My Hockey Captain Found Out I'm an Omega

Chapter 4 - My Enemy Found My Secret

Richard Cole watching my results go public isn't a threat. It's a promise.

I spend the whole next practice barely present, going through drills on autopilot while my brain runs a hundred exit strategies, all of them bad. Ace notices. Of course he notices — he's started noticing everything about me, which is its own particular danger.

"You're somewhere else today," he says on the bench, nudging my skate with his. "Talk to me."

"Just nerves. Finals nerves."

"Liar." He says it gently, like an accusation wrapped in something softer. "You've been off since my dad's name came up. You want to tell me why?"

My heart stutters. "It's nothing."

"He's not an easy man," Ace says quietly, staring out at the ice instead of at me, like it's easier to say this way. "Growing up Richard Cole's son meant understanding that some people don't count as much as others to him. Omegas. Anyone who isn't useful." His jaw tightens. "I used to believe him. Took me a long time not to."

I go very still.

"Why are you telling me this?"

He finally looks at me, and there's something raw in his face I've never seen before — Ace with the captain mask cracked open, just for a second, just for me.

"Because whatever you're hiding," he says, "I don't think it's the thing my father would call a problem. I think it's the thing he'd call a threat. And I'd rather you trust me before you find out I'm not him."

I want to tell him everything. The suppressants. The patches. My brother's shoulder that never healed right. The email that could end both our seasons if anyone traces it back to me. I want it so badly my throat aches with the shape of the words.

I say nothing. Coach calls us back to drills, and the moment closes like a door.

•

Dominic catches me alone in the stairwell after, before I even make it to the parking lot.

"Cozy little chat with the captain," he says, blocking the door with one arm. "You two looked real close out there."

"Move, Reyes."

"Here's what's going to happen." He steps closer, close enough that his voice drops to something ugly and quiet. "You're going to tell Coach you're benching yourself for the final. Nerves, injury, whatever excuse gets you off the ice without questions. You do that, whatever you're hiding stays hidden. You don't—" He shrugs, easy, like he's not holding my whole life in one sentence. "I start asking Dr. Ferris some very specific questions about a certain email she got from a bioethics account. See how long it takes her to figure out whose."

The floor drops out from under me. "You don't know anything."

"I know enough." His smile is all teeth. "Twelve days, Vance. Bench yourself, or I do it for you — the hard way."

He leaves me alone in the stairwell, and I stand there shaking, because he's bluffing about the details but not about the threat, and there's no version of benching myself that doesn't end with Ace asking questions I can't survive answering.

•

That night, I go back to my dorm to grab a fresh patch before the team bus leaves for the championship hotel, and my drawer is already open.

Empty.

Every patch. Every backup. Gone.

My hands go cold. I tear the room apart — under the mattress, inside my gym bag, the hidden pocket sewn into my jacket lining that no one should know about. Nothing. Someone didn't just find my stash. Someone knew exactly where to look.

My phone buzzes.

Dominic: Looking for something?

I call him. He picks up on the first ring, and I can hear the smirk in his voice before he says a single word.

"Give them back," I say, hating how my voice shakes.

"Give what back? I don't know what you're talking about, Vance. I just think it's interesting that a guy who never sweats through his collar suddenly can't stop." A pause, sharp as a blade. "You've got, what, twelve hours before the panel posts your results anyway? I figure I'm just speeding up the inevitable."

"Dominic—"

"See you at the hotel, Twin Ace." He hangs up.

I try the campus health center first — closed for a staff training day, a laminated sign taped to the door like the universe is laughing at me. I try Marcus next, some vague excuse about needing to borrow allergy medication, and get back a confused dude, we're already loading the bus. Every option I have runs out in under ten minutes.

I sit on the floor of my ransacked room with my whole body shaking, doing math I don't want to do. Twelve hours. Maybe less. My cycle has never been reliable under stress, and stress is the only thing I've felt for a week straight.

Without a patch, there's no telling how long I have before my body stops keeping the secret I've spent two years building my entire life around.

The team bus leaves in twenty minutes.

I could stay behind. Fake sick, fake anything, buy myself one more day to find a patch, a doctor, a miracle.

But if I don't show up the night before the biggest game of the season, Coach asks questions. Richard Cole asks questions. And Dominic gets exactly what he wants without even having to expose me himself.

I grab my bag with hands that won't quite steady and run for the bus.

Ace is saving me a seat. Of course he is. He smiles when he sees me, easy and warm and completely unaware that the guy sliding in beside him is a countdown clock with a captain's letter sewn on his jersey.

"You okay?" he asks, already reaching over to squeeze my shoulder. "You're freezing."

His hand lingers.

His eyes narrow.

And under the fluorescent bus lights, close enough now that there's nowhere left for me to hide it, I watch the exact moment his pupils blow wide and his whole body goes rigid beside me.

"Jude," he says, voice dropping into something I've never heard from him before. Something low. Something hungry. "What's happening to you right now?"

I open my mouth, and nothing comes out except a broken, helpless sound, because the answer is already climbing up through my skin where every single person on this bus could see it if they knew what they were looking at.