Chapter 30
W hen a lawyer finally called him, he nearly didn’t pick up. He didn’t recognise the number and the first thing that popped into his head was that it must be the White Cats. He’d heard nothing from them since Maslow’s surprise visit, but even all the way in Terali, he was well aware that he was still theirs on paper.
They had every right to check on him, because Kallen had given them that right.
And he couldn’t take it away, not until the lawyers got the footage for him. Because if he slammed the door shut on their faces, they might figure out what he was about to do. Even if he didn’t, they might still delete the whole thing the moment it was requested, but that would just incriminate them further, wouldn’t it? If the times Kallen needed were gone.
Not that he was all that sure what time it’d been, but he figured if they started checking half an hour before the game ended until about two hours later, they had to find it.
The thought brought a sour taste to his mouth, to think of anyone else seeing him like that. As if talking about it hadn’t been bad enough.
It was a pleasant surprise to find that not only it wasn’t the team, but that he was speaking to a senior partner. The man was confident and direct, asking questions about what Kallen had said in his email. It was easier to talk about it. He didn’t go into as much detail this time, calling it sexual abuse and speaking about the locker room specifically.
“This will not be easy,” the lawyer concluded.
“I know,” Kallen told him. “But... is it possible? To get them to give us the video? To...” He trailed off.
“Possible, yes,” Mirel Evans agreed. “You said you are in Terali now?”
“Yeah, I just... I didn’t wanna be there anymore.”
“Understandable, and they might try to use it against you, but the case we want to make is that their hostile work environment has made it impossible for you to do your job, and the abuse has made it necessary for you to retreat to a safe space while you recover. Do you have a psychologist?”
“Um, no. I... I can get one.” He’d told his parents he thought he needed it, but he hadn’t done anything about it.
“That would be advisable. For you, not just for the case.” He thought there was something softer in the man’s voice then, and he had to gulp hard to keep his cool.
AFTERWARDS, HIS HANDS were shaking and he couldn’t stand to be inside, so he went for another walk. Even outside, he got so lost in thought he nearly tripped over a tiny dog. He was half swallowing a curse and half preparing to apologise when he glanced up from the small but loud menace on four legs and recognised the person holding the leash.
She was frowning at him, of course, but after a moment her eyes cleared. “Kallen?” She laughed a little. She knelt and picked up the dog, tucking it against her chest and petting it without looking away from Kallen.
“Yeah. Analisa, right?” he asked, even though her face was still just as rounded and her hair just as red. It was his second day in the neighbourhood, so it wasn’t that weird to meet a neighbour, except it felt a bit like he’d summoned her.
She shook her head. “Yeah! This is a surprise. I thought you were in...”
“Jiro,” he said.
“Oh, yeah. My mum tells me about you sometimes, I think she still talks to your mum a lot. Are you visiting?”
His stomach twisted. “Something like that. What about you? Do you still live here?”
“Me?” She asked. “No! I’m at uni up north, but my folks are on a cruise.” Her grimace spoke volumes about her opinion on that. “So I came over to look after the tiny beast.” Despite her words, she glanced down and smiled at the dog, who’d settled in her arms quite happily despite all the furious energy it’d demonstrated when Kallen had impeached on its territory.
“Sorry about...” He gestured towards it.
Analisa had looked annoyed earlier, but now she shrugged it off. “No worries, my dad never taught Mini to walk by his side. “So where are you headed? We can walk with you. I don’t think I have seen you since...” She was frowning.
“Just walking, any direction is good.” He turned so he was by her side, and she put Mini down again, where the dog immediately stretched its leash to go investigate a nearby tree. “I moved out three years ago,” he offered. “So at least since we were sixteen.”
“Damn,” she shook her head, shooting him an incredulous smile. “It’s weird, it doesn’t feel like that long to me when we found Mrs Hendrich’s car door had been left open and we filled it with leaves.”
He followed her gaze to a bright yellow house across the road, and he snorted. “That was your idea.”
She widened her eyes in feigned innocence. “Was it?”
