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Shane’s wolf shares that she’s pregnant the second week they’re at the cottage.
“Shared” means Shane wakes up, gasping and hot, already hard and desperate, grinding himself into the mattress. Means that he feels full, but not full enough. It’s not dissimilar to going through one of Lakey’s heats, honestly. But he had thought that he was done with that for another year.
Through their bond, Shane can feel that Lakey is pleased with herself. She’s with Ilya’s wolf, because of course she is, the two of them are never separated these days. She’s drawing him in, showing off for him, teasing him, letting him smell that she’s full of him--
“Ilya,” Shane moans. He’s drooling into his pillow, but his hand reaches blindly across the bed to find his husband, who, naturally, is still asleep. He makes a confused noise in the back of his throat as Shane slaps at his chest.
“Shane…?” Ilya mumbles.
Lakey has Ilya’s wolf on his back. Shane’s nose is flooded with his scent, and it scorches through his veins. He needs to come. He’s going to come, but he needs to be full of Ilya more than that he needs that. He forces himself to stop rolling his hips and raises his head, sucking in lungfuls of air, so that he can look at Ilya.
“Fuck me,” Shane says.
Ilya is still rumpled. His eye are wide, perhaps just a touch confused. But not unaffected, no, because he can feel what the wolves are broadcasting through their bond. He can feel his wolf rearing back so that he can sink into Lakey--
“Yes,” Ilya says. “Okay.”
He grabs the lube from where it’s still on his bedside dresser and does a minimal amount of prep to make sure that he doesn’t hurt Shane who is, luckily, still open from the night before. Shane can barely handle it as it is.
“Fuck me,” Shane instructs again, a near growl, as Ilya draws his fingers out of the inferno of Shane’s body. Ilya is overcome enough that he doesn’t even make a snarky comment. He doesn’t tease Shane, doesn’t draw things out, or call him a needy slut. He sinks his cock into Shane’s body, and Shane moans at the stretch, face pressed back into the sheets.
Ilya blankets him, draped across Shane’s back, as much of their skin touching as possible, so that Shane feels like he could just burn up. He starts shoving his hips back against Ilya before Ilya begins to move.
“More,” Shane demands, a familiar refrain from Lakey’s heats. It’s never enough with Ilya.
Ilya takes Shane’s hips in between his broad hands and steadies him. He begins to thrust relentlessly into Shane, rutting into him more than anything. He barely pulls out of Shane as he thrusts, his hips hitting Shane’s ass hard, and it’s the most perfect friction that Shane has ever felt.
He moans, shamelessly loud, cock drooling onto the bed. Lakey’s pleasure is a mirror of his own: self-satisfied, so pleased with being full full full of their mates. This is who she chose from the beginning, had always wanted him, had burned so much down to have him. Now, she has him. Only him, and she’s carrying his litter.
Shane comes in a painful spasm.
Ilya curses behind him. He rears up, back, letting all the power in his body go to work as he fucks Shane hard. Shane cries out breathlessly. If he could, he would command Ilya to do it, to fill him up. Fuck him harder, pin him in place--
But Ilya doesn’t need a verbal command to know. He knows Shane. He’s always known what Shane wants, more so than Shane some times. And he can feel the thrumming pleasure of his bond with the wolves, Lakey with his wolf right where she wants him.
“Jesus,” Ilya spits, and then he’s coming as well, leaning down to sink his teeth into Shane’s shoulder—the same place he always bites when Lakey’s in heat, and the lines between them and the wolves gets a little blurry.
At the heat flooding insides, Shane’s entire body lights up, fireworks sizzling up his spine and popping behind his eyes. He moans again, still panting, open-mouthed. He basks in the feeling of being claimed by Ilya, of claiming him in return.
Ilya kisses his shoulder, rubs gently at his hips as he pulls out of Shane. Shane flops back down against the bed, never mind that he’s a mess, pressed into his own spend right now. Ilya rolls onto his own back and laughs faintly.
