Rating:

Mature

Archive Warning:

No Archive Warnings Apply

Category:

M/M

Fandoms:

Heated Rivalry (TV), Game Changers Series - Rachel Reid

Relationship:

Shane Hollander/Ilya Rozanov

Characters:

Shane Hollander, Ilya Rozanov, Svetlana Vetrova, Grigori Rozanov, Sasha | Ilya Rozanov's Coach's Son, Irina Rozanova

Additional Tags:

Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Hybrids, Fluff and Angst, Autistic Shane Hollander, Mutual Pining, Ilya's post-soviet childhood angst, Character Study, In a sense, Irina is not here but she is haunting the narrative

Language:

English

Series:

Part 2 of Cheetah Shane

Stats:

Published: 2026-02-22 Completed: 2026-03-07 Words: 8,213 Chapters: 2/2

What Need We Fear Who Knows It

Summary

Shane is adjusting to a lot of things in his life.

It's just a little more difficult than he'd like to comfort his new owner, in a country where he doesn't speak the language, all while trying to maintain just enough of a physical and emotional distance that he can recover from this when it all inevitably falls apart.

Notes

A few things:
1) Like many other authors in this fandom have said, it is absolutely wild to go from posting in a nearly-dead fandom to this one, I am absolutely overwhelmed with how much love y'all gave the first fic in this universe.
2) If you haven't read the first part in this series, go read that first! This fic is going to be substantially less fluffy than the first one (especially at first.) Part of that is the setting and a deeper dive into the worldbuilding; part of that is that we're now in Shane's POV rather than Ilya's, and as well-meaning as Ilya is, he just doesn't have the kind of firsthand experiences that Shane is having with the worst parts of this worldbuilding.
3) I don't speak Russian, nor have I ever been to Russia, but I did study a fair amount of Soviet and Post-Soviet history when I was in college, so the echoes of that are making it into this fic in places.
4) The second part of this should be up in within the next 3 days, I'm traveling tomorrow so I probably won't be able to write much.
Hope y'all enjoy this first part!

Chapter 1

Shane had been on an airplane plenty of times in his life.

Most of those times, admittedly, had been in the section in the back of the plane behind economy, reserved for hybrids without human owners (or ones whose human owners didn’t want to pay the full seat price for them.) That had always been a tense experience, both because of the cramped seating and because Shane had no interest in sitting between two wolf alphas he didn’t know for multiple hours. 

Traveling with Svetlana had been good. She’d flown business class, and contrary to Shane’s expectations, had gotten him the seat next to her own. The seats were much nicer than Shane had ever gotten in “sub-economy,” and were very wide even compared to what Shane had seen whenever he walked through normal economy. Svetlana had also told Shane to drink whatever he wanted when the flight attendants came by (“just apple juice, thanks,”) and had spent most of the hour-and-a-half flight telling him stories about what Ilya Rozanov had been like as a child.

Ilya Rozanov. If you’d asked Shane what he’d thought about him, two months ago, Shane would’ve been torn between gushing about his statistics, calling him a performative asshole, and blushing. The man was, objectively, a hockey god. And as much as Shane’s friends and coaches would’ve reassured Shane that he was just as good, if not better, Shane could never prove that. No one in the hybrid leagues intended to make it into a career, so almost no one took it seriously. (Shane did, but his own intensity carried most of that. Yuna’s intensity carried the rest.) Being Ilya’s… Shane had barely considered the idea, before he knew it was happening.

And now Shane is two steps away from Ilya, walking into trans-continental business class for the first of their two flights and discovering that trans-continental business class is basically a different universe from normal business class, let alone sub-economy.

“Your pod,” Ilya says, from the other aisle, when they meet at the seats listed on their boarding passes. Calling them seats is an understatement. Shane is blinking rapidly, and everything is tense, and he just has to breathe. Ilya is lifting his carry-on into the overhead storage, and Shane swallows, reaching down for his own carry-on to do the same.

Their seats are next to each other, a retractable divider between them, and with walls up around most of the seat like they’re trying to cut off the rest of the world. There’s more foot room than Shane even knows what to do with, and the seat is just as wide as the one in normal business class, perhaps a touch softer.

“Is very nice, yes?” Ilya says, as he gets settled in his own seat. “After take-off, you can recline the seats until you lie down. Sleep a few hours. Most people sleep all the way until landing, I think.”

Shane blinks. Lying down? In a plane? “It’s um– Seven hours, right?”

“For the first one, yes. Wish there were direct flights, but… No luck,” Ilya says. “The food is good too, if you want to stay awake.”

“I’ll think about it,” Shane says. He swallows, looking around the business class cabin as the other passengers filter in and find their seats. He has to be the only hybrid in here. “How much did this cost?”

Ilya chuckles. “Less than the NHL fined me for swearing in my last interview.”

That’s not a reassuring number.

“Hey,” Ilya says, when he catches the look on Shane’s face, “don’t worry about it. I want you here. Too much money, I rather spend on you than on girl I just met in club or on new car, okay?”

That doesn’t do much to calm Shane’s nerves, but it doesn’t do nothing.

“You have book in your bag, yes?”

“Yeah,” Shane says, “another Gretzky biography.”

“Get that out, go ahead and read until takeoff, okay? Get your mind off things.”

Shane does as he says, standing back up and getting his book out of his carry on. He settles back into his seat a moment later, beginning to flip through the book, only occasionally interrupted by flight attendants asking him questions (he lets Ilya answer for him) and giving him free things that Shane is fairly certain he would never get in sub-economy.

An hour later, when Shane is lying down and peering over the divider at where Ilya is watching some action movie that Shane’s brain can’t keep track of, he wonders what he did to deserve this man.

