’m so, so sorry. Forgive me. I’ll make it up to you. Anything, just forgive me.”
The hold on his arms vanished. Shane dropped to his knees, hands fumbling to unbuckle Ilya’s belt, panic making his fingers shake violently. He had to fix this, to appease him.
A sharp tug on his hair forced his head up.
“You left one hell of a collection of bruises, Hollander,” Ilya scoffed, his eyes cold.
“What was that?” He yanked his own shirt up, revealing dark, angry hematomas blooming across his ribs.
“Explain to me what the fuck these are for? Because you did a number on me. And it looks to me like some fucked-up attempt to mark your territory?”
“I—I just—”
“You just what? You were acting like an Alpha gone stupid in a rut.”
“I’m sorry. There’s no excuse for that.” His eyes burned with humiliating tears. He truly didn’t understand what was wrong with him.
“Are you in rut?” The question was sudden, clinical.
“Um… no? I’m not due for one for weeks. It’s too early.”
“Well, my verdict is you’re in one now. You smell… more. Twice as much like yourself, and twice as needy.”
“I don’t know what could have caused it,” Shane whispered, rubbing his cheek against Ilya’s thigh in a desperate, instinctual search for comfort.
“You don’t seem to know a lot of things lately,” Ilya said, the jab landing precisely because it was true.
“Do you want me here for it? Your rut.”
“Wait… you’d stay?” Shane was thrown, hope warring with confusion.
“Maybe. We’ll see. I don’t have plans. Our season’s over—and you made sure our last game was a fucking disaster.” That stung.
“So I might as well take what I’m owed. And tonight, I’m going to fuck you. I don’t care that you’re slipping into a rut.”
Ilya leaned down, his face inches from Shane’s, his voice dropping to a low, resonant promise that vibrated in the space between them.
“You’re going to take it. And you’re going to love it, Hollander.”
The promise of that made him tingle with anticipation and arousal.
A violent shiver wracked his frame, part fear, part desperate want.
The air between them was thick with the sharp, cloying scent of his own distress - and beneath it, the undeniable, heated musk of an encroaching rut.
Ilya was right. He could smell it on himself now, a primal fog rising from his own skin, clouding his senses with need.
“Ilya,” he breathed, the name a plea and a surrender rolled into one.
His fingers, which had been fumbling with the buckle, stilled.
The panic wasn’t gone, but it was being swiftly drowned out by a deeper, more insistent current.
The scent of another alpha on Ilya had been a spark to tinder. Now, the tinder was ablaze.
Rozanov looked down at him, his gaze calculating, stripping Shane bare far more effectively than any clothes ever could.
The anger was still there, banked like hot coals, but it was mingling with something else - curiosity, a predatory kind of interest.
“You smell like a for est fire,” Ilya remarked, his voice dropping from a hiss to a low, resonant rumble.
His hand in Shane’s hair tightened, not enough to hurt, but enough to assert control. To ground him.
“All chaos and burn. Is this what it was? This… this driving you on the ice? Making you act like a rabid dog?”
Shane could only nod, pressing his forehead against Ilya’s thigh. The rough texture of the track pants against his skin was a focal point.
“Couldn’t think. Only smelled him on you. It… it felt like a challenge. Like a violation.” The admission was torn from him, shameful and raw.
Ilya was silent for a long moment.
Then, a low, humorless chuckle escaped him. “So the big, proud alpha has a possessive streak. How predictable.”
The words were a jab, but the hand in his hair began a slow, almost soothing stroke. “Get up. Kneeling there, looking pathetic, isn’t going to fix anything.”
Shane staggered to his feet, his body humming with unstable energy. Ilya didn’t step back, forcing him to stand close, enveloped in his space, his own conflicted scent.
Calm beta clarity now edged with the pungent reminder of another man and the sharp ozone of his anger.
“You turned our last game into a joke because your nose got offended,” Ilya stated, matter-of-fact. “You owe me. More than you can imagine.” He finally stepped back, his eyes raking over Shane from head to toe.
“Rut or no rut, you’re going to pay that debt. But we do it my way. You don’t get to lose control again. You don’t get to mark. You don’t get to claim.” He spat the last word as if it were poison.
“You listen. You follow. You take what I give you. Is that understood, alpha?”
The title was a provocation, but Shane seized it like a lifeline. It was an anchor in the storm of his instincts. An order. A structure. Ilya’s structure.
“Yes,” Shane gasped, the word scraping his throat raw. “Yes. I’ll… I’ll follow.”
A flicker of something dangerous and satisfied passed through Ilya’s eyes. “Good.” He turned and walked towards the bedroom, not bothering to check if Shane followed. He knew he would.
“Strip. And get on the bed. On your back. I want to see your face when you remember who’s in charge.”