They’d mostly spent the walk reminiscing, but he’d found out Analisa was studying to be a barrister. She wanted to be in court, which she casually described with an eyeroll as a distinctively un-omega profession. It was odd to be reminded the rest of the world had its own hangups, even if there was nothing as archaic as what sports’ teams imposed. The contrast could have made her predicament seem absurd, but he found himself empathising easily. After all, she was following her own dream and the world was telling her she had to be better than everyone else around her because of her biology.
It was yet another reason to do something about what had happened to him.
When they made it back to their own street, they discovered they’d never exchanged numbers before and concluded they must have stopped hanging out before they’d got mobiles of their own.
“My parents wouldn’t buy me one till I was fifteen ,” Analisa said with a sigh. “So really, not that meaningful if you think about it.”
“I’m glad we ran into each other,” Kallen told her sincerely, and he managed not to startle when she casually leaned in for a half-hug. Of course it was normal for omega friends to touch each other casually, but until he’d met Brad, Kallen hadn’t had any contact with other omegas.
He’d been completely isolated from the people who’d have understood. The people who could have pointed out how deep he was in and helped him out of it. Was that an accident too or how Team Management wanted it to ensure he didn’t deviate from their plan?
HE HAD ANOTHER COUPLE texts from Levy when he checked his phone after dinner. The first one was a photo of a lasagna that made his mouth water despite the fact that he’d just eaten. The second was a text he couldn’t parse [Now can carb out in peace.]
Almost on autopilot, he switched out of the screen onto the search engine. The name of his former team was enough to bring up the answer he half dreaded. The White Cats had been eliminated from the semi-finals in a series of bad games. The first one had been Kallen’s last, and since then they had managed to eke a couple wins, but not enough to compete with teams that were performing well regularly.
He could guess what he’d find when he opened the article. It was inevitable, after all, the narrative was so obvious . The reporter wasn’t outright blaming him for the loss, but he did say that once Kallen had stopped playing, the spirit had gone out of the team.
It was a toss-up if it was laughable or true. The team hadn’t even checked if he was alive . Apparently, they’d been under orders not to, but shouldn’t that have worried them more ? Especially Johnson and Alexei, who’d known what had happened to him. At the same time, he didn’t think they were all psychopaths, maybe Johnson felt so bad about being a cowardly shit that it’d thrown him off his game.
He wasn’t arrogant enough to assume his presence on the ice could be that essential, though he was one of their top forwards and even if he’d been out on an injury, it could have destabilised the dynamic enough to— Enough , he commanded himself. None of it mattered, he’d made a decision and he was going to live with it, because it was still the best choice he could have made for himself. The choice he’d needed to make because he couldn’t trust anyone else to protect him instead.
Levy must have thought he knew, it was easy to feel that way when you were truly immersed in the game. And it made sense, really. They had been his team . He’d dedicated most of his waking hours to getting them the Cup, and now he’d missed that they’d lost.
And he didn’t even care. Worse, he was a little glad that it’d been taken from them.
Like they had taken it from him.
But of course not Levy. Levy had done his best in fucked up circumstances and he’d protected Kallen as much as he had been able. At least the second time around.
[Tough one] he texted [But so jealous of your lasagna]
[Tx. Will save you some :)]
For the first time it occurred to him that there had been no reason for his mother to make him a side of green vegetables instead of feeding him the potatoes his parents had had for dinner. He didn’t need to keep up his muscle mass, or... His throat closed up and he dropped the phone next to him on the sofa.
“Son?”
He blinked, realising the living room had gone dark around him.
His dad was frowning and suddenly Kallen remembered what had happened the day before and dropped his gaze. “You wanna talk about it?”
Kallen shook his head. “The White Cats are out, I just saw it.”
“Yeah.” The slightly vacillation was very unlike his father. “They are. Teaches them to waste their MVP,” he added with some sharpness.
It wasn’t true and they both knew it, objectively. But it was still nice of his dad to say. “They’ll have all winter to regret it.”
Traditionally the most intense finals were played during the colder months, even sharper up north in Jiro, to keep everyone active during the harsher season of the year. Besides if they’d tried to play that many games back-to-back in the heat of summer, players would have dropped like flies.
He rubbed at his own arms, feeling the muscles there. He’d lost some of it during his convalescence, but he was still pretty strong, and he hated the idea of losing that. All those hours of hard work. “Do you still have the basement set up?”
His dad nodded. “Of course, your old man does his reps every morning. Just like I taught you.”