(Some part of him, the loud part that Shane tries to keep quiet by running out his energy, tells him that Ilya won’t want him for long, and then Shane will be back in Montreal with all of the other Canadian hybrids who’d made it to their twenties without a human owner or a hybrid mate.)

====

Ilya is notoriously bad at explaining things, at least in English, which is part of the reason that it takes so long for Shane to put the pieces together.

The first time he notices that things are different is sixteen hours after their second flight lands in Moscow, as they prepare to go see Ilya’s father and step-mother before the older couple can show up at Ilya’s door unannounced.

“Why are you wearing that?” Ilya asks, when Shane returns from the bathroom in the outfit he’d picked. It’s a perfectly respectable outfit, exactly what Shane would expect someone to wear when meeting their friend or partner’s family for the first time. Shane struggles to find which part of the outfit Ilya is concerned with. “No, no, the– This.”

Ilya reaches out, touching the thin collar that Shane had placed on himself.

Most hybrids didn’t wear collars at home, unless their owners told them to. Hybrids in facilities basically never wore them. But to Shane’s knowledge, from what people told him and he’d been taught in school, almost all hybrids with human owners wore collars in public spaces. Some had the collar engraved with the owner’s information, some just wore it as a symbol. But it was… Safety. This one’s taken. Someone will track you down if you try to take them.

Shane had even worn this same collar on the plane, and Ilya hadn’t mentioned it then. “What’s wrong with it?”

“In Russia, we don’t–” Ilya sighs. He pauses, tilting his head to the side like he’s trying to find the words. “Only assholes make hybrids wear this. I am not asshole. Not here.”

“But wouldn’t I seem like I… Don’t have an owner? If I don’t have a collar?”

Ilya is already reaching around Shane’s neck to undo the clasp, so perhaps arguing will get them nowhere. And Shane isn’t trying to argue, he just wants to understand.

“Is not our tradition,” Ilya replies, pulling the collar off him. “One second.”

Ilya disappears back into his bedroom for a moment, returning a minute later with something held in his hands. He grabs Shane’s right wrist, lifting it up, and wraps something around it. When Ilya’s hands retreat, Shane sees that it’s a bracelet, a thin chain. Either gold or gold-plated.

“You need something of mine,” Ilya says, “just not… Collar. This bracelet, it was my mother’s.”

“It’s beautiful,” Shane says, and wonders whether Ilya is giving it, like Shane is something he intends to keep, or whether it is just for Shane to wear while they are here. “Thank you, Ilya.”

“It looks good on you,” Ilya says. He nods to himself and takes a step back. “We should go, yes?”

“Okay.”

====

Shane has never been good at naturally reading people. It’s not an instinctual thing, by any means, and he still struggles sometimes with figuring out what someone is implying or with figuring out whether someone is angry before they start yelling. But he is good at reading people in a removed sense: body language, symbols of status and background, twitches and glances and the way they lean towards some people and away from others.

Ilya’s father and step-mother are both easy to read in an initial first glance: Ilya’s father is an older man (much older, certainly, than either of Shane’s parents,) with the kind of posture that is screaming with a desire to be recognized. There is confidence, yes, but not the kind that comes from a lack of caring about others’ opinions. His eyes are quick, immediately judging, as he scans over Ilya and Shane’s forms, standing in the entryway of his home. The step-mother, Polina, is younger. Not quite Shane and Ilya’s age, but certainly young enough that Shane would’ve assumed she was the older alpha’s daughter or niece long before he guessed that she was his wife.

The conversation happens almost entirely in Russian (it’s not as if Shane needs any introduction to know who they are, after Ilya’s earlier explanation,) with only one sentence in English from Ilya’s father.

“Your little Western pet,” he says, looking pointedly at Shane. The word “pet” is almost spit, like a curse word. Shane has heard plenty of insults thrown at hybrids (“half-breed” being the main one, and one that had stung a little too hard for him in particular,) but he’d never heard “pet” be used in that way before. “How… Vulgar.”

Ilya steps in front of Shane, saying something that Shane is certain is less than polite. Or perhaps it is perfectly polite, perhaps Ilya is only telling him the truth: that Ilya hasn’t even touched Shane yet. And that might be even more insane to explain, because what kind of alpha gets an omega hybrid and doesn’t sleep with them?

Breathe.

Shane watches the distance between father and son, since he doesn’t dare meet anyone’s eyes. There’s a restraint to Ilya, one that Shane wouldn’t notice if he hadn’t already spent a week and a half living with him and years before that watching most of his interviews. Whatever Ilya is saying, he’s choosing not to turn this into a full argument.

They’re only there for a little over an hour, the conversation only a little less tense than that first exchange.

Ilya holds one of Shane’s hands the entire time, and Shane’s not certain that Ilya even realizes he’s doing it.

====

“What did you say to him?” Shane asks, later that night, when they’re lying in bed. They’d slept in the same bed the past few days, but they rarely say anything. Ilya will comment (usually a bad pickup line of some kind) and Shane won’t rise to the bait, because he knows exactly where that will lead them.

If Shane kisses Ilya once, he won’t be able to hold himself back.

“What?”

“Earlier today. With your dad, after he called me your pet. What did you say?”

Ilya is quiet, only the sound of his breathing and the lingering sounds of the city echoing in Shane’s ears. Shane isn’t really expecting an honest or in-depth answer. But it’s better to ask than not. At least the door is open if Ilya does want to talk about it.

“Just… Told him he shouldn’t imply that about you.”

“Imply what?”

“You know what.”

Shane scrunches up his face. “No, I don’t.”

