“Alex,” Sasha begged. “Солнышко, wait.”
Alex paused, hand on the door handle. “Don’t call me that. I have to go. I—I can’t be here.”
Then he was gone, fleeing down the hall and leaving Sasha alone in the hotel room, shell-shocked and speechless.
Sasha buried his face in his hands. I only wanted to know the truth. How did this go wrong so quickly?
Chapter Twenty-Four
ALEX FLED down the hallway blindly, bare feet rough against the hotel carpet. Shawn’s room was at the end of the corridor, and at that moment it was the only safe place he could think to go. Sasha was still in his room. Sasha, who—
A well of fear threatened to bubble up from inside his chest. Alex stopped at the last door on the left and knocked as quickly as he could, praying that he had the right room.
When Shawn’s familiar face appeared seconds later, Alex didn’t hesitate. He pushed through the barely open door and straight into his friend’s arms.
“Alex?” Shawn’s voice sounded far away, but Alex couldn’t focus on it. He couldn’t focus on anything except the scared, angry tears that burned his eyes and the feel of strong arms around him. “Phantom, bro, talk to me. Are you okay? Do I need to call someone?”
Alex shook his head. He was distantly aware of Shawn moving them both farther into the room, of being lowered to sit on the bed. Shawn must have turned the show he was watching off, because the room went silent all of a sudden, and then Shawn was wrapping an arm around his shoulder and running tender fingers through Alex’s hair.
“What happened?”
Somehow, Alex found the words. “Sasha knows.”
Shawn didn’t have to ask for clarification. He cursed and pulled Alex closer. “I’ll kill him if he hurt you.”
“He told Despres. They both know.”
The cursing this time was more creative.
Alex wasn’t sure how long they sat there, side by side on the end of Shawn’s bed, before he was able to catch his breath and begin to speak haltingly. “The first time I met him, he was laughing at an anti-Para slur that Volkov had called him.”
“Mikhail is a dumb kid,” Shawn said. “Not excusing him, but the shit those kids hear and say before they come to the NHL doesn’t mean anything.”
“But Sasha laughed. Like calling someone that word was funny.”
Shawn didn’t have a response to that.
“Despres doesn’t like me. Sasha told me that they’re best friends and they’ve been close since he joined the team years ago.” Alex’s hands were shaking, and he clenched them into fists to try to make them stop. “When Despres was in the locker room, he kept glaring at me, and I overheard him tell Sasha that he thinks I’m trying to steal his spot on the team.”
“Alex.” Shawn hugged him close but didn’t say anything else.
The fragile calm that Alex had managed to hold on to started to crack, and panic slipped through, making it difficult to breathe. Alex closed his eyes, struggling to inhale around the sensation. “If he tells Coach, they won’t let me play anymore.”
Alex didn’t clarify which he he was talking about, because either possibility was equally horrifying. Sasha had revealed his biggest secret to a man who wanted him off the team and could use that information to make it happen. Even if it wasn’t Sasha himself who knocked on Coach Henrique’s door to spill the beans, the betrayal was just as immediate and heartbreaking.
“Hey, no.” Shawn gripped his shoulder, turning Alex to face him. He used his free hand to lift Alex’s chin, and Alex blinked his eyes open to see Shawn staring at him dead-on, serious in a way that his best friend rarely was. “That’s not going to happen, man.”
The laugh that escaped Alex was hollow, not remotely humorous. “Yeah, Carts. That’s exactly what’s going to happen. I’ll never play pro hockey again.”
“Then fuck ’em.” Shawn’s eyes were blazing. “If they want to get rid of you because 50 percent of your blood isn’t human, then that’s their loss, because they’ll have to find a new first-pair defenseman too. I’ll go play in the Swedish leagues before I let them kick you off this team because you’re Para.”
“No! Carts, that’s not—you can’t do that.”
Shawn grinned crookedly. “Pretty sure I can, dude. Anyways, I hear the men and women in Sweden are way hotter, and they have really amazing Para equality laws.”
