Colin exhaled through his nose. A long, quiet breath that he’d clearly been holding since the hit.
“Told you,” I said. “Fine.”
“I wasn’t worried,” Colin said.
I let that one go.
The penalty against the other team gave the Badgers the power play, the clock started moving again, and I let myself refocus. But I caught Colin’s gaze tracking to the bench where Charles sat, trainers still working on his leg, and I filed that away for later. In most cases the player would be taken off the ice and back to the locker room area, but I doubted Charles wanted to miss the end of the game.
The puck came loose off the boards in a scramble, and for one horrible second, I lost it in the bodies. Then I found Elliot, I always found Elliot, breaking out of the chaos with the puck on his stick, nothing between him and an empty net at the other end of the ice except two hundred feet and a defenseman closing fast.
I stopped breathing.
He didn’t rush it. That was the thing that killed me, that was the thing I would probably never stop loving about him. He didn’t rush it. Even now, even with the defenseman’s stick reaching, even with the clock bleeding out, Elliot wascomposed. He angled his body, drew the defender to one side, and put the puck in the net like he’d done it ten thousand times, because he had, because this was Elliot, and this was what he was built for.
The horn sounded.
The arena came apart.
I was screaming. I didn’t realize I was screaming until Colin grabbed my arm and I saw his mouth moving and couldn’t hear a word of it over the noise. I didn’t care about that either. I waspointing at the ice like Elliot could somehow see me through the glass and the chaos and the pile of teammates landing on top of him.
“That’s my omega!” I shouted, at nobody, at everybody. “That’s my—”
Colin clapped me on the back hard enough to stagger me forward. “I know,” he said, loud enough to cut through. He was grinning. “The whole section knows.”
I didn’t care about that either.
I watched them celebrate. Watched Elliot climb out from under the pile, visor fogged, hair sweat-dark against his forehead, laughing at something his linemate said. He looked young like that. He looked so happy it made something in my chest ache. I thought about the night he’d come to me and we finally figured out how to make this work. I thought about how far we’d come from that moment to this one, him holding a championship in his hands and my kid tucked safe beneath his heart.
He found me in the stands.
I didn’t know how. The place was a madhouse, twenty thousand people on their feet, light and noise and confetti drifting down from somewhere above us. But his eyes cut through all of it and landed on me, and he pointed, just one quick finger, and I pressed my hand flat against my chest like an idiot because that was apparently all I was capable of.
Colin made a noise beside me. “God, you two are disgusting.”
“Extremely,” I agreed.
I glanced over at him. He wasn’t looking at me. He was looking at the bench, where Charles had pushed himself upright and was watching his teammates celebrate from the other side of the glass, still favoring his good leg, expression unreadable from here.
“You should go check on him,” I said.
Colin opened his mouth. Closed it. “He’s got trainers.”
He didn’t say anything more, and he didn’t look away. When the crowd started moving toward the exits twenty minutes later and I turned to ask if he wanted to grab a drink, he was already gone.
I turned back to the ice, where Elliot was still celebrating, stick raised, and smiled.
I could wait.
Epilogue
Elliot
I had been injured before. Pain wasn’t anything new. All throughout my career — playing in the youth leagues, the high school team, the nationals team, eventually going pro — injuries happened. I’d had fingers broken, shoulders dislocated, twisted ankles, pulled muscles. All the things. There was the time I hyperextended my knee and was pretty sure that my toe had touched my forehead when that happened. But nothing prepared me for the absolute agony of having my body split in half as a baby entered the world.
The pregnancy itself had been smooth. I wasn’t allowed to play hockey, but the doctor had no concerns about me skatingcarefully and doing various practices with no contact from other players, so I kept in shape. I kept active. I even kept running. The whole pregnancy had been an amazing experience of Silas and me finally beginning our lives together. We found a house just outside of Port City with a yard. Our teammates were close by. Colin, who was still an official for the league and a close friend of Silas’s, had moved to the city along with his surprise omega — that one had floored all of us. Coach and Rowan were just a few miles away. There were several times that we had cookouts together.
It was great. Soon, though, once this baby was born, I would be going back to work. I couldn’t wait, but also, I was terrified. I knew that Silas would do a fantastic job as a stay-at-home alpha, and I knew I would spend every moment not on the ice with my baby. I couldn’t believe we were about to be a family.
