Page 86 of The Price of Ice

The lights changed and he had an excuse to look forward again. He tried the words in his head first, to see if any of them made him feel anything. He’d been angry at the police station, and when he’d first met with Mr Evans. But now... Now, he wastired. He’d been fighting for his place in hockey for years, and now he’d lost it. Or walked away from it, but grief wasn’t made any easier when you were breaking your own heart—in fact, it made it worse because he knew he could have gone back any time he liked. Except for how he couldn’t do that either, he’d fall to pieces the moment he stepped on the ice with McKinley, probably end up paralysed again or sick in some other way.

So he was stuck here, in this limbo where he wasn’t a hockey player any longer and he wasn’t anythingelse. Where he was nothing. And he’d thought that at least he could make a difference, sue the team, tell the truth about what had been done to him and get something done. Maybe get what these people were fighting for, step in a swoop of bravery and excruciating humiliation and win it for his new team.

But of course he hadn’t prepared for a legal battle like he had for hockey, and even on the ice, he’d rarely been able to make such a definite difference. He’d scored game-winning goals once or twice, provided assists a bit more often. But that hadn’t been his accomplishment alone, he’d always had helped.

He’d never been alone.

He’d just felt like he was.

“Mostly I’m tired,” he admitted. “Like I can’t do it anymore.”

“Oh.” Analisa’s voice had lost all its edge. “So you are quitting...?”

Kallen nodded. In a lot of ways, it felt like he already had. Finding out the White Cats had lost from the telly, for one, because none of his teammates except Levy and Benny talked to him anymore. Because he didn’t care.

Her hand on his elbow startled him enough he had to turn the steering wheel the other way to keep the car on its lane.

“Fuck, sorry!”

“It’s fine, I’m... a little screwed up.”

“Well,” Analisa replied with a stubbornness that hadn’t changed since she’d been six and using every single tool at her disposal to convince everyone to play baseball with her. “At least you know that.”

And Kallen couldn’t keep from snorting. It was true, for a long time, he’d pretended he was just a guy getting screwedover. Now he knew it was him, his choice, and that he could choose something else.

THE MEETING WAS A CIRCLEof chairs instead of the auditorium he’d been imagining. Analisa had said it was for those who wanted to find out more, but apparently that meant they’d be asked things such as what had brought them there. The moment the facilitator, a middle-aged black omega man with akindly smile, asked the person to his left to share their name, phenotype and what had brought them there, Kallen almost shot to his feet.

Analisa reached for his hand and tugged him back down without even looking, like she’d been expecting it. It stung, that she thought he was such a coward, but it also made it impossible to get up without making a scene.

He dropped his eyes instead and listened. There were a lot of omegas, but also a few betas and even an alpha woman with a young omega child who was determined to play football.

“She’s only eleven,” the mum said and if he hadn’t known, Kallen couldn’t have said she was an alpha, her voice went thin at the end, like she was barely holding back tears. Presumably, the lady could have used will to control her child, it wasn’t even that frowned upon when it was a child, who was supposed to obey anyway. And it would be to keep her safe, surely that could have been enough justification.

Instead, the mother was here to maybe... Change the world? The sole notion made Kallen want to laugh bitterly.

The whole story distracted him enough that he didn’t realise it was his turn until Analisa poked him on the knee. She’d let go of his wrist at some point. “Um, hi. I’m Kallen. I’m an omega.” He stopped there, eyes flickering nervously in the direction of the facilitator.

“Hello, Kallen. What made you want to come today?”

“I...” He pressed his lips together, swallowed, but no matter how hard he pushed his throat muscles, he couldn’t seem to make another sound.

“Maybe you can tell us later?” the guy suggested, and it made him grit his teeth, but what was he supposed to do? He managed a jerky nod.

Analisa didn’t mention him as her reason for coming, talking instead about her interest in the law and how the way omegaswere treated in sports teams made her blood boil. She blamed it entirely on the teams wanting to make money and control the players, and on the alphas literally getting a free ride—no wonder she’d reacted that way to Levy texting—but the person who spoke after her didn’t draw the line there.

Staring at the floor as he was, Kallen couldn’t tell what their gender was, they’d just said they were an omega and introduced themselves with a short moniker that didn’t tell him anything. But he couldfeeltheir fury and their disdain. “Like, I get loving sport,” they said. “That’s why I’m here, Iwantto play, but debasing yourself like that?”

“Suri.” It was the first time the facilitator—Taylor—had interrupted anyone, and Kallen tensed up even further, nails digging into his palms, jaw clenched painfully. “This is a good example of how we work here. We do not judge omegas, or even alphas, for how the system works. There are many reasons someone will make a choice to participate in a system that is highly problematic. As an organisation, it is one of our core principles not to ask people to justify those choices. What we want is to give thembetterones.”

“But don’t they have to get they are making the wrong choice first?” Suri demanded.

Taylor made a noise of acknowledgement. “Let me tell you a story,” he proposed.

Suri didn’t say anything, but they must have given some signal that they were willing to listen.

“I grew up in a team house. My father played for them, had played with them for ten years when he met my mother and she agreed to marry him and move in. I knew some of the kids there were my half-siblings, but I mostly stuck to our apartment and my two older brothers. We played football, of course. Everyone did, and we got organised into teams for day-long tournaments over the holidays.” Taylor shrugged. “But our school did similarthings, albeit with more varied activities. To be honest, football was my favourite part of every day, and I wasgoodat it. It’s a bit of a cliche, but it made my dad notice me and I loved that. When I was about eight or nine, he started taking me out for extra practice.Just me. My older brother was an alpha and he didn’t much like that, which... wasn’t great. But my mum intervened, made my dad take him out too and after that, he went back to mostly ignoring me.”

Taylor glanced away from them for a moment towards a wall, full of posters Kallen could tell he wasn’t looking at. “I didn’t know anything about what being an omega meant. In the team house, everyone talked to the omegas with the utmost respect, opening doors and offering to carry their stuff. And in our apartment, my dad would always defer to my mum in front of us. If one of us got in real trouble and needed to be disciplined, it was my mother who’d decide on the punishment. I was a kid anyway and all I wanted to do was score. No one was stopping me from playing and no one said anything about there being only one omega in a team. There were lots of us who liked to play, even if only one other who was as obsessed as I was...” He swallowed, glancing around the circle. “What I want you to understand here is that I had a great childhood, I was loved and well-cared for, nurtured in my gifts and helped with my weaknesses.”

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