The command was a lightning strike to Shane’s system. He fumbled with his own clothes, his movements clumsy, driven by a mix of obedience and a rising, feverish need.
The world had narrowed once more, just as it had on the ice, but this time it wasn’t fueled by blind jealousy.
It was focused by a singular, terrifying point of submission.
He lay back on the cool sheets, exposed and trembling, watching as Ilya took his time, removing his own shirt, revealing the map of darkening bruises Shane had left on his torso.
A visual testament to his loss of control. Ilya traced a finger over one particularly vivid mark on his ribs, his expression unreadable.
Then he looked at Shane, and the full force of his will filled the room.
“This,” Ilya said, his voice a quiet, absolute force, “is not about your rut. This is about my anger. You will take it. And you will thank me for it.”
When Ilya finally moved towards him, it wasn’t with the heat of their usual clashes.
It was with a deliberate, devastating certainty.
It was punishment and absolution all at once, and as Shane arched off the bed, a broken sound escaping his lips, he knew Ilya was right.
He would take it. And a shameful, secret part of him, the part that had wanted to bare his throat in Saskatchewan, was thrilled.
He was utterly, completely fucked. And there was nowhere else he’d rather be.
The moment Ilya’s weight settled over him, it was like the world clicked into a terrible, perfect focus.
Shane’s skin felt too tight, every nerve ending screaming. But it was the look in Ilya’s eyes that truly pinned him.
“Always the same with you alphas,” Ilya murmured, his voice thick with the rolling consonants of his mother tongue.
It wasn’t an accent he usually leaned into this heavily. It was a weapon now.
“All this strength. And for what? To lose your minds over a smell? To act like beasts with no thought.”
His hands, broad and punishing, mapped the bruises on Shane’s hips, pressing just enough to make him gasp. “Look at this mess you made of me.”
“I’m sorry,” Shane choked out, the words automatic, meaningless against the tidal wave of Ilya’s disdain and his own need. He arched up, seeking friction, contact, anything.
Ilya denied him, shifting back. “Sorry? Pfft. You are in rut. You are an animal. I know how to handle animals.”
He leaned down, his mouth close to Shane’s ear, and his next words were a deliberate, venomous caress. “You know who it was you smelled on me? Sasha. Back from Moscow for one night.”
Shane’s body went rigid. A wounded, furious sound ripped from his throat.
Ilya smirked, enjoying the reaction. “Ah, there it is. The beast snarls. He is an alpha too, of course. A proper one. Not like you. He knows his place. With me.” The emphasis was cruel and precise.
“We had a good time before the game. For old times’ sake.”
Every word was a twist of the knife. His Sasha. A proper alpha. His place. Shane’s vision hazed red, the possessiveness roaring back, tenfold, mingling with a devastating sense of inadequacy.
He wanted to erase the scent, the memory, the very idea of this Sasha.
“He is at the top of his social circle,” Ilya continued conversationally, as if he weren’t destroying Shane beneath him. “But with me? Always bottom. Since we were teenagers. He knows… some things are just natural order.”
His gaze swept over Shane’s prone, trembling form. “You could never understand. You are too busy fighting your own nature.”
The insult was layered: Shane was neither a proper, controlled alpha like Sasha, nor was he naturally submissive to Ilya.
He was a failed, chaotic thing caught in between.
“Ilya, please,” Shane begged, the need overriding pride, the jealousy a live wire in his gut. “Please, just…”
“Just what, солнышко?” Ilya cooed, the Russian word a jaring, tender contrast to his tone.
He finally touched him, a rough, unforgiving grip that made Shane cry out. “You want me to fix the mess your alpha brain made? To put the beast back in its cage?”
Shane could only nod, desperately, tears of frustration and want pricking his eyes.
He was so needy for him, for this, for the painful clarity of Ilya’s control. It was the only thing that could quiet the storm.
“Then listen,” Ilya commanded, all pretense of playfulness gone. “Sasha means nothing.”
He shifted, aligning their bodies, his movements deliberate and slow, stretching Shane with a burn that felt like branding.
The confession was buried in an insult, but Shane heard it.
As the pain crested and subsided into a devastating fullness, Ilya began to move. It wasn’t pleasure, not at first. It was a re-mapping. A reassertion.
With every thrust, Ilya drove out the phantom scent of Sasha, replaced it with the reality of his own sweat, his own breath, his own low, Russian curses.
“This is who you belong to, when you are like this,” Ilya grunted, his own control fraying at the edges, his composure cracked by the raw, physical reality of it.
“Not to your rut. Not to your jealousy. To me. The beta who has to clean up your alpha mess.”
And that was the final, devastating truth.
Beneath the jabs, the cruel comparisons, the professional fury over the ruined game, was this: Ilya was here. In the eye of Shane’s hormonal storm. Not running from the beast, but confronting it, wrestling it into submission.