Something loosened in Alex’s chest. The panic was still there, but he could manage a few shaky breaths around the weight on his ribs. “I was so careful,” he said quietly, glancing away. “I can’t figure out how he guessed.”
“Who cares?” Shawn got up off the bed, digging a bottle of water out of the hotel fridge and passing it to Alex, who took it gratefully. “If he tells, he’s an asshole. Don’t let yourself worry about the how right now… we have a game tomorrow. You should go out there and show him that you don’t give a fuck what he says or does, or who he tells. Play your heart out; show them that getting rid of you is the biggest mistake they’ll ever make.”
Oh god. He was starting against Atlanta in less than twenty-four hours. This time the panic was something he could grasp on to, at least.
“Stop, Phantom.” Shawn hauled Alex to his feet, meeting his gaze once again. “What do you want?”
“I want to play hockey,” Alex whispered.
“Then do it. You can freak out and spend all night going over the what-ifs, or you can drink that water, climb into the spare bed to crash for the night, and wake up tomorrow ready to play hockey. What’s it gonna be?”
The answer was obvious. Alex took a deep breath, and then another.
If Sasha or Despres wanted him off this team, he was going to show them exactly what they’d be losing.
“If his performance tonight is anything to go on, I think Alex Fanning is going to drag this team to the playoffs kicking and screaming. Especially when you look at how poorly the defense played tonight… if it wasn’t for Fanning being a force of nature between the pipes, this team would be looking at a loss to Atlanta instead of a win.”
“Absolutely agree, Bob. But I also want to highlight how Mikhail Volkov played tonight. He absolutely made the most of every shift, and his two goals and one assist were the driving force behind the Cascades’ offense. If both of these rookies keep playing like they are, the Cascades will have to postpone their summer vacation plans for sure.”
—Bob Rousseau and Emily Burnwood, Seattle Cascades Post-Game Report
ALEX HADN’T looked in his direction even once since the night before the Atlanta game.
Sasha knew this, because he’d spent every waking moment watching Alex instead, feeling like there was an entire canyon of misunderstanding and heartbreak between them.
Even Shawn wasn’t speaking to him, unless it was a call to pass the puck, or something else related to hockey.
“Hey, you and Fanning fighting again?” Merkley asked, finding him before they headed out for warmups before the game against Tampa.
Sasha resisted the urge to look over toward Alex, dressed in his full goalie gear and talking animatedly with Bayer and Mo about something. “No,” he said shortly.
“So, yes, then.” Merks nodded. “I don’t need to tell you to sort it out, man. I don’t know why the two of you were at each other’s throats back in January, and I don’t care why you’re back to this frozen silence now. But get it together before it starts affecting this locker room, okay? We have a real chance to make playoffs this year. But if you two fuck with the team chemistry, summer vacation is going to come too early. Got me?”
“Yeah, Cap. I got you.” Sasha watched his captain head across the room and sighed.
Merkley is anti-Para. The thought came out of nowhere. He didn’t make any secret of it in the locker room, though Merks had gotten better about using certain phrases and being too vocal since he’d gotten the captaincy. If he knew why Alex was so upset with me, he would care. He’d insist that Alex be kicked off the team.
And that, Sasha resolved, was not going to happen. Alex could hate him until they were both retired or traded to teams across the continent, but Sasha wasn’t going to let anyone kick him off this team because he was Para.
Of course, knowing he was Para meant so many little oddities finally made sense. It was honestly a miracle that no one else had noticed—though, Sasha reasoned, hockey superstitions and weird goalie quirks definitely helped to mask any Para behavior.
But some things, put into context, now finally made sense. Like the burn on Alex’s arm, which had looked vicious and painful when Sasha had seen it. But now, thinking about it, the burn had been completely gone a few days later when they’d all been fucking around in the player’s lounge before video review one day. And the girlfriend, Heather—
Does he feed from her? Alex had seen her every few days before he and Sasha had gotten together, based on gossip from their teammates and cell phone pics posted online. And Alex had been upfront about the fact that they were friends, that he still “hung out” with her sometimes.
