Page 41 of Full Body Hit, Part 2 (Alpha Omega Hockey #6)

AUSTON

A uston had thought that he and Chase had bonded well together, their scents mixing perfectly, but it was nothing compared to the pair sitting on the other side of the table.

Auston had never really given Beau Lavoie and Emilio Torres much thought.

News had come out of their bonding at the beginning of the season, but Auston, one, was busy with his own shit and, two, didn’t really give a fuck about who mated who in the league, even if there was apparent drama surrounding the bonding.

Maybe Auston should have paid closer attention, what with going through a similar situation himself.

He avoided the media like the plague, but he couldn’t help coming across a few online comments about how weird it was that Auston and Chase were suddenly mated.

How there was something fishy there—maybe it was a PR stunt.

Maybe Chase had been pressured into it for some reason.

Maybe Auston was drinking Chase’s blood to rejuvenate himself and be able to play a few more seasons.

Auston had almost replied to that last one. ‘I’m drinking something, but it isn’t his blood’, he wanted to snark, watch all the traditionalists crawl out of the woodwork about an Alpha giving an Omega a blowjob.

There were small doubts Auston tripped over sometimes, the loose soil of a shoddily constructed foundation—would the outside voices eventually pierce the bubble encasing Auston and Chase? Would Chase start listening to the chatter and realise all those people were right?

Was them against the world too much of an ask? Could nobody survive that?

Watching Beau and Emilio settled something wild and scared inside Auston. Beau was talking to his brother in a voice that was two decibels too loud while Emilio stared at him as if his mate were the only thing in the universe.

They’d more than survived the trials of a public and controversial mating.

They’d thrived despite it. There, before him, was the example of a mated pair who had come out of the mess seemingly unscathed.

Auston wasn’t foolish enough to believe it’d had no impact, that under the shiny veneer there weren’t a few hidden bruises, but what relationship didn’t have those?

All Auston could see between Beau and Emilio was adoration.

And looking at Chase, that was exactly what he felt, too.

Auston stretched an arm around the back of Chase’s chair when he finished his own food. He rubbed a thumb lightly across the nape of Chase’s neck, far enough away from the mating bite that it wouldn’t be scandalous.

Chase glanced at him, smile wide on his face, shining like there was something glowing behind his eyes, some golden thing Auston wanted to reach out and touch.

They all went for a drink after, bar crowded with chatter and the thin, looping sound of blues, a warbling voice making the air shiver.

Auston relaxed into the wine-coloured booth, sipping from his drink, Chase pressed against his side but engaged in conversation with Beau and Sammy. Noah was nodding along, looking a little lost, but then again, Noah always seemed to have a perplexed expression on his face.

“Hey.” Emilio’s voice cut through Auston’s staring. Emilio was smiling a little, hair perfectly styled, stubble shaved close to his face.

Auston made a questioning noise.

“Wanted to say congrats. About the mating.”

“Oh. Thanks, man. Had to go out with a bang, you know,” Auston joked—there was enough speculation about this being his last year in the NHL that Auston didn’t feel the need to be coy about it even if he hadn’t officially announced it yet. “It’s been a few months now for you guys, right?”

“Yeah, a year this summer.”

“Smart time to do it. Away from the cameras.”

Emilio snorted. “Yeah. Doing it during the season was ballsy.”

“I love attention,” Auston deadpanned. That knocked a laugh out of Emilio.

“Yeah, I can tell. Guess it comes with winning two cups.”

That was the funny thing about hockey players who hadn’t won the big prize—they always brought it up. “Guess I missed my chance to mate in front of the trophy.”

“ Eurgh , I don’t want to know what the Cup has seen.”

“Or touched.”

Emilio mimed throwing up in his mouth, jerking forwards with his cheeks bulging.

“Media chewed you guys up a little after summer, though, right?” Auston asked.

Emilio shrugged. “Those fuckers make a big deal about everything. Not that I have to tell you —but it’s not worth listening to that shit.”

Auston had experienced the media in all its forms—from claiming he was the best Captain of the NHL, that he had carried his team to the cup wins, to saying he was washed up, that he should have retired when his hip first gave in.

That was hockey, though. That part of him was calloused by the acid touch of the limelight.

This—what he was building with Chase—felt far more vulnerable, the kind of underbelly only shown to people he could truly trust.