“Good, then.” Ilya huffs, turning onto his back. “Is good you don’t know.”

“Is it?”

Ilya shrugs, his shoulders jerking quickly. “You don’t have to think about it, if you don’t know. So yes, is good.”

“Can’t you just be honest with me? For once?”

“For once?” Ilya turns his head, meeting Shane’s eyes in the low light from the window. “You think I lie to you?”

“Not– Not lying, but… I don’t know, sometimes it feels like you avoid the question.” Shane shakes his head, looking down at the sheets. “You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. Not if it’s about you, or your family, or– Anything like that. But if it’s about me, then yeah, I’d kind of like to know.”

Ilya takes a deep breath, and then sighs.

“I just… Don’t like him thinking that you are… Something I use, or own, or something. I hook up at clubs, yes? Lots of girls, omegas, whoever. But those are people who have a choice. Hybrids like you, there’s no choice, yes?”

Shane tries to tamp down the strange feeling in his chest when Ilya mentions girls and omegas, instead focusing on his wording. “Like me?”

“Like, hybrids in this… System. With human ‘guardians.’” Ilya makes the air quotes with his fingers, and his hands drop back to the bed with the soft crumple of fabric.

“Not really any other kind of hybrids, are there?”

Ilya hums. “Not any like you, kitty.”

“I thought you’d dropped that. The name.”

“Never.” Ilya grins. “You’re always my pretty kitty.”

Shane chuckles. “For the past week and a half, sure.”

“And for the next forever.” Ilya’s grin slowly fades, as he shifts, sitting up and shuffling back up to the headboard. “I’m sorry. For bringing you here, with them. Especially when we just met.”

“It’s–” 

“Don’t say it’s fine.”

Shane bites his lip. “I mean, I’m adjusting. Probably will be for a while. But… I knew I’d have to adjust to things sooner or later. Whenever I got adopted.”

Ilya’s hand shifts, running across the fabric of the pillows, and Shane feels his fingers hovering above his head, almost seeming to ask permission. Shane presses up into the touch, and Ilya begins to run his fingers through Shane’s hair, gently scratching around the base of his ears.

“Here, though, can be hard to adjust. More than in Canada or America, for you.”

“Sure,” Shane concedes.

“My father– He is sick, now. Doctors very cautious about diagnosis, but…”

“Sick, like… Cancer?”

“No. Dementia.” Ilya sighs. His hand in Shane’s hair doesn’t stop. “Is still early, but… Sometimes it is like he is living twenty years ago. We try to talk around it, keep him happy, unless is important in the moment. Is just hard, knowing he will be… Less and less. I never really liked him, but…”

“He’s still your dad.”

“Yes.”

Shane swallows. “Do you want to tell me more about him? Any happy memories you have?”

“Happy memories, those are… Complicated,” Ilya says. “Most happy memories are with my mother, before she died. My father… He is the kind of man who reads too many quotes and not enough books, yes? Lots of ideas about who we should be, very little idea why.”

“Did he want you to be a hockey player?”

“Not really,” Ilya says. “Ideal world, I am police, like him. If I play hockey, he wants me to play in Russia. Playing in NHL… He says it is like running away. Not being responsible. But… What is point? Staying here?”

“I mean, do you think of it as home?”

“Yes,” Ilya says. “But… Home is not always like Americans think. Americans think home is wherever you love, yes? But home is also just… History. You are born here, your ancestors lived and died here, is home. You cannot escape that, or change it.”

Shane tries to think of his home in Ottawa, and as much as he loves it… He doesn’t feel nearly that strongly about it. Neither of his parents did, from anything they’d ever said, but sometimes his mother had mentioned her parents, and how they’d both come over from Japan and how they’d signed off on Yuna being made into a hybrid because all they knew was that it would keep her safe, in the place that they were determined to make their new home. How they’d loved Osaka and kept little pieces of it everywhere in their lives, and yet they’d still clung so closely to the idea of a new home that they had signed off on something so drastic with so little real knowledge of the consequences.

“Old people,” Ilya continues, “they have lots of ideas. We were great, and powerful, and respected. They want it to be like that again. But… is worth being powerful, if we don’t use it for good? They just… Seems like they care about the outside, not the inside.”

“Like, the appearance of it, not the substance?”

“Yes.” Ilya sighs. “My father is like that. He thinks being powerful, you have to be strong, have to be very… Manly. Like big, strong alpha. My brother is like that, too, but is just because he is scared. World does not get better, so you pretend you are big and strong and nothing can hurt you, until it does. And then he lashes out, and everyone else gets hurt.”

Shane hums. “And what do you think?”

Ilya pauses, for a long minute. His hand in Shane’s hair finally stills, and Shane processes it once more, and he needs the alpha’s touch to either resume or disappear entirely. But Ilya needs time to think, so– Shane restrains himself.

“I think… I am one person. I play good hockey, I make people happy. Maybe angry, sometimes, too, but mostly happy. Make sure that family have what they need. That friends are safe. I cannot change more than that.”

Shane isn’t sure whether it’s for his benefit or Ilya’s, but he curls closer to the alpha’s side, tucking his forehead against Ilya’s hip. His tail wraps around Ilya’s leg, barely able to really grasp onto it at this angle. He’s careful not to touch anywhere that could be taken as inappropriate, but he tries to wrap his arms around Ilya, too, and feels Ilya wrap his arms loosely around Shane in return.

“Sleep,” Shane murmurs. He wishes he could say more, but… His words wouldn’t come out in the right order, if he tried.

“Is kitty going to scratch me, if I don’t listen?”

“Yes. Sleep.”

“Okay.”

====

“You’re so slow, Ilya.”