The thought of feeding, of Alex drinking someone’s blood, was where Sasha got stuck, however.
He’s Para. Vampires drink blood.
Sasha was gay. In Russia, that was spit upon at best, criminal at worst. But while being gay was bad enough in his culture, being Para was… unthinkable. And Alex drank people’s blood, which was somehow even more terrifying than simply being Para.
There were too many questions, too many things Sasha didn’t understand.
He found Shawn during warmups. “I need to talk to Alex.”
“Fuck off,” Shawn replied. “If you’re going to threaten him by going to Coach or the NHL officials, you can just tell it to me. He doesn’t need to hear any of that shit.”
Sasha glanced at the net, where Alex was focused on his own warmup routine. “I’m not going to threaten him. I only want to talk. I need answers.”
Shawn spat on the ice. “Alex doesn’t owe you anything, especially answers to whatever questions you might have. If you want to see how badly you’re about to fuck up his life, go google ‘Para pro athletes.’ But leave him alone.”
With that, his partner skated off. Sasha watched him go, deep in thought. He couldn’t imagine the horror stories that would come up if he searched for stories about Para athletes, couldn’t even fathom how difficult things were for people like Alex.
But… he could do some research. And maybe, if he figured out what he was dealing with, he could figure out a way to stop Ed from telling anyone. Maybe he could fix this, so Alex didn’t need to be afraid anymore.
The majority of Paranormal beings have two “forms”: their natural state, in which their Paranormal status is obvious; and a human state. While few tests have been done on the difference in abilities between these two forms, what little research we’ve seen proves that Paras who are in their human form are, for all intents and purposes, human. So far, no testing has revealed any performance-enhancing benefits for Paras in human form, apart from minor sensory increases (i.e., hearing, scent). Even allergies, which may be deadly to a Para in his natural form, are significantly less impactful in the human form.
Patel, A. N. (2017). An analysis of Paranormal abilities. The American Journal for Paranormal Studies, 3(3):44-49.
Let me break this down for you: Patel collected dozens of research papers and test results, and showed that Para athletes get ZERO benefit from being Para when they’re playing. Like sure, a wolf can run really fast, but a werewolf sprinter can’t go any faster than his human-form body allows him to. The science proves it! Unless your Olympic swimmer suddenly grows a tail in the middle of a heat, the only way they’re going to win is if they work hard and train diligently—same as any other human competitor.
—Cole Whitesmith, for Deadspin.com
THERE WERE only so many things that Alex could focus on at one time, and he was fast reaching his limit between hockey, Sasha, and the gnawing hunger that he couldn’t seem to shake no matter what he did.
At first he’d thought it was just a physical manifestation of the heartbreak that sat heavy in his chest every time he spotted Sasha on the ice or at a team dinner. He’d fallen hard for Sasha, and quickly. The revelation that Sasha—and, through him, Despres—could ruin the one thing Alex loved more than anything… well, he hadn’t been surprised when he’d started to feel lethargic, aching, and unsettled.
He’d pushed the discomfort aside to play his second game of the road trip against Tampa. Hockey came first, always, which meant he couldn’t waste time worrying or hurting over something beyond his control.
But then they’d lost the game against Tampa, and Alex had been forced to reevaluate.
It hadn’t been a bad game. The Cascades were hungry for every point they could get, vying desperately for one of the wildcard spots in the Western Conference, and they’d played like a team hungry to win. Tampa hadn’t been able to hold together against them.
Unfortunately, neither had Alex.
Something’s wrong. It wasn’t the first time he’d thought that in the last few weeks, but now it was becoming frighteningly obvious.
“I was too slow,” he told Shawn later that night. He had his own hotel room again in Tampa; it was pristine, bland, and empty of both Sasha’s scent and Sasha himself, unlike the room in Atlanta. But Shawn’s room smelled bright and fresh just like his best friend did, and Shawn didn’t seem to mind Alex crashing on his spare bed. It was comfortable, and Alex was craving comfort these days.