Kallen flashed him a smile. “Good to know. Might join you tomorrow.”
KALLEN NEARLY WALKED out. He might have if the heavy door hadn’t swung shut behind him.
It was hardly shocking that Mirel Evans was an alpha, lawyers in general tended towards the masculine end of the spectrum in both gender and phenotype.
“Do you want a chaperone?” the man asked, not moving from behind his desk. He’d stood up, presumably to offer Kallen a hand to shake.
It was something people did. They weren’t in dark ages, alphas and omegas could shake hands.
Kallen faltered, pulse still too fast, trying to parse what he was feeling besides alarm.
The alpha sat back down, only then pointing to the side. “That chair is heavy enough to keep the door open.”
And he wanted to say it wasn’t necessary. It probably wasn’t. What kind of idiot would the guy have to be to attack a client in his own office? The door was heavy, but it’d hardly be soundproofed enough that the beta secretary a few steps away could miss screaming.
He glanced towards the chair, and then went for it, lifting it easily and propping the door open. His face was hot, but he didn’t care. He had every right to feel safe, and the man had offered, hadn’t he?
When he met Evans’ eyes. He expected condescension, perhaps pity. There was nothing but intense focus, helped by their deep blue colour. “Psychologist?”
“Yeah, I have a phone interview,” Kallen told him, still standing across the room. It was a lie, but he’d make it true as soon as he got home.
Evans nodded. “If you don’t think you can work with me—”
“No,” Kallen cut him off and saw the surprise in the other man’s face. Surprise but no anger, he was well-trained to look out for that on an alpha. “I’m still... No offence, but I was thinking I should have an omega lawyer.”
“You can,” the alpha said easily. “I will even recommend one. But if you’d like me to help, I promise I will do my best for you. I’m a fan, you see.”
“What?” He’d drifted closer and took a chair.
The alpha shrugged, a rueful smile turning his lips. “Played up to secondary school,” he explained. “And you know the Crocodiles aren’t much to write home about.”
It was true, the Terali team had been at the bottom of the league rankings for years. “Crocodiles can’t even hold a stick,” Kallen replied, a much-used joke amongst fans referring to the team’s mascot and namesake.
But the other man snorted. Now that he wasn’t frozen in terror, Kallen could take him in. He had to be around forty, dark-skinned and blue eyed, which was a striking combination even behind his thin-rimmed glasses.
And he hadn’t pretended Kallen wasn’t afraid. He’d given him a way out. That’s what he wanted, a way out.
“You need a minute to think about it?” Evans asked when he didn’t speak.
Kallen eyed him closely. For years, he hadn’t allowed himself to look at alphas for fear of offending them, but this was too important not to look. Besides, what had he missed by looking away? “I guess if you are a fan...”
“I am,” Evans confirmed, holding his gaze easily. “And I will be very happy to help the team clean up.”
There was something dangerous in his voice then, but it didn’t frighten Kallen. He wanted that anger. No, he needed it, because if no one helped him to get it out and do something good with it, it was going to poison him from the inside.
“So how do we do this?”
THERAPY WAS IMPORTANT , he could see that. But the police report was urgent , and it couldn’t wait until someone held his hand so he could talk about what had happened. So he had to find another way.
He knew if he let himself think about it, he’d put it off so as soon as he got home, he asked his parents to drive him to the local police station and asked for an omega officer there.
To his surprise, the one that came to get him after about half an hour was a woman, petite and dark eyed, black straight hair tied neatly at the nape of her neck. She couldn’t have been even thirty, but her pale face was blank and professional when she invited him into a private room to talk.
She’d got him some water and then set something on the table between them. “Do you mind if I record this conversation?”
Kallen startled. “I... Why?”
“So I can write a report when we are done.”
“Oh.” He’d hoped she might be able to play it for other people. “Sure.”
She set it up and let him sip at his water, skin clammy despite how cool the room was. “I cannot take a guess,” she told him eventually. “But I can promise you I have almost certainly heard worse. Seen it too. And I will help if I can.”
He huffed, irritated at himself. “Yeah, just... I worked... work for a hockey team. Play for them, I mean. And...” He let go of the glass and pressed his fingers hard against the tabletop instead. “They... Some of them hurt me. A lot. And Management wouldn’t do anything. I tried to tell them and they told—” He cleared his throat, hard enough he might have spat. “They told me it was my fault, that I provoked them.”