Because someone had to. Because, inexplicably, he cared enough to be the one to do it.
Shane clutched at him, his fingers digging into the bruises he’d made, babbling a stream of apologies, promises, and pleas.
He was so needy it was humiliating, a bottomless pit of want that only Ilya could fill.
Ilya silenced him with a brutal kiss, all teeth and dominance. When he broke it, he was breathing harshly, his forehead damp against Shane’s.
The mockery was gone from his eyes, replaced by something fierce and focused.
But the body remembers its own pride. A low, involuntary growl rumbled in his chest, a last stand of alpha instinct that rebelled against the sheer, blissful subjugation.
Ilya felt it. Of course he did.
He paused, pulling back just enough to look down at Shane with a cool, disappointed glare that cut deeper than any shout.
He clicked his tongue, a sharp, dismissive sound.
“See? The beast still growls,” he said, his voice laced with contempt. “Even when it is getting exactly what it wants. Неблагодарный.” Ungrateful.
He didn’t speed up. He slowed down. Became agonizingly deliberate, each movement a calculated lesson.
“You think this is for you?” Ilya taunted, his breath hot against Shane’s jaw. “This is for me. To take my anger out on the stupid, beautiful body that ruined my game.”
The words were meant to wound, to put him in his place, and they did.
They also sent a white-hot lance of pleasure straight through Shane’s core. He sobbed, turning his head into the pillow to muffle the sound, his fingers twisting in the sheets.
“Look at me,” Ilya demanded, his hand snapping out to grip Shane’s chin, forcing his gaze back. His eyes were like flint. “You don’t get to hide. You want to act like an animal on international television? You face me now.”
He punctuated the sentence with a particularly deep, grinding thrust that stole the air from Shane’s lungs.
The world narrowed to the pressure of Ilya’s hands, the cadence of his voice, the punishing, perfect friction.
Shane’s alpha brain, frantic and possessive, screamed at him to flip them, to dominate, to claim.
But his heart, that traitorous, yearning thing, was chanting more, more, more.
He was losing his mind with it. The conflict was a fire in his veins.
He babbled, a broken stream of “Ilya” and “please” and “sorry,” his body straining both towards and against the onslaught.
Ilya watched his unraveling with a fierce, possessive satisfaction.
He leaned close, his lips brushing the shell of Shane’s ear, his accent thickening as his own control began to slip.
“My wild dog,” he murmured, a strange, rough tenderness in the cruel epithet. “So loud. So messy. Who else would want this? Who else could handle you?”
It was the closest to a confession he would give. The words seared into Shane, dissolving the last of his resistance.
He came apart with a ragged cry, the intensity of it borderline painful, utterly overwhelming.
Ilya followed him over the edge moments later, his own release a silent, shuddering force, his forehead pressed hard against Shane’s shoulder.
For three days, they didn’t leave the apartment.
The world outside ceased to exist.
Time was measured in the ebb and flow of Shane’s fever, in the delivery meals piling up by the door, in the slow accumulation of sweat-scented sheets.
The dynamic established that first night held. He was harsh, critical, brutally efficient in wringing the rut out of Shane’s system.
He pushed him to the edge, denied him, made him beg, all with a detached, almost clinical air.
“Your scent is still too sharp. It’s obnoxious,” Ilya would state, shoving a glass of water into his hand. “Drink. You are dehydrating yourself with your dramatics.”
When Shane, trembling and needy, would nuzzle at his neck, Ilya would push his head away.
“No. No scenting. You are not in a state to be trusted with that.” But his hand would linger in Shane’s hair, fingers rubbing a slow, hidden circle on his scalp.
He’d leave the room for stretches - just to shower, to get food, to prove he could - and each absence was a small torture for Shane, who would lie in the nest of their bed, aching and hyper-aware of the fading imprint of Ilya’s body.
The alpha in him would rear up, anxious and possessive. Once, he’d even growled at the closed bathroom door.
Ilya had emerged, a towel around his hips, steam billowing behind him.
He didn’t say a word. Just arched a single, imperious brow.
Shane had flushed, shame and want curdling in his stomach, and lowered his eyes immediately.
Later, when the fever spiked again and Shane reached for him, his control thinning, Ilya held him off with a firm hand on his chest.
"So needy," Ilya tutted, his eyes glinting. "Is this what they teach you in all those leadership seminars? To whimper and paw at your rivals? Very inspirational."
"Just... touch me," Shane gasped, hating the desperation in his own voice, hating how much he loved it when Ilya dissected him like this.
"Such a specific request from the man who gives 'we'll get 'em next time' interviews," Ilya mocked, but he finally relented, his touch as much a branding as a caress.
"You are lucky I find your pathetic Canadian desperation so... amusing. It is like watching a very handsome golden retriever try to do calculus. The effort is tragic."