Shawn made a back-and-forth gesture with his hand. “You looked a little off at times, but you were playing fine.”
“I wasn’t, trust me.” Alex stretched out on the bed, and every muscle in his body protested at once. “I couldn’t move fast enough tonight. Like my body wouldn’t respond the way I needed it to.”
Silence made him turn his head, only to spot Shawn looking troubled. “When’s the last time you fed, bro?”
Alex shrugged, then regretted it when the ache radiated down his back. “Sunday morning, before we left for the airport. I ran by Heather’s early, since she had a midmorning set call and we had our flight.”
“And you’re okay? On blood, I mean.”
Shawn held his wrist out hesitantly, as though to say I can help if I need to.
“I fed four days ago,” Alex stressed. “It can’t be that.”
But even as he said the words, he knew they were a lie. He was hungry, bone-deep. Feeding from Heather hadn’t worked for some reason. Maybe it hadn’t been working in a while, but now he was really noticing the effects.
“I’m fine,” he said. “Maybe I just need more sleep.”
Chapter Twenty-Five
Seattle Cascades (@CascadesNHL)
A loss to Tampa last night isn’t going to stop these guys from enjoying a day on the beach! Tomorrow we take on Florida… today, we play an epic game of beach volleyball! https://t.co/Ergk5bTG0D
Mrs. Merkley… a girl can dream! (@MerkleyFan96)
Finally, my favorite day of the year: when the entire Cascades team runs around in the sun wearing just a pair of shorts. #hot #somuchmuscle
THE BEACH was paradise. The sun was hot, the sand was white and beautiful, the ocean was blue, and they had a cooler with water and sports drinks set up beneath an umbrella.
Sasha lounged in the shade, sunglasses firmly in place, and tried to enjoy it.
The rest of the team was engaged in what had begun as a civil game of volleyball, before devolving into chaos. Sasha had escaped as soon as the match had turned into a winner-take-all elimination contest, grabbing a cold drink and finding somewhere to sit in the shade.
He was having fun, but he couldn’t help but notice the holes in the team where people were missing. Rybár and Wilson had ridden down to the beach with them on the bus, only to vanish into a nearby restaurant for some Cuban food. “And air-conditioning!” Wilson had added, grinning.
The only other person missing, though, was the o
ne person Sasha wanted to see more than anything. Alex had apologized profusely, explaining that he had a phone interview that he’d scheduled weeks ago, before the team bonding day was announced, and he couldn’t get out of it. So their goalie was back at the hotel, and Sasha was miserable in paradise without him nearby.
“How on earth can you look so sad right now?” Misha threw himself onto the sand beside Sasha, chatting happily in Russian as he sprayed his face down with a bottle of water. Alyssa came by, dressed down in shorts and a tank top, and snapped a photo of the two of them for the Cascades’ social media account before moving on.
Sasha took another sip from his own drink and stared moodily out at the volleyball game. “Not sad,” he responded eventually. “Just thinking.”
“Thinking deep thoughts about Fanning?”
The Gatorade he’d just taken a sip of caught in his throat, and Sasha coughed and almost spit it right back out. “What?” he gasped.
Misha, the little shit, laughed at him. “We might be hockey players, Sasha, but none of us are dumb. When you and Alex go from being best friends who sit on the bus together, to not even looking at each other, people are going to notice.” He stretched his legs out in front of him and tilted his head back. “Also, I live with you, dumbass. You come home late all the time, and the next day Fanning looks like he’s the happiest boy in Seattle.”
The casual reveal hit Sasha like a freight train—or like being boarded by Bilovsky, that asshole. He shook his head to clear it, and then studied his rookie carefully. Misha had left Russia only a year prior, had spent his entire life before that entrenched in Russian culture and politics as one of Russian hockey’s rising stars. Sasha had been spending most of his year in America for half a decade, but he still fought against the deeply engrained stereotypes and stigmas of his childhood.
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