Page 85 of The Price of Ice

“The doctor knows too. Maslow.” He snorted. “I don’t know his first name, does that matter?”

The children of team omegas took their surnames, not the alphas’. Besides the doctor, there were at least two other Maslows in the support staff, and there had been a player too. It was strange now that he thought about it. Was it because the alphas didn’t want to take responsibility? Kallen knew the kids were raised in the Den by their omega parent and other omegas who lived there. Did the alpha players feel they’d contributed enough with their DNA, or did they take the kids out sometimes?

God, it got worse the more you thought about it. It wasn’t just shit for the omegas, was it? The kids must have known they were just... a tool. One the team hoped to use one day and would take care of in the meantime.

“It’s Oriol.”

“What?” Kallen repeated.

“The doctor’s name. Know thy enemy,” Mr Evans explained. “And don’t worry about that sort of thing. Anyone reading your report will be seeking to understand you, if you name someone by their job title and their surname, it will be enough. If they need to be identified, you’d be expected to look at their faces.” Kallen couldn’t suppress his reaction at that. “We could start with photos, unless... Well, let’s cross that bridge when we come to it, shall we?”

Kallen nodded slowly. “So I... do I do anything?”

Mr Evans shook his head. “You have done your bit, now leave it with me.”

It sounded too easy and maybe Mr Evans sensed it, or maybe he’d just been planning to do it all along, because right before Kallen left so the next client could see him, Mr Evans handed him a flier.

“WHO YOU TEXTING?” ANALISAasked, bumping shoulders with him as they walked. She must have been really bored because she’d been coming to knock on his door every time she went to walk Mini.

“Oh, sorry,” Kallen said, pocketing his phone.

She rolled his eyes at him. “Whatever, who?”

Kallen licked his lips and considered lying. “My teammate.” It felt weird to say, even if it was technically true, he was still employed by the White Cats and Levy was still his teammate.

It was enough to stun her into silence, apparently and he turned his head to look at her. “What?”

“No, nothing. Only... Is he nice?”

“Levy?” Kallen laughed. “He’s a puppy. In fact...” He took the phone out again to show her the last image, which was of a literal puppy. “He is trying to decide on his ideal dog.”

Analisa’s face softened for a fraction of a second before she looked up at Kallen’s face. “He is nice to puppies, but is he niceto you?”

“Yeah,” Kallen said, getting a little impatient. “Just because he’s... Because we play together, doesn’t mean he is a bad person.”

His childhood friend made a highly sceptical noise, and Kallen made the concerted decision to let it go. What did it matter anyway? Levy was all the way in Jiro, and Analisa would go back up north herself soon. They were never going to meet, and all Kallen had to do was keep the puppy pictures to himself.

Anyway, it wasn’t like it could last. He didn’t see how long they could keep it up, Levy with the innocuous sharing, and Kallen enjoying the little warmth he still got out of it while he walked further and further away from a life where they could be together.

AT FIRST, THE VERYnotion that someone had not only noticed but spoken publicly and loudly about what was wrong with how omegas were treated in sports beggared belief. He didn’t know why, he’d grown up in a world that had outlawed the practice of omega sharing. Some cities had taken longer to get around it, but it’d been several decades since it’d been legal anywhere in the continent. So as a society, they’d long ago decided it wasn’t healthy or right to ask that of someone.

Except if that someone wanted to play a team’s sports professionally. He’d spent his whole life ignoring the issue, and for all that he’d taken the flier, he’d been so close to tossing it away the moment he’d understood what it was. Wasn’t he doing enough reporting them to the police and setting a lawyer after them?

He didn’t want to think about any of that, he wanted... he wanted the team to fucking apologise, and for it to be over. All of it.

And it was impossible, so the next best thing was not thinking about it.

But maybe deep down he knew what a bad idea that was because he’d given Analisa the flier the next morning when she’d come back to drag him on yet another aimless dog walk.

Analisa growled at the phone in her hands. Kallen wasn’t sure about inviting her to the meeting, but shewasan omega, and she was studying to be a lawyer. Besides, she’d sat on the passenger seat of his dad’s car and read him from the organisation’s website so he wouldn’t show up completely ignorant.

It turned out that many peoplehadtried to argue the way sports teams worked wasn’t legal. But the sports associations had just designed contracts that got through one loophole after another. It was still legal for an omega to contract his heat to more than one alpha, after all, they’d argued. Never mind that was an arrangement done out of either convenience or love, and that in the whole continent there were two documented cases of an omega choosing four alphas, which was very much not thirteen, and only about a thousand cases where the omega had selected two. The courts hadn’t found a reason to restrict the number of alphas an omega could freely choose, which in turn meant teamsofferingan omega a contract that included themfreely choosingto give a team the power of selecting whothey spent their heats with was perfectly within the bounds of legality. He was too afraid to ask how they’d got breeding rights too.

“It’s suchutterbullshit,” she spat, and glancing at her as they reached a red light, Kallen caught sight of her white knuckled hands on her lap.

She was right, of course, he knew that. But he still found it strange how angry she seemed to be. “Did you want to... Like play baseball professionally?”

Her look of utter disbelief made him close his mouth with a click of teeth. “What? I need to want it for myself to think it’s medieval to do that to a person?” She shook her head, frown deepening. “I mean—” She visibly cut herself off. “You are the one who asked me to come to this,” she told him. “Aren’t you angry?”

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