Chapter 2
Elliot
The air was electric and my skin tingled with excitement, like a thousand tiny shocks mapping their way down my limbs.
It was always this way during a game, but it was amplified by a thousand because I knew that somewhere in that audience was Silas.
Any time he watched my games, I always played better knowing that he was there, knowing that later we could talk about things I did or didn’t do, plays I made or fumbled.
Those nights were the best. I wished like hell they were every night, that Silas could come to every one of my games, like he was my personal coach, cheerleader, and lover all wrapped up into one.
That was not happening. Ever.
That was what happened when you had a relationship with someone who was completely out of your reach.
Hell, if anyone knew we were together, both of us would be in trouble with our jobs.
The League of Ice Kings, affectionately called LIcK, had a strict no-fraternization policy between alphas and omegas in the organization, more so when it was an omega player.
On top of that, there was a no-fraternization policy, no exceptions, when it came to officials and players.
Three strikes, you’re out.
Wrong sport.
My teammates stopped short of carrying me back to the locker room on their shoulders, shouting their congratulations at the shutout.
We had won three nothing, another win for us in an already winning season.
There were slaps on the back, rough shoulder shakes, and a few times where I almost fell completely over, but there was always another teammate there to lift me up. My skates barely touched the floor.
All I really wanted to do was grab my phone, text Silas, or better yet, call him.
Even better yet, see him in person. Which I would get to do tonight.
I wanted to ask him if he saw the play where I made my second goal.
I wanted to ask him if he had any comments about my goals, or if he noticed any infractions that the inferior refs didn’t call.
Whether the league knew it or not, Silas was the best of the best. The man knew the rule book front to back, and if he wanted to, he could easily climb up the ranks and be an official for LIcK rather than the lower league.
Part of me knew that he didn’t make that jump because of me, but I wasn’t going to acknowledge it, say it out loud, or ever even ask about it.
“We going out tonight, boys?” Nix asked.
All I wanted to do was get home, climb into my alpha’s embrace, and bask in his scent.
Not that I would ever admit that out loud.
I shook that thought away. He wasn’t my alpha.
He was just an alpha that I saw on occasion…
every occasion that we possibly could, and also talked to incessantly while we were on the road.
Oh, and we lived together. He was the first person I thought of when I woke up and the last person I thought of at night.
But that didn’t really mean much, right? Of course not.
“I’ll go,” I said, if only to combat my own feelings. Rushing home to Silas meant recognizing that this relationship of ours was more than it actually was.
The fact that we lived together was just a convenience. It had to be.
We both traveled so much it was stupid to have separate apartments. Technically, Silas could be based out of anywhere, but I had to be in Port City.
“Let me text Ro and see if he wants to go,” Evan said. Our mascot, Rowan, was probably still out there with the crowd. He usually had to work later than we did. Then again, his husband was the coach, so if the team was celebrating then the two of them would probably go also.
“Elliot,” Coach Garrison spoke, and the rest of the room quieted a bit. “You’re talking to the press.”
There were more shouts and cheers.
“Of course, he is! Why would the press want to talk to the rest of us, huh? We didn’t even score any goals,” Derek, one of our defensemen, said.
“Hey, I blocked at least a hundred different shots,” Nix shouted.
Evan rolled his eyes. “Pretty sure the actual count was like forty-nine.”
“Dude, it felt like a hundred.”
“No way we let that many of them past us,” Derek said.
I loved this team. But what the hell would any of them think if they found out who else was in my life?
What would they think if I told them I wanted to spend my life with an official?
Besides our neighboring rivals, the Sharks, one state over in a town called Shadowpeak, the officials were enemy number one. And I shared a bed with one.
I mean, we had a lot of respect for the refs, but there were times where they were definitely the enemy, more so than the team we were playing against.
Most of the refs were good guys. They got weeded out if they weren’t. But we couldn’t help but feel that sometimes calls were personal, a slight against us, because maybe they didn’t like omegas, maybe they didn’t like our city. Refs were human, after all.
They were meant to be neutral, impartial, and blind to the color of the jersey we wore.
I knew better. I knew they did their best and that they were all pretty normal. Before I made it into this league, I used to spend a lot of time with Silas and his work friends. Now I barely knew the names of the guys on his crew, and he had never met any of my closest friends.
In the three years since I’d been called up from the lower league, I’d never introduced Silas to any of my teammates. Since he wasn’t an official in our league, no one even knew who he was.
No one knew we were a thing. They couldn’t.
Since the guys thought I was single, they had tried to set me up with friends and family members over the years. I’d declined enough times that they now thought I was some sort of confirmed bachelor. It helped that Nix was the same way. As the only other omega on the team, we had bonded early.
“Yeah, let’s go out after I talk with the press,” I said.
“You going to drink with us tonight, Shaw?” Derek’s eyes were comically wide, his cheeks flushed from the heat of the game.
“Yeah, I’m not a complete hermit, you know.”
He clapped me on the back. “Nah, but you usually obsessively watch replays of the games during the season. You’re worse than Cap!”
It was true. I did spend a lot of time re-watching games. But that was because I wanted Silas’s feedback, and we would spend hours on the phone dissecting every frame together.
The guys all thought I was talking to a former teammate of mine. In reality, I was talking to my alpha.
“Let’s go get hammered!” Derek put both hands on my shoulders and shook, forgetting that he was three inches and fifty pounds bigger than me. My teeth shook from his onslaught.
“Yeah, after the press,” I said.
Silas would understand. Tomorrow we both had the day off and we could spend the day together. Our first in nearly six weeks.