“No, I am fast, you are not human,” Ilya replies, running at a pace that (Shane recognizes, even if he will not admit) is quite fast for a human. Shane is still jogging at what feels like a snail’s pace in order to stay near his side. “Is cheating.”

“Can’t help my genetics.”

“Hm, maybe I sue your genetics,” Ilya says, leading them around another corner. He’d told Shane that he regularly ran this route, in the summers, so Shane tries to make note of all the landmarks as they go.

“Sue my genetics? For what?”

“Cheating.”

“Don’t think that’s how it works,” Shane replies, “but you’re welcome to try. Pretty sure you’d technically be suing yourself, at least in US and Canadian law.”

“I sue scientists, then. Who give you cheetah genes.”

“Who gave my mom cheetah genes. I just inherited them from her.”

“Specifics,” Ilya says. He laughs, and it comes out a little ragged. He’s dripping in sweat, and it does nothing to make him less attractive. “Do cheetah genes give you stamina, too, or just speed?”

“What?”

“What? Just asking,” Ilya says, the shit-eating grin on his face making it obvious he isn’t, if the words themselves weren’t enough.

“Fuck off,” Shane says. “No more innuendos, or you’re sleeping on the couch tonight.”

“I thought I was the one in charge, here, kitty.”

“Not a chance.”

Shane wouldn’t be anywhere near this daring, if he knew Ilya wouldn’t respond in turn. He’d been raised not to challenge his owner (or humans in general,) but Ilya had made it clear from their first days together that he would never punish Shane for something he’d said. The grin on his lips whenever Shane talked back was enough to keep Shane going.

“Hmm, I think I know a way to make you happy,” Ilya says. “So I don’t sleep on couch.”

Oh no. “...What way?”

“You smell so nice, I’m sure you taste nice too.”

“Nope. Couch for you. And every new innuendo gets you another night on the couch.”

Ilya chuckles. “So I start with one night, or two?”

“Two. And rising as we speak.”

Ilya slows to a stop, holding up his hands in surrender. “I’ll be good, I promise.”

“Good.”

“Unless you want me to be bad–”

“No.”

====

“Shane! Good to see this oaf hasn’t annoyed you to death, yet.”

Svetlana grins, pulling Shane into her apartment. Ilya is half a step behind and already whining.

“What am I? My best friend ignores me for my cat, now,” Ilya says, removing his shoes with two exaggerated kicks. “How will I survive?”

“I knew you would survive. I had to check on my favorite hybrid, though,” Svetlana says, grinning. She switches to Russian, with her next words, and the playful grin on Ilya’s lips drops into a look of concern.

Shane doesn’t ask, just following behind the two alphas as they go to the living room, where there is… A fourth person, lounging on the couch.

A tall, thin man, beta scent. Pale skin, brown hair, silk clothes that look straight out of a men’s fashion ad. His gaze turns toward them, as they enter the room. A shiver rolls down Shane’s back, before he consciously notices it. The man’s eyes narrow, quite literally, into a thin line of pupil set again a solid yellow iris. There is no white in his eyes.

“Sasha,” Ilya greets, as if he has seen him a hundred times before, and as if he deeply wishes this were not the hundred-and-first.

“What– What is he?”

Sasha chuckles, saying something in Russian. His voice… It’s not substantial enough for Shane to feel like he’s not going crazy, but he could swear there’s something different about his voice, compared to a normal person’s. Almost… Like a hiss.

Svetlana says something in return, and then Sasha’s uncanny, reptilian eyes narrow in on Shane once more.

“What’s wrong, pussy?” Sasha asks, in French. “Don’t recognize a snake?”

Shane freezes. He blinks half a dozen times, forces himself to breathe, and asks, “What are you? You’re not a snake hybrid, I know snake hybrids–”

“I am a snake hybrid,” Sasha answers, “just not the same kind you know.” He glances to the empty length of sofa next to himself, patting an open seat. “Let the alphas talk to each other, and I can explain.”

Shane hesitates, but when he glances to Svetlana and Ilya, neither of them seem to think anything is wrong. Ilya doesn’t seem happy to see Sasha, certainly, but he doesn’t seem to think Sasha is any kind of threat. And Shane trusts Ilya’s judgement, so Shane fights against his instincts and takes a seat a foot away from the beta.

“Tense, aren’t you?” Sasha asks.

“I’m– Fine.”

“Sure,” Sasha chuckles. “You’ve never left North America before, have you?”

Shane swallows. “Is it that obvious?”

“Yes. Someone who’d been in Russia for more than a few weeks wouldn’t bat an eye at me. Still get a few weird glances in Paris, but I know my way around most situations,” Sasha says, low and slow like he’s flirting. “You know there’s not just one kind of hybrid, don’t you?”

“I mean–”

“Not species. Kind. Process of making,” Sasha specifies.

A memory stirs in Shane’s brain, from his sixth grade science class. “You mean, like, how the US made the first hybrids in the 50s, and then everyone else either got the process from them or tried to recreate it?”

“Kind of,” Sasha says. “US scientists make hybrids, and they do it to make… You. Pets.” He says the last word in English, in that same tone that Ilya’s father had said it. “Pretty little things with animal ears and tails and noises. Mostly omegas, because we all know what you were really for, right? Alphas with too much money buy pretty pet to fuck, and scientists get money from patent royalties. Market economy at it’s finest, right?”

Shane huffs, looking away. “And?”

“How much did Ilya buy you for, anyway?” Sasha bites his lip, his gaze trailing up and down Shane’s form as if it were something with scales and slime. “Sveta said you were a cheetah, and normally I’d guess an omega cheetah would go for a million US dollars, but you’re a little old, aren’t you? Maybe five-hundred thousand, if you’re a virgin; two-hundred thousand, if you’re not.”