“I’m sorry,” she said, but before he could tell her he didn’t want her pity, she went on, “but I have to ask how they hurt you.”
He froze, looking at his own fingers, pulse pounding in his ears. He’d told Levy, and Mr Evans. “Sex.”
“Was this during your heat?”
“No,” he said, barely biting back a grown, and saw her stiffen a little, but it didn’t stop him. It felt like nothing could, once the wound was reopened. “It started during heat, and then one of them did it in the locker room. He just— He used will and he made me stay still and he raped me.”
Her face was softly upset, a mask of polite empathy. Maybe it was the only way you could look someone in the eye and ask, “How?”
For a moment, Kallen couldn’t breathe, let alone speak, and then, like it’d been a challenge, he held her gaze and spat it out, vicious and graphic, “Rammed his cock down my throat. Made me swallow.”
She tried not to react, but he caught the little flinch anyway. “Did you ever consent to sexual contact with this individual outside of heat?”
“No.”
She nodded and her fingers curled and uncurled next to the recorder. “It sounds like sexual assault.”
He snorted.
“Is there a chance you might be pregnant?”
“What? No!” At that, he leaned back, repulsed.
“That’s good,” the officer told him. “It has been used as a defence by alphas in similar situations,” she explained, and Kallen suddenly felt like a dick; she hadn’t been asking him because she didn’t believe him, but because she knew other people wouldn’t.
“There’s video,” he said, softer now, and a little desperate because this what he was here for. “If you can get an order to get it. There are cameras in the locker room and one of them must have caught it. My lawyer says it can be done.”
Her dark eyes were direct and attentive on his, and when she nodded, her lips curved faintly upwards. She grabbed a piece of paper from the satchel she’d placed on the corner. “Write down the dates and times.”
She’d still made him write a full report of his testimony, including the names of everyone involved in the attacks and who he’d complained to and what he’d been told. He’d thought it would be difficult, but it felt good to do it, using all caps for their names to ensure everyone would know, and going into a level of detail he hadn’t believed himself capable off, fuelled by anger that bordered on hatred.
If Evans wanted to clean up the team, Kallen wanted to scourge it, burn it to the ground until nothing remained. Unless there was something clean underneath after all, but other than the children they were raising to feed into their fucked-up machine, he doubted that very much.
What had happened to Coleridge? It suddenly occurred to him to wonder. The White Cats hadn’t been patient like other teams, they’d started recruiting as soon as the omega before Kallen had announced his retirement. Somehow, Kallen had forgotten all about him until this very moment.
Except that was a lie, wasn’t it? He just hadn’t wanted to think about the man he was replacing, not about the decade the other omega had spent with the team or the three pregnancies he’d had for them. One of them by McKinley, which would have entitled him to sexual access to Coleridge for the duration. The officer wasn’t wrong, everyone knew an alpha who’d impregnated an omega needed to have sex with them while they carried their child to term.
Just like everyone knew no alpha could resist an omega in heat.
But both Levy and Benny had.
Coleridge could very well still be in the Den, raising the children there because his contract specified that he couldn’t sue for custody. Yet another thing Kallen had convinced himself not to think about when he’d signed his life away to be allowed to play.
Had they done the same things to him? Yrovsky hadn’t been with the team then, but everyone else... Fuck, Levy had been there a couple of months before him. Had he...?
His stomach convulsed.
The knock on the door startled him back to the present. It was the officer coming to check on him and Kallen nodded when she asked if he was okay. He wasn’t, not even close, but it was what it took to hand her the pages and walk out of there.
HIS DAD WAS ALONE IN the waiting room. His mum had gone out for a moment to get them a hot drink and something to eat. Glancing at the clock revealed he’d been inside for over two hours.
“Son.” His dad was on his feet at once, alert and worried, and Kallen looked at him and didn’t know what to say.
They’d come with him, and his dad had said those things about the team. But he hadn’t done anything. Maybe he hadn’t been able to. Just like Levy hadn’t found the strength to walk out on the team, or how it’d taken Kallen nearly a year to realise he had to.
