My Hockey Captain Found Out I'm an Omega

Two years of lying nearly ends on a Tuesday, in the third minute of a scrimmage nobody was even supposed to care about. Ace's shoulder drives into my chest — two hundred pounds of captain-of-everything — and the boards catch my spine like they've been waiting all season for the chance. Pain flashes white behind my eyes. My gloves scrape ice as I go down, and for one endless second, his face hovers an inch from mine. I stop breathing. Not because of the hit. Because his nose twitches. Just barely. Like he caught something in the air he can't place yet. If he places it, I lose everything. Not just the team. My name, my scholarship, the one thing I've built with my own two hands after watching my brother lose his. Two years of suppressant patches, cold showers, sleeping with the window cracked open in January so my scent never settles anywhere long enough to be traced. Two years of being careful, invisible, controlled — all so I could put on a Brentwood University jersey and skate for a program that would cut me from the roster within the hour if anyone here knew what I really am. "You good, Vance?" Ace's voice is low, rough from the whistle he's been screaming through all morning. "Never better." I hate how breathless it sounds. He hauls me up by the collar like I weigh nothing — because to an Alpha built like him, I don't. His eyes drop to my throat, where sweat has soaked straight through my collar. Something flickers behind his stare. Not recognition. Not yet. Just a question he hasn't figured out how to ask. I yank my jersey straight and skate off before he can look any closer. Behind me, Dominic Reyes laughs, sharp and mean. "Careful, Ace. Heard Omegas bruise like fruit." He says it loud enough for half the rink to hear. A few guys chuckle. Nobody defends me. Nobody ever does, because as far as this team knows, there isn't an Omega on the roster to defend. That's the whole point. Three years ago, the league made it official: Omegas don't play elite hockey. Too fragile. Too emotional. Too biologically unfit, according to a memo signed by men who've never taken a check in their life. My brother believed that memo. Believed it enough to walk away from the sport he loved before anyone could throw it in his face first. I didn't walk away. I disappeared into someone else instead. Coach blows the whistle and calls us in, and I skate toward the circle with my heart still slamming against my ribs. Ace falls into step beside me, closer than he needs to be. "You skate angry," he says. "I skate to win." "Same thing, with you." A ghost of a smile, gone as fast as it came. "You've got something to prove, Vance. Two years on this team and I still can't figure out what." You have no idea, I think. What I want is simple: dethrone him. Take the captaincy, take the record, take the one thing every Alpha in this program has been handed since birth — the assumption that they belong here more than I do. I want it so badly it feels like a second heartbeat. What's stopping me is standing four feet away in practice gear, jaw sharp enough to cut glass, watching me like I'm a puzzle he's slowly assembling. Coach claps his hands. "Finals are five weeks out, ladies. I want lines set by Friday. Showers, fifteen minutes, then film session. Vance — my office, right after." My stomach drops before I even move. Fifteen minutes means no time to wait the locker room out, no excuse to linger on the ice until it's empty. Fifteen minutes means twenty guys crowding into one room at once, and me right in the middle of it, sweat-soaked and reeking of exactly the wrong thing if my last patch has worn thin. • I check my collarbone the second I'm behind my stall, fingers brushing the edge of the patch hidden beneath my compression shirt. Still there. Still sealed. For now. "You're doing the weird shower thing again," says Marcus, two stalls down, not even looking up from his phone. "Cold water only, every practice, like you're training for the Arctic or something." "Helps with recovery." I keep my voice flat, bored, the exact opposite of how I feel. "Sure it does." He doesn't push it. Nobody ever pushes it far enough — that's the one mercy I've been counting on for two years. Today, my luck runs thinner than usual. The hot water's out on the visitor's side, so half the team floods into our showers at once, and suddenly there's no corner far enough away, no angle that keeps me out of reach of eight Alphas at close range. I keep my head down, patch pressed tight under a strip of waterproof tape, praying the steam is cover enough. It almost isn't. Dominic passes close behind me on his way to his stall, and I feel him slow down. Just for a second. Just long enough that my whole body goes rigid. "You always this jumpy, Vance?" he says, low enough that only I can hear it. "You always this obsessed with me, Reyes?" He smiles like I've confirmed something instead of deflected it, and moves on before I can figure out what he thinks he knows. By the time I'm dressed, my hands won't stop shaking. • Coach Halloway is waiting by his office door. "Vance. In here." The hallway goes quiet in that specific way hallways go quiet when someone's about to get bad news. I follow him, pulse hammering, running through every reason he could be calling me in. Grades. Attendance. Please, let it be something that small. He shuts the door and drops a folder on the desk. My name is typed across the top in block letters. "League's moving up the designation certifications," he says. "New biology screening, mandatory for every player before postseason eligibility. Full panel — hormone markers, everything." He taps the folder. "Yours is scheduled for the night before the championship game." The room tilts. A full biological panel. Not a scent check I can fool with a patch and a prayer. Blood work. Hormone markers. The kind of test that doesn't care how careful I've been for two years. "That's — " My voice cracks. "That's awfully close to game time." "Only slot left." He's not looking at me like he suspects anything. He's looking at me like a coach worried about a sophomore's nerves before the biggest game of his career. "You've earned your spot, Vance. Don't let a routine test rattle you." Routine. If he only knew. I walk out already doing the math — how many patches I have left, how many days until the test, whether there's any version of this where I make it through finals week without every lie I've built collapsing on top of me. Ace is waiting by the locker room door. Of course he is. "Everything okay?" he asks, and there's something in his voice I've never heard directed at me before. He almost sounds like he cares. I open my mouth to lie. That's when I catch it — the exact second his eyes narrow, drop to my collar again, and his jaw goes tight like he's just solved a problem he didn't know he was working on. "Jude," he says quietly. "What are you?" I don't answer. I can't. Because the look on his face isn't disgust, and it isn't confusion anymore. It's certainty, cold and immediate, like he's already made a decision about what happens next. And I have absolutely no idea what that decision is.