“So,” Ilya drawls. “Puppies, yes? Will she be this horny whole time, Hollander? You will kill me.”
“Shut up,” Shane mumbles, without any heat at all. He’s not sure he can feel every part of his body yet.
“No,” Ilya answers, drawing his face closer to Shane so that he can kiss his nose despite the awkward angle. “I do not think I will.”
They lounge a little longer before Shane desperately needs to clean himself up. So, they shower, dress, and then head down for breakfast. As soon as they leave the bedroom, Lakey comes trotting up to him, still pleased. She shoves her nose immediately into Shane’s stomach with enough force that it almost punches the air out of him.
She sniffs once, and then snorts in frustration—disappointed that Shane is not also carrying puppies.
Shane blushes the deepest red he’s perhaps ever blushed.
“You know it doesn’t work like that,” he tells her. She does. She understands, conceptually, the way that she and Shane are different. But she doesn’t at the same time, forgets that they’re not actually the same being. But at the reminder that she has accomplished something that Shane can’t, she merely begins broadcasting her pride again.
Ilya pats her on the head and coos at her.
“Yes, yes,” Ilya tells her. “You are the best printsessa. Many treats for you today.”
Because he heads into the kitchen, Lakey lopes after him. She knows treats. There’s no denying that Ilya feeds his wolf a hardy and carefully curated diet. In many ways, he took care of his wolf better during his Boston days than he did himself. But Ilya is also prone to spoiling the wolves in a way that Shane simply is not. The amount of toys they have is ridiculous, Ilya is always spending money on new treats for them, and he had kitted out one of the rooms in the cottage basement as a sort of interior den for them, although they’re outside more often than not here. He loves to forget that they’re not spoiled lap dogs.
No wonder Lakey is hopelessly in love with him.
Ilya chats with the wolves while he gets their breakfasts ready. Shane meanwhile pulls the much less exciting task of cooking for himself and Ilya.
“I’ll have to the league know,” Shane says, frowning. “I’m not sure they’ll be able to get a vet up here to take a look at her. But she’ll probably deliver by the end of summer.” It’ll be Lakey’s first litter since he transferred to the Centaurs. Whenever they have to deal with the league, it continues to be frustrating.
Ilya hums.
“Is shame,” he says. “Puppies will probably be very cute.”
“Puppies go back to the league, Ilya,” Shane says, even though Ilya knows. He got Lakey through the league. Any puppies she has, by default, go back to them to bond with other hockey players. Bitches are still a rare enough commodity in the MLH that he doubts there will be much wiggle room for discussion.
“I know,” Ilya sighs as he feeds the wolves bacon and coos to them in Russian.
…
Unfortunately for them all, it quickly becomes very clear that Lakey is taking Ilya’s side in the manner.
…
“The puppy problem,” Farah says, smiling tightly.
Yes. The puppy problem. Shane can already feel a headache building behind his eyes. He’s lost track of how many calls they’ve had with Farah to discuss the impending litter. On the floor by them, Lakey sprawls happily, her head in Ilya’s lap, eyes half shut as Ilya absently rubs her ears. She’s big now. Full of four squirming puppies who are going to be coming sooner rather than later. Puppies that Lakey has decided are hers and that she’s going to keep.
It had started up right away, as soon as they all knew. David and Yuna had come over for dinner the following night, and Lakey had growled at them when they came too close to her. Baffling, by all accounts because they practically helped raise her. They had known well enough to keep their distance, though. It was the vet that had been the real problem. When the league’s vet had shown up to inspect her and the pups, she had snarled and snapped viciously, and Shane is pretty sure that she would have bitten him if he had dared to press his luck and come closer. He hadn’t. He had tried again a few days later, with the same results. They had tried a different vet not long after, and Lakey continued to refuse to let anyone besides Ilya and Shane come near her.
“We need to make sure that the puppies are okay,” Shane told her, exacerbated.
Mine, is what Lakey had pressed back. Mine mine mine.
She’s had litters before. She’s preened and shown them off to Shane and had taken care of the pups until it was time for the league to take them. She understood they had a purpose like her.