He kept his gaze low. “Can we go home?”
“Sure!” His dad agreed, and if his mum hadn’t taken five more minutes to return, they might have walked off without the copy of the report Mr Evans needed.
As it was, Kallen let her take it and followed them to the car in silence, and when they got to the house, he waved away any offers of a snack and went straight upstairs to collapse on top of the covers.
He was done, he decided. He’d done his part. He’d done enough.
THE NEXT MORNING, HE woke up with the sky still dark, stomach rumbling and body desperate to move. It was only to be expected when he’d gone to bed so early. He remembered what he’d done, what he’d written, but it had faded a bit, that utter despair pressing him down.
Enough that he could see it rushing back for him and also the chance to evade it. He went downstairs and made himself an omelette, eating it quickly at the kitchen counter with a cup of strong builder’s tea. Then he got himself down to the basement. Strength training was a very small part of his exercise routine, and he had nothing to train for , but waking up at six in the morning felt good anyway. Maybe it was just habit, maybe it was the knowledge of the endorphins coming his way. But it was work he could do well on his own and he was going to do it.
It didn’t matter that his goals for the day mostly involved helping his mum cook, meticulously folding laundry and... Emailing Mr Evans the police report. He would do that when he got back up, after a shower, or maybe he’d go for a run. He needed to build up his stamina.
He was carefully ignoring the fact that he didn’t know what for . He wasn’t going to get another job in a professional team, and he was way too young for coaching, even if he’d thought he’d be any good at it.
For the first time since he’d gone away to school, he was in complete control of his own body.
He didn’t quite know what to do with it except what he’d been told, though.
IT WAS NOT IDEAL, BUT after a few days, he managed to pull himself together enough to do some maths and go to the doctor to ask for a pill to suppress his upcoming heat. He wasn’t sure how he felt about it, messing with his hormones was dangerous, especially in the long-term. It was strictly forbidden as part of his contract, he knew that much, even if he doubted it’d been primarily motivated by an interest in his well-being.
When he’d explained he’d got hurt on his last heat, his family doctor had prescribed it at once. He’d also wanted to examine him, but Kallen had put him off, explaining there had been no visible marks.
“I see. We better sort out the invisible ones then,” the man told him in a tone that brooked no argument, shoving a binder across his desk. It turned out to have doctors listed by specialty.
Doctor Kakar had left it open to the P.
He was a beta, but he’d known Kallen since he’d been an eleven-year-old desperate to grow faster. It wasn’t like he could tell his parents what they discussed now, but still.
He’d wanted hormones back then, he remembered. A few months on testosterone would have done the work of a year’s constant training on his developing muscles.
He hadn’t told anyone, knowing his dad would have been beyond disappointed at his lack of work ethic. But it’d been so unfair that he had to work so much harder than any of his alpha teammates, who seemed to bulk out in the space of weeks while Kallen trained his arse off on a diet so strict he wouldn’t allow himself cake on his own birthday.
It turned out therapists disclosed their gender and phenotype as a matter of course. But other than that, he had no idea how to pick one.
“Do you want my advice?” the doctor asked.
Kallen glanced up. “Sure.”
“Pick one. Any of them.” He must have sensed Kallen was about to object that wasn’t exactly helpful because he added, “Just put your finger down somewhere on the page.”
So he had, right on top of an omega woman’s name, it turned out. He swallowed, suddenly angry. And scared.
And not knowing why. He’d already told people, this was no different.
“Kallen?” Kakar said, gentler than usual. “Shall I make the referral?”
He’d nodded, massaging at the stiffness on the side of his neck.
At the pharmacy, he’d given back the other five pills in the blister pack despite their assurances that it was perfectly safe to suppress heats for up to six months.
Maybe it was and maybe it wasn’t, but Kallen could see too clearly that if he allowed himself to get used to it, he wouldn’t stop. Once would be enough, just a little more time to remember his legs worked again and that he was safe. He’d fantasised about flying Levy to Terali for the day, which was probably messed up on a number of levels, and quickly discarded it. His friend might have even agreed, given that he was relatively free for the rest of winter. But it would have been a dick move, for both of them.
So he had swallowed the tiny pink pill to tell his body to give him a break, just a little grace this once so he could figure out what the hell he was doing.