“Lana bought me, not Ilya.”

Sasha laughs. “Of course she did. Daddy’s money is very useful.”

“What is your point?”

Sasha rolls his eyes (unnerving) as if Shane had ruined his fun. “The scientists do this in the 1950s, right? And yes, making hybrids like you is mostly for money, but they had to prove they knew biology well to do it. So Soviet biologists, they thought… The physicists were already fighting over nuclear weapons, over space and the moon. The biologists can prove they can do just as much as the Americans. Maybe better than them. So they make hybrids, too. But not the same, not just… Soft little things like you.”

“I’m not soft,” Shane objects.

Sasha doesn’t look convinced, but he doesn’t say anything to the contrary. “They made hybrids with traits that actually change us. Little things. Hearing like a bat, claws like a cat or a bear. Eyes like–”

“A snake.”

“Yes,” Sasha says. “Some things were useful, some were not. Program got shut down, after a few years. The scientists went to work on more useful things.”

Shane has heard this story up to this point, in his history classes. “I thought all of the hybrids in those experiments were…”

“What? Killed? Abandoned in Siberia?” Sasha laughs. “Maybe one or two of the really terrible experiments, but the rest just went home. Married someone, had kids. Most of the hybrid genes vanished in a generation or two. Some got passed on. And now there’s a few hundred-thousand people who had a grandparent or great-grandparent who was a hybrid, and most don’t even know.”

“Until one of their kids is born with claws?”

“Exactly,” Sasha says, full of satisfaction like Shane is finally in on the joke. “We have some pets like you, now. Started showing up in the early 90s, like all the other Western things. Assholes with too much money and nothing to do with it.”

Shane thinks back to a week before, when they’d just arrived and Ilya insisted Shane stop wearing his collar. “Is that why… Ilya didn’t want me collared?”

“Probably,” Sasha says. “He’s happy to be an asshole with too much money, but he doesn’t want people to think he’s an asshole who paid a million dollars for a hybrid pet.”

Shane glances across the room to where Ilya is chatting with Svetlana, and the lump in his stomach grows.

They’re not even together, not in a way that matters. But Shane doesn’t want to be a burden on Ilya. He doesn’t want to be something that Ilya is ashamed of, or that he feels like he needs to hide. Maybe…

Maybe if Shane weren’t a hybrid, if he were a normal human omega who was allowed to make hockey his career and not his hobby, maybe he and Ilya would’ve met some other way. Maybe they would’ve been friends, more naturally, instead of being forced together like this. Maybe Ilya would like him. Maybe Ilya would want him, in the way that Shane wants. Maybe Ilya would feel proud to call Shane his.

But Shane isn’t that. Whatever he is, whoever he is… Being a cheetah is part of that. If he separated out the cheetah parts of himself… What would be left?

Chapter 2

Chapter Notes

Sorry for this taking so long, y'all! Real life got busy, but also I had a plan for this chapter that originally had a lot more family drama that just wasn't doing as much to support the emotional arc I was going for, so ultimately I decided to abandon the original plan and just let them work out their problems in their own way.

Also: I originally planned for there to be smut in this chapter; the vibes were not going in that direction so I have edited the tags to reflect that. I'm keeping the rating as mature because I think some of the subject matter still keeps it in that range, but just be aware there is no smut here; my apologies to anyone who was hoping for it.

Hope y'all enjoy!

The only good thing about being around Sasha, Shane discovers, is that Sasha’s father is still a hockey coach, and that means that Sasha is able to sneak them all into a hockey rink that they definitely shouldn’t be on.

(Well– It’s not like Ilya doesn’t have somewhere to practice, but Shane and Svetlana definitely aren’t authorized to practice with him.)

And that’s how they end up at a hockey rink at an ungodly hour of the morning, the three of them in skates with the world’s least-fitting borrowed hockey gear that was made to fit people at least six years younger than them, while Sasha sits in the stands and smokes and probably takes entirely too many videos of them on his phone.

“Sveta can play goalie,” Ilya insists, after five minutes of him and Shane playing keep-away with the puck that Shane absolutely dominates at. The hybrid’s not nearly as fast on ice as he is on land, but his reaction times and general speed of movement are still far faster than even the most athletic human’s. It makes for a situation that, Shane will admit, isn’t terribly fair to play against. “Goalie gear might actually fit her.”

“Yeah, but there’s only one goalie, then. Unless you think Sasha can do it.”

Svetlana snorts, gently skating past them as she does loose laps around the ice. “No way in hell. Last time I saw him on skates, he fell on his ass in the first two minutes.”

“We play against the same goal,” Ilya says, ignoring Svetlana’s remark. “Simple enough, right?”

“I mean–” Shane looks down at the puck that they’d been playing with, now sitting not far from them on the ice. “I don’t think that would… Remove my advantage, or whatever. It’s still basically keep-away but with shooting.”

“Maybe,” Ilya says. “Maybe I want to watch you make shot on goal. See how mad you get when Sveta deflects it and it goes right onto my stick.”

Shane rolls his eyes. “You wish.”

“She’s my best friend,” Ilya insists, grinning. “She will help me cheat.”

“I’ll do what?” Svetlana asks, skating back past them. “Ilyusha, tell me I did not hear what I think I heard.”

“You’re my best friend, you help me,” Ilya says, before saying something else in Russian. Shane has started to pick up a few words over the weeks he’s been here, but it’s nowhere near enough to understand anything that passes between the two alphas. Or anyone else, unless they’re purposefully speaking slowly and clearly.

