Chapter 206: Staying Quiet

The medical wing beneath the arena was a storm of harsh fluorescent lights and shouting voices.

​The stretcher slammed through the double doors, the medical staff barking orders over each other while Reid refused to drop my hand.

The moment they transferred me onto the trauma bed, the pain in my shattered leg flared into a blinding agony that made my chest heave, but the sheer biological shock tearing through my blood was worse.

I couldn’t stop the sweet, suffocating cloud of orchid pheromones from leaking off my skin, heavy and thick enough to make the attending nurses visibly falter as they prepped the IVs.

​"Get an immobilizing splint on that leg, now!" the lead doctor shouted, snapping surgical gloves onto his hands. "And get a full hormone suppressant drip in his IV! His system is in complete shock!"

​"Don’t give him generic suppressants," Reid growled, his voice dropping into a dangerous, terrifying rumble as he stepped between the doctor and my bed, his pine scent flaring as a protective wall. "His body can’t handle standard Alpha or Beta formulas right now. You stabilize the fracture, and that is it."

​"McCoy, step back! This is a medical emergency—"

​"I said no," Reid snarled, his broad frame towering over the trauma team.

​Before the argument could escalate, the double doors banged open, and Coach Devin stormed into the room, his face red, his breath coming in sharp, furious gasps. Behind him, the corridor was a zoo—arena security struggling to keep reporters, league officials, and confused teammates back behind the line.

​"What in the absolute hell is going on here?!" Devin roared, slamming his clipboard against the counter.

He looked between my pale, sweating face, the heavy scent of orchids hanging in the sterile air, and Reid standing guard like a rabid hound. "The entire game is on hold! The League commissioner is on the phone! Half the arena is choking on Omega pheromones, and the press is calling it the biggest scandal in sports history! Evans—McCoy—I need an explanation right now!"

​Reid went completely rigid, his jaw clenched so hard a muscle twitched violently along his neck. He looked down at me, his eyes dark with the terrifying realization that one wrong word right now—one slip of the tongue before our story was aligned—would turn a medical crisis into a criminal felony for fraud and league deception.

​So, Reid said nothing. He just stared at Devin with a blank, stone-cold expression, keeping his mouth shut tight. 𝒻𝘳ℯℯ𝑤ℯ𝒷𝘯ℴ𝓋ℯ𝘭.𝑐ℴ𝑚

​"You’re not talking?" Devin rasped, his eyes widening in sheer disbelief and rising panic. "You’re just going to stand there and play mute while the entire franchise burns down around our ears?!"

​While the medical wing devolved into a pressure cooker, the home locker room was in absolute ruin.

​The rest of the team sat in frozen, suffocating silence. The broadcast on the wall monitors had been cut to a generic League logo, but the audio from the sports anchors was still echoing through the room—analysts wildly speculating about forged medical records, illegal gender deception, and lifetime bans.

​Gerald was pacing the rubber floor, his helmet clutched in his hands, his face pale as a sheet. He stopped in front of Miller and Russo, who were sitting side by side on the bench, staring straight ahead with grim, tight expressions.

​"You guys are way too quiet," Gerald said, his voice cracking with built-up hysteria. He pointed a trembling finger at them. "Evans just unleashed an Omega scent plume that almost knocked out the first five rows! McCoy acted like he was ready to kill anyone who stepped near him! You two were right there—you helped box them in! You know something about this, don’t you?!"

​Russo didn’t even flinch. He slowly raised his eyes, his expression a wall of pure, unbothered steel, blending in seamlessly to protect the Captain.

​"We’re as clueless as you, Gerald," Russo said smoothly, his voice flat and steady. "Kain took a dirty, blind-side hit from Pedro at thirty miles an hour and his leg snapped in half. We boxed him in so twenty thousand fans didn’t record our Captain screaming in agony on camera. Anything else is medical business, and I’m not a doctor."

​"Don’t give me that bullshit, Russo!" Gerald hissed, leaning in closer. "That wasn’t just pain! That was—"

​"That was a tragedy on the ice," Miller interrupted coldly, his deep voice cutting Gerald off instantly as he adjusted his goalie pads. "Shut your mouth and let the team doctor handle it. Speculating out loud in front of league reps is how you get this entire locker room subpoenaed."

​Gerald swallowed hard, looking around at the rest of the silent, terrified roster before backing off, thoroughly shut down. Miller and Russo exchanged a brief, imperceptible glance—holding the line, keeping quiet, and waiting for the signal.

"But honestly, Cap being an Omega?" Petter wondered out loud, catching all their attention. "I can’t believe it one bit."

"Yeah," another veteran, Jake added. "He’s been ramming bodies into us for ten years, he’s been our captain for four. There’s no way we wouldn’t have known if he was a fragile, weak thing on the ice."

"One thing’s for sure," Russo folded his arms. "The captain is far from fragile."

​Back in the hallway, Reid stepped away from the bed for a second, his hands trembling as he pulled his phone from his gear bag and dialed Marina.

​She picked up on the very first ring.

​"I’m already in the parking garage," Marina’s voice cut through the line, cold, razor-sharp, and completely steady amidst the storm. "I saw the broadcast. I have the flash drive, the backdated research logs, and my firm’s senior sports contract attorney with me. We’re stepping into the elevator now."

​"Devin is demanding answers," Reid whispered into the receiver, his back turned to the room, his pine scent spiking with raw urgency. "And the League reps are outside."

​"Don’t say a single word, Reid," Marina ordered sharply. "Not to Devin, not to the refs, and especially not to the League. This isn’t just a sports fine anymore—if they try to claim Kain lied on his initial entry draft, they’ll try to push for criminal fraud charges. Let my lawyer handle the narrative. We treat this as a secondary, trauma-induced biological anomaly caused by your rut. Nothing else."

​"Understood," Reid rasped and cut the call.