Page 18 of Omega’s Forward

He hands the six-pack through the gap instead of pushing it. “Enjoy, big man.” He goes down the steps backward, watching me, and points two fingers at his own eyes and then at mine, the thing he does from the crease when he wants a defenseman’s attention. Then he turns at the bottom, and a couple of minutes later, the gate swings shut behind his taillights.

I close the door and stand there with my forehead against it and a six-pack going warm in my hand.

6. Everett

Two suppressants in my palm, guest bathroom, seven in the morning.

I swallow them dry and grip the edge of the sink. The man in the mirror looks like he lost a fight. Wet hair, gray face, shadows under both eyes. One night in this house.

I barely slept. How am I supposed to when an alpha who looks like Brody Callahan is just a few steps down the hall? At two in the morning I lay there with the sheet kicked off and listened to him move around his own bedroom, and I put my hand on myself and took it off again, twice, because the walls in this house are thick but they are not that thick and he would smell it. This is exactly why the Bureau does this. I’m not naïve. I know exactly what they’re doing.

They’re making me sleep in a house saturated with his scent in the hopes that we’ll give in and fuck each other’s brains out. To be fair to them, it’s a tried and tested formula.

The house is solidly built with thick stone walls between us. It makes little difference. I can still scent him as strongly as if he were in the room with me. Woodsmoke, in the towels, in the air of the landing, in the pillow I have slept on exactly once. My body answers it before I have any say in the matter.

There’s also no lock on the guest room door. I told him not to come in and he hasn’t. I should feel pleased about that. Instead, the stupid omega in me is disappointed.

The first dose went down last night, and it works, mostly. The edge is off. But nothing on the market cancels out an alpha like that completely. Under the soap and the new-carpet smell of this room there is still woodsmoke, faint and constant.

Today I meet the team.

I dress with more care than I’ve dressed for anything in years. Charcoal suit, white shirt, the navy tie. I do the buttons slowly, to prove my hands can. Let them hate me in a good suit.

It doesn’t help that Callahan had the sports channel on last night. I heard it through the wall while I answered email: Gordie Rourke’s son, taking over. Two retired players and a host, speculating. The word “unknown” got used nine times. At one point somebody said, “Gordie never really mentioned him.” That one was fair.

Today, in front of twenty-three professional athletes, we are going to shake each other’s hands as complete strangers. I have spent my whole career being pleasant to people I can’t stand. This should be easy.

I knot the tie tighter than it needs to be and go to find out.

I drive to the arena with the radio off, rehearsing answers to questions nobody has asked me yet. Officially, I slept downtown. The rental still smells faintly of his garage. Of him. That is not a helpful thing to notice at forty miles an hour.

Sacco meets me in the tunnel. He shakes my hand once, briskly. He doesn’t bother saying as much as a ‘hello’.

The bastard. I don’t know why he even cares. I’d be happy to pass the team to him or anyone else. Neither of us wants me to be here. We could be allies in that at least. For some people, it doesn’t matter if you’re as nice as you can be to them, or just as nasty. They’re going to dislike you either way. There’s no point putting the effort in or letting it get to you.

He walks me down a corridor lined with photographs of old players and pushes open a door. The noise behind it dies the second I step through.

The locker room is a horseshoe of wooden stalls with names over them, and it smells like sweaty alphas, and under all of it, cutting straight through two doses of the strongest suppressant money can buy, woodsmoke. Twenty-odd enormous men in various states of gear turn and look at me at the same time. Half of them are wearing a black patch on one shoulder with my father’s initials on it.

“Gentlemen.” Sacco’s voice fills the room without trying. “Mr. Everett Rourke. Gordie’s son. He owns this team now, so look alive.” He gestures at the biggest stall, center of the horseshoe. “Your captain. Brody Callahan.”

Callahan crosses the room with his hand already out, and the cover story gets its first road test. His hand closes around mine, dry and enormous and careful. Heat runs straight up my arm and settles low in my gut. This close his scent comes off him in a wave, woodsmoke and something warmer underneath it, and I have to lock my knees and breathe through my mouth. Two doses this morning. Two doses, and he is still doing this to me. I keep my grip firm and my face pleasant.

“Mr. Callahan.” Steady. Good.

“Mr. Rourke. Welcome to the room.”

Nothing in his face. Nothing in his voice. He gives my hand one businesslike pump, lets go, and steps back, perfectly calm. My palm keeps the heat of him for a good deal longer than that, and I am sweating through a good shirt in a cold building. It isn’t fair. Very little about this is.

It starts friendly. Somebody asks if I’m keeping the arena. Somebody asks if I skate, and there’s an easy laugh when I say no. The young Swedish one, all wrists and cheekbones, asks very earnestly whether I watched the last game, and I say yes, which is true in the worst possible way.

Then a veteran with a flattened nose asks what team I rooted for growing up, and I make the first honest mistake of the day.

“None. I’m not a fan of hockey. I didn’t grow up with the game, and I wasn’t expecting to inherit this team.”

The temperature drops maybe ten degrees. Stick tape stops squeaking.

“You going to sell us?” That comes from the back, no hand raised.