Eventually, they do end up playing against each other (and technically, Svetlana, who does fit in goalie gear designed for a teenage boy a little too well,) for a short game where neither are really keeping track of points. Shane keeps the puck most of the time, but everytime Ilya gets control of it–either because he’d picked it up off a blocked shot or because he had checked Shane into the boards with a well-timed maneuver–he ends up sending a shot Svetlana’s way. The female alpha isn’t a terrible goalie (nature or nurture there, take your pick) but she definitely doesn’t have the training of a professional goaltender. 

By the end of it, Ilya is absolutely soaked in sweat, grinning at Shane in a way that Shane recognizes and yet doesn’t want to process.

“You win,” Ilya declares, whispering it in Shane’s ear while they strip off the borrowed gear. “Want a prize, when we get home?”

“Not that kind of prize, asshole.”

“Shame,” Ilya says. “I had plenty of things I had in mind if I’d won.”

====

Shane never meets Ilya’s brother directly. Perhaps he would have, in another life, but given how badly the introduction to Ilya’s father had been, Ilya had seemingly decided that it was better for Shane to hole up in Ilya’s apartment and be spared meetings with any of Ilya’s other relatives.

But Shane can always tell when Ilya comes back from family dinner.

Ilya returns, a little later than he normally would when he was just out practicing or seeing old friends, and the look in his eyes is pure exasperation and annoyance, his fingers tapping against the kitchen counters and his eyes constantly wandering around the room. There’s a glass in front of him, almost empty when Shane walks into the room. Shane can smell the vodka from the doorway.

“Fuck!” Ilya says, drinking what’s left in the glass and slamming it down on the countertop.

“Do you… Want to talk about–”

“No,” Ilya says, shaking his head. “No, I just… Fuck. We should go out. To club. Forget about this shit.”

“I don’t think–”

“Shane. I’m going out. You come too, or no?”

Both are bad choices, in completely different ways.

But when Shane thinks about both options, he imagines being sleeping alone in Ilya’s bed and waking up alone and wondering whose bed Ilya is waking up in. He doesn’t want to wonder. He wants to know exactly where Ilya is. He wants to be able to see Ilya in the morning sunlight, and he wants to brush Ilya’s curls off his forehead as he sleeps.

Shane doesn’t care how many other people have seen that, before. That’s… It’s his, now, and his alone.

“I’ll go,” Shane says. “But I don’t… Dance. Or drink, really.”

“We call Sveta, then,” Ilya says. “I will dance, she will sit with you and be boring.”

====

Shane doesn’t like clubs.

They’re too loud, for one, and the constant flashing lights does nothing to help. He doesn’t really like alcohol either–both because it usually tastes like rubbing alcohol and because he has no desire to “lose his inhibitions”–so he doesn’t really see the point of getting stressed and overstimulated just to watch other people grind on each other.

The fact that he’s watching Ilya grind against other people doesn’t make it any better, even if it is an objectively nice sight to watch.

“How do you watch that?” Shane asks. His gaze is fixed on Ilya, where the alpha is across the room with his hands on a woman’s hips.

Svetlana chuckles. “I’ve seen it a hundred times. Old news.”

Shane bites his lip. For as short of a time as he’d known her, he does consider Svetlana to be someone he trusts. She’d been nothing but kind to him, in the time that he’d lived with her, and she’d always treated him like a person, not a… pet. She’d told him far more about her own history with Ilya than Shane had any real right to know, as if Shane were her new bestfriend that she wanted to gossip with. And the fact that Svetlana had been intimately involved with Ilya had certainly not been left out.

“But don’t you… Feel like something’s wrong? Watching him with someone else?”

She shrugs. “He’s not mine, we just enjoy each other. Why would I be jealous?”

“I’m not jealous,” Shane insists.

“You are,” Svetlana says. “And I’ll bet you anything that Ilyusha’s just doing this in front of you to make you jealous.”

As if on cue, Ilya finally looks over and locks eyes with Shane, at the same time that his lips trail open-mouthed kisses up the woman’s neck. Shane blinks, finally turning away. He knows his ears are pressed low against his head, the way they always are when he gets emotional. He just hopes Ilya can’t read him that well, yet.

“Why would he do that?” Shane asks.

“Because he wants you to do something about it,” Svetlana explains. “He likes you. Like I said he would.”

Shane inhales sharply. “Then why doesn’t he just– Do something about it, himself?”

“Because he wants to know for sure that you are choosing him.” Svetlana nudges Shane’s drink (the fruitiest cocktail on the menu, because it was about the only thing that Shane could stomach given the lack of ginger ale) toward him. “If he comes onto you, how does he know that you’re not just obeying him? So he has to provoke you, instead.”

“And if I do… Do something about it,” Shane begins, “how do I know that he’ll… Keep his side of the bargain?”

Svetlana laughs so hard that her drink nearly shoots out of her nose. “You don’t have to worry about that. That man likes being on his knees more than any other alpha I know. Sucking cock, eating pussy, eating ass, whatever you like, he’ll do it.”

Shane blushes. Good to know, but… “That’s not really what I meant.”

“What did you mean, then?”

“Like…” Shane can’t bear to look at her as he says it. “How do I know that he’ll keep me?”

“...Keep you?”

“Yeah. Like…” Shane takes a deep breath, then sighs. “I’ve seen a lot, being in Montreal. Once you’re past twenty, a solid fourth of the hybrids that get adopted end up returned within two years. And then it’s almost impossible for them to get adopted again, at least if they’re omegas. Because alphas who adopt omega hybrids basically only want virgins. And I– I guess it wasn’t the worst thing in the world, being there, but– I don’t want to spend a few months of my life living with Ilya fucking Rozanov, and learning what my life could be like, only to get taken back there and know that I’m never going to get anything like it again. Especially if–”

He cuts himself off.