“Yeah,” Auston agreed anyway. “You guys doing good, then?” He wouldn’t ask how a random mated pair were fairing usually, but he was giving himself permission—Emilio had brought the topic up first.

“Yeah,” Emilio replied, gaze slipping to Beau. His whole face transformed into something softer, the edges of his lips ticking up. “We’re doing good.”

***

Playing the Baltimore Beasts was always going to be strange. As if he’d tripped into a dimension just to the left of his, slipping into the skin of a man who looked like him but wasn’t quite playing his role correctly.

The team had changed a lot since their cup-winning years, of course.

Mark was retired now, Bunji, their goalie, was in Atlanta, a middling team who could still use a veteran goalie as the starter.

The only main guy still in Baltimore was Lee Hux, the star defenceman, grinning at Auston from across the ice.

Then there were all the other guys he didn’t have as much history with but had made up his career in Baltimore—the ones he’d taken under his wing as rookies, the teammates he’d battled with after the cup runs, trying to regain the old glory.

It was a cosmic fucking coincidence that Auston’s 1400th career game was against the Beasts. The Spirits had set up a whole ceremony before the game, his old teammate Hux and new captain Noah presenting a gold-plated stick to him on centre ice.

The thing was fucking heavy and cold in the icy air. He patted Noah and Hux on the back, said thank you, stood still and watched the overhead screens as they played a video of people around the league congratulating him for his long career.

He kept his face impassive. His emotions were pressed against a hard, glass pane.

He could see their misshapen forms—the clawed creature of fear, the big-eyed piece of longing with its sticky fingers leaving trails wherever it went.

He could see the joy and the sorrow and the hope, but they were right where he couldn’t reach them, just far away enough to survive the moment.

He had a whole fucking hockey game to play afterwards. He needed to shake out his trembling hands and get on with it.

Chase bumped him as they sat on the bench, waiting for the first whistle. “That was a nice stick, huh?”

Auston snorted. “Yeah.”

“I’ll get you one of those hooks people hang swords on. We can put it on the wall.”

“Swords? You mean guns? Like, shotguns?”

“No. Like those guys with samurai swords. I mean, I guess you could hang a shotgun the same way.”

Auston laughed, but the drop of the puck cut off any response he might have come up with.

He got through the game, swallowing the OT loss with as little bitterness as possible—at least it was one miserable point. Not that the Beasts were doing any better in the standings.

Chase kissed him goodbye as Auston left to hang out with his old team—the guys had asked him to take Chase along, but he didn’t want his mate to be hounded. He was about to get enough shit about getting surprise-bonded as it was.

“There’s the new groom,” Hux said as soon as Auston got to the bar.

Auston rolled his eyes. “We’re not actually married.”

Hintz, who seemed to have grown two inches since his rookie days, shook his head. “Living in sin.”

Auston turned to Hux. “Remember when this idiot ate a worm on a dare?”

Hintz scrunched his face up. “That was one time.”

“Yeah, that’s not the defence you think it is,” Auston drawled.

As predicted, Auston was inundated with questions before he’d even ordered his first damn drink, and every single fucking one of them was about Chase.

Had the mating been planned? How the fuck had that happened? Since when were they dating? Since when did Auston date, period? He was a bit young, wasn’t he? Hintz joked that he would have given it a shot as a rookie if he’d known he had a chance.

“You didn’t,” Auston deadpanned.

There was a time when Auston didn’t have to give those guys a rundown of his life—they’d been living it with him.

There was a sort of dissonance there as he sat at the table and talked about Chase. His old life and his new one superimposed over the other, misaligned, making both of them blur.

It was late when he made it out of the bar, sober enough to make his own way home in an Uber, but not by much.

He had to concentrate fully to get his key into the lock on the front door, stumbling in. The scent of home hit him at once—warm and deep and quiet.

He tripped out of his shoes and shuffled to the couch, sitting heavily and sinking into the cushions. He let a slow breath out, disinflating, the stillness and silence crawling on him suddenly.

God, his life really was ending. Life as he knew it, anyway. Sure, there were plans ahead, but they were so unknown.

He was a hockey player. It was what shaped him, the sturdy beams he didn’t know what he would do without.

What was going to be left of him after the team was knocked out and the season ended? He had no idea which parts of him would stay standing and which would simply fall apart.