They all know the difference is that she’s never had a litter with Ilya’s wolf before. All the other litters had been when Shane was still with the Metros. And since then, Shane’s learned a lot about “wolf problems,” and Lakey has come into her own as a bitch unwilling to be reckoned with.
(When the problem was that he found Lakey’s heats with the Metros unbearable, Shane had been told to trust his wolf. She knows what to do. Let her do it.
So when her heats had lasted and lasted and she still had been pining for Rozanov’s wolf, he had compromised. He had still done the team-building thing, spent the majority of her heat getting fucked by the Metros. And then he would take himself and Lakey home, where Rozanov and his wolf were waiting, and they would break the heat that way. A perfect bargain, all around, Shane figured.
When the problem was that Lakey began refusing Metros wolves, wanting only Ilya’s wolf, he had been told to get her under control. At the end of the day, she was only an animal, and it was bad for team morale for their captain’s wolf to be so openly rejecting them. Never mind that Lakey knew which of the Metros were less than supportive of Shane. She had bitten part of Comeau’s wolf’s ear off the last time he tried to mount her. When Comeau had still reached for Shane, she had bitten him as well.
“They’re going to get rid of us,” Shane had said, just as frustrated with her. “You know that, right? And then there will be no more hockey.” She had been hurt by his frustration, but she had been stalwart in her decision. She always was. She didn’t like the Metros anymore. She didn’t trust them, didn’t like that they didn’t trust Shane. She wanted her kingdom to be somewhere else, and Shane had been baffled by the idea that there could be somewhere else.
When they did eventually leave the Metros and went to the Centaurs, the problem was that only captains had bitches, and could Rozanov really be expected to maintain control of his locker room when Shane Hollander and his bitch were stepping into the picture? But, well. Shane hadn’t really been listening to anyone’s opinions by then. Wiebe had met with them beforehand, crammed into a room with Shane and Ilya and both wolves, Lakey every inch pleased and preening with the outcome.
“Ottawa’s never had a bitch before,” Wiebe had said. “So I’m not going to pretend to know how to handle her. I’m just going to trust you two to know your wolves. Is there going to be a power dynamic problem?”
Shane had looked down at where Lakey was licking the snout of Ilya’s wolf intently.
“No,” Shane had said, and Ilya had shaken his head, one hand resting on his wolf’s head.
“Okay,” Wiebe had said, as if the matter was settled for him. Shane had expected more pushback. “I need you to tell me if that changes. I can only have your back if I know what’s going on. Now, I prefer to introduce the wolves in small groups, because I think it gives us a better chance to see where there might be friction and head that off.”
Shane might have suspected that such an approach was for Lakey’s benefit; he knew that she had developed a reputation for being difficult. But Ilya’s wolf had been introduced just the same.
“Any concerns about that? Or anything else?” Wiebe had asked.
“What about heats?” Shane had blurted out, and very much wish he hadn’t. But it had been a whole new issue, being with a different team. Amazing, because he was with Ilya. And terrifying because their relationship was already on grotesque display, and he didn’t think he’d be able to deal with having other people watch Ilya fuck him. And he didn’t think Ilya would be able to deal with watching other people fuck him. They hadn’t discussed it at length. Ilya had just been sure that it wouldn’t be like that.
Wiebe had paused.
“Well,” he had said. “How do you want to handle her heats, Hollander?”
“Not with the team,” Shane had whispered. And Wiebe hadn’t pressed. Even though that was one of the obvious benefits of having a bitch on the team.
Probably, Lakey wouldn’t have accepted any of the other wolves by then anyway. The first time her heat had been nearing with the Centaurs, Haas’ wolf had gotten a little too close a little too fast, and she had snapped at him, warning him back. Haas had blushed and stammered out an apology, but other than that, it was fine. Lakey liked being around the other wolves leading right up to her heat. She would let them chase her and curl up with them, and they were her pack in every way that mattered, but she only ever wanted Ilya’s wolf. She would tease him sometimes, letting one of the other wolves get close to her, and she would feign interest. Ilya would be almost unbearable during those games—playing rougher, like he had during his Boston games, more handsy with Shane than Shane would normally allow.
So, heats are just them. Allowing them all to know with absolute certainty who sired the puppies.)
“The commissioner is holding that the puppies need to be turned over to the league when they’re the appropriate age,” Farah says apologetically.
“Can we not buy them or something?” Ilya asks. Probably, if they were any other hockey players, that would be a reasonable request. But Crowell still has it out for them and makes their lives as difficult as possible.
“The league’s view is that these puppies are invaluable,” Farah says.
Ilya scoffs.
“All hockey wolves are invaluable, no?” he asks. “How does it matter who their mama and papa are? The wolves pick who they bond with.”
Objectively, Ilya is right. In the process of bonding, Lakey’s puppies are no different than any other. Shane knows that doesn’t change that people are going to be obsessively interested in this litter because the puppies come from the wolves of Shane Hollander and Ilya Rozanov. Bred for greatness. Most of Lakey’s other puppies have already bonded to promising young players as well.
“I know, Ilya,” Farah responds. “The league simply isn’t budging on this. I could try and see if they’d be willing to split the litter?”
Ilya looks at Shane, and Shane looks down at Lakey. He already knows the answer. She wants all the puppies. There is no splitting up the litter for her. She and Ilya’s wolf made each of them; they’re all hers.
“Keep talking to them, please,” Shane requests.
“I will,” Farah says. “But I think you may need to prepare.”
Shane says nothing, because he doesn’t know how to explain that there is no preparing. That he has no doubt that Lakey will tear through anyone the league sends to try and remove the puppies.
…
There had been similar conversations after they had been outed. Not about Shane and Lakey. About Ilya and his wolf.
(“Crash,” Shane had repeated, dumbfounded, when Ilya had shared his wolf’s name while they were at the cottage the first time.
“I am translating wolf thought to Russian to English,” Ilya had said, aghast. “Give me a break, Hollander.”
So. Crash. Shane had understood in a way. Because of what Ilya’s wolf had smelled like to Lakey: that pervasive scent of burning and gasoline. But it had made him sad, too, because Ilya and his wolf were beautiful, and Shane could see the fatalism that Ilya and his wolf had imbued in the name. The violence and ruin inherent in it. That they were made to burn out.)
Crash is a quintessential KHL wolf. Bred to be larger than the wolves in the MLH, his coloring unusually dark. Ilya had bonded with him unusually young. Shane has never seen any footage of Ilya playing hockey where Crash wasn’t already there.
“Proudest day of my father’s life,” Ilya had said sourly when he recounted the story, and Shane had been angry that Grigori Rozanov had tainted even that memory, because he remembers how thrilling it had been to bond with Lakey, and he suspects that Ilya had needed his wolf in a very different way than Shane had needed Lakey.
When they had been outed, there had been the shock first, sure. And the anger. That feeling that one or both of them had betrayed their teams. And after that wave of discourse had died down, people had turned to their wolves. The homophobic bullshit about there being a reason why Shane had a bitch for a wolf, that he had expected. What he hadn’t expected was the discussion surrounding Crash.
“If I was Rozanov, I’d be worried about Russia coming to reclaim that wolf,” some podcaster had said, and then that was all anyone could talk about. Had any league every reclaimed wolves from their athletes? No. Of course not. It was generally accepted that leagues were taking a gamble, and they couldn’t control where the wolves wound up after they bonded. Players injured themselves or washed out. They moved to different countries. But there was no breaking bonds or re-bonding wolves with different players, so there wasn’t much of a point to reclaiming a wolf.
“Unless you’re a country trying to make an example of one of your star athletes who’s embarrassed you,” the podcaster helpfully supplied. And then the theory was off, viral within the hour.
“Is that a possibility?” Shane had asked Farah and their lawyers.
“Well, it’s never happened before,” they had