“Especially if what?”

“If I get pregnant,” Shane says. He keep his eyes firmly fixed on his glass. “Half the omegas who got returned were pregnant. It’s all– Fun and games, for the alpha owners, and then they knock up their hybrid, and they realize they don’t want hybrid kids, and they return the omegas so they don’t have to deal with them.” Shane takes a long sip of his cocktail, and it doesn’t make him feel any better. “I just– I know I don’t really know Ilya, but… I don’t know how I’d deal with that, having his kid and not having him, y’know?”

“Shane,” Svetlana says, slowly. “That man wants to knock you up. He’s not going to leave you because he did it.”

“He’s barely three years into his professional career,” Shane says. “I doubt kids are his first priority right now. Especially with– With a hybrid.”

Svetlana sighs once more. “Shane. He has told me, in very direct words, that he thinks you would look absolutely adorable with kittens. His kittens.”

“Cheetahs don’t have kittens, we have cubs.”

“Same difference.”

Shane takes another sip of his drink. “Lana…”

“Yeah?”

“Maybe he… Says all that now, but once it’s actually happening, what if he changes his mind?”

“He won’t,” Svetlana says. “Maybe he’ll… Get more worried, or think of other problems. But he won’t abandon you like that. That’s not something Ilyusha would do.”

Shane didn’t say anything to that. There was no point in saying anything. But Shane knew, no matter how much Svetlana reassured him, that he couldn’t let go of his worries. Maybe some of it was his anxiety, but… Svetlana had dealt with Ilya as another alpha. As someone who was fully human. And no matter how nice Ilya was with Shane (joking assholery aside,) Shane was an omega. He was a hybrid. And omega hybrids very rarely got the same treatment as human alphas.

“He is a good man,” Svetlana says. “As much as he thinks he isn’t. He’s always been his mother’s son.”

====

“I don’t like that look.”

Shane had been silent the entire drive home, but Ilya hadn’t mentioned it. Not until they were back in Ilya’s apartment, standing in the living room well past midnight, while Ilya leaned back against one of the walls with a grin on his face that was bordering on a smirk.

“Couch,” Shane says, nodding in the direction of said couch. He walks past Ilya toward the bathroom, ready to take a shower and then attempt to sleep off his irritation and anxiety alone in Ilya’s bed.

“What?”

“You’re on the couch again.”

Ilya follows behind him, grabbing Shane’s wrist and stopping him in his tracks. “I didn’t make any bad joke, though, did I?”

Shane turns around. He doesn’t meet Ilya’s eyes. “What were you doing at the club tonight, then?”

“Dancing?”

“And?”

“And what?” Ilya asks. The grin has returned to his lips, and Shane is– So done with it. “Is dancing crime, now?”

“You were halfway to fucking that woman on the dance floor!” Shane pulls his wrist out of Ilya’s grip, taking a step back.

“Why do you think people go to club?” Ilya asks, leaning forward, his hand reaching out to touch Shane again. Shane’s tail flicks forward, slapping his hand away before it can make contact.

“Don’t touch me,” Shane says, and turns around to continue walking toward the bathroom. “Not tonight.”

“Shane.”

His voice is quiet, removed of all traces of mischievous laughter.

Shane takes a deep breath, sighs, and turns around. There’s half a room of distance between them now, and Shane does nothing to close it. “What?”

“What did I do? To make you sad?”

“I think that’s pretty fucking obvious,” Shane says, shaking his head.

“I’ll make it better,” Ilya says. He takes a step forward, and Shane doesn’t take a step back. “Please, let me make it better.”

Shane looks away, out the window at the scattered lights of the city night. There’s so many things he wants to do– To tell Ilya to go fuck himself, to demand to be put on the next flight back to Canada, to just let himself go limp and let Ilya do whatever he wants to him. He can’t decide which one is the most immediate instinct. They’ve still only known each other a month-and-a-half, and Shane cannot claim that he loves Ilya in any way that feels real and permanent. But he does want him, in a way he’s never been able to deny to himself.

But he can’t just let Ilya have this, either, the way he knows the alpha will inevitably take him and never define anything or say anything about his intentions. Svetlana may think Ilya wants to keep him, but she had told him plenty of other things about Ilya, too. That he tended to push away emotions and follow the path of least resistance. That he would sooner buy the moon for someone than tell them that he loved them. And Shane– Shane can’t live in that kind of ambiguity.

For as long as Shane can remember, he’s needed control. Not the big, obvious kinds of control, like being the leader of a group, he’s… Generally not the best at leading other people in any context. But he needs control over his own life: he chooses his own food, he chooses what to wear, he chooses when and how to clean his space and wash his clothes. He makes plans, both short-term and long-term, even when he knows he has no real control over all of the variables involved. Because things get overwhelming, when they don’t go to plan. Because the food is the wrong texture and doesn’t have the right nutrients and calories to keep him from getting nauseous and light-headed. Because some clothes itch from the moment he puts them on to the moment he takes them off. Because he needs to do something today, so he has time for everything else tomorrow, so it doesn’t all pile up and leave him with a million things to do and the inertia of not doing any of it.

There is a life, in which Shane gets returned to the facility for adult hybrids in Montreal, pregnant with Ilya’s child and never able to see him again except on TV when the Bears’ games are playing. That life, that future, exists. And Shane would be able to figure it out, if he had to. But he doesn’t want to. His plans had always been to live out the rest of his life as a single, unadopted hybrid, playing hockey until he couldn’t. Probably getting mated by a returned alpha hybrid at some point in his thirties when his injuries started to stack up. And all of that had changed already, once, when Svetlana had walked in, her hair bouncing and a satisfied smile on her lips as she told the facility staff all about the professional hockey player she needed a cat hybrid for.

Shane wants this future, in Ilya’s bed and with Ilya’s arms wrapped around him every morning, with their negotiated chores list and their constant banter and a few children that–hopefully, if there was anyone listening to Shane’s prayers–wouldn’t inherit any of Shane’s hybrid traits. He wants it so much, now that it’s even hypothetically possible.

He needs to know. He needs it to be certain, before he’ll let himself hope.

“What do you want, alpha?”

“What do you mean?” Ilya stops, still an arm’s length away from him, careful not to crowd Shane too closely.

“I mean– Are you attracted to me?”

“Yes, obviously,” Ilya says.

“But is it…” Shane bites his lip. His eyes are watering, and he has to blink them quickly to get them to stop. It barely helps. “Are you attracted to me as your pet, or as– As a person?”

“Shane.” Ilya looks heartbroken, truly, for the first time since Shane has met him. His eyes are wide, his shoulders hunched in like he’s trying to make himself small. His arms keep twitching, like he wants to reach out for Shane and stops himself everytime. “You’re not my pet.”

“You say it almost every fucking day, though,” Shane says. “I’m your ‘pretty kitty,’ right?”

“You’re pretty, and you’re a cat hybrid. Is all I mean.” Ilya swallows, looking like he has something more he wants to say. “Did Sveta tell you, when she bought you, that it was supposed to be a, uh, joke gift?”

“What?”

“Is– For us, would be joke. We know hybrids, have hybrid friends, like Sasha. We don’t– We don’t like having hybrid as pet,” Ilya says. “Sveta tease me, say she gets me hybrid as pet, I tell her is bad idea, she would find someone who can actually take good care. But– You are hockey player. And you like me. Apparently. So I keep you.”

“If you don’t want a hybrid, then you should’ve just said no at the beginning.”

Ilya’s face drops once more. “Shane–” He looks down, sighing, and looks back up. His eyes are on Shane’s face, but Shane can’t meet his eyes. “Shane, look at me, please.”

“No.”

“Shane… I say we don’t like hybrid as pet because we think hybrid are same as normal person,” Ilya explains. “You are– Like roommate. Not pet. Only ‘pet’ because of bad laws. And I like you. As roommate. As… Person. As omega.”

“You do?” Shane looks up, seeing Ilya through blurred eyes.

“Yes,” Ilya says. He closes the gap between them, bringing his hand up to cup Shane’s cheek. “I like you very much.”

“But–”

“No but,” Ilya says. “I like your freckles and your bird noises. I like how fast you are, how boring you are. I like that you are so good at hockey–”

“I’m not–”

“Sh,” Ilya says. “If they let you play, you would be best player in league. Better than me or Scott Hunter or anyone else, okay?”

“Okay.” Shane takes a deep breath, letting the tension out of his body. He slumps forward, without thinking, and Ilya catches him without any hesitation. “So if, um… If we try this, like, being actually together, you wouldn’t… Return me, when the thrill of it wears off? Like, when the honeymoon phase is over, or whatever, and it’s just us and figuring out chores?”

“We already figure out chores.”

“Yeah, but– Like, if we have kids, and I make you get up at 4 AM to put them back to bed when they start crying, you wouldn’t be… Upset?”

“No,” Ilya says. “Maybe a little annoyed about less sleep, but not upset with you.” His thumb runs across Shane’s cheekbone, wiping away a tear that Shane hadn’t even realized was there. “If we have babies, is my fault, not yours, so I should be responsible, yes?”

Maybe Svetlana was right.

Shane laughs, and Ilya grins back at him. “I’ll remember you said that. And I’ll remind you all about it when you complain, alright?”

“Please do,” Ilya says. “I complain, you complain, babies complain–”

“The babies won’t be able to complain, most kids can’t talk in full sentences for like, three years–”

“Not the point,” Ilya says.

“What is the point, then?”

“That I like you,” Ilya says, his gaze drifting down to Shane’s lips. “And I really want to kiss you, now, and maybe do more, if you want.”

“Maybe– Maybe I should quit crying, before we end up in bed.” Shane wipes away the leftover tears from his other cheek. His eyes feel sore, and his nose feels swollen and congested, and he hadn’t noticed any of it until he was already calming down.

“Yes, that would be good. Don’t want you telling anyone I made you cry,” Ilya says. “Well, not like that, anyway.”

“Ilya–”

“I joke.”

“You’re not joking,” Shane says.

“No. Not really.”

“Oh my god, just kiss me, you asshole.”

Ilya does, and Shane has never felt more right, with another person pressed against him, even with red eyes and a snotty nose and anxiety in his chest that he’s still working on letting go of.

“Are you– Purring?”

“Jesus fucking Christ, Ilya.”

Chapter End Notes

I may be tempted to write one more fic in this verse, it would be very different than either of these two, though. It might take a while to come out and I make no promises, but uh... If you like the idea of "several years later, Shane finally lets himself get added to the Boston WAG chat and tries to hide that he's a hybrid from the other WAGs because he doesn't want them to think weirdly of him and/or Ilya", then you might want to subscribe to the series.

Also, in case anyone was wondering: since the title of the first fic was a pun on "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet," which is a butchered Romeo and Juliet line, I figured I'd pull the titles for the other fics in this series from other Shakespeare works. This one is from the sleepwalking monologue in Macbeth. If any of you are Shakespeare nerds and have lines you would suggest for the title of the third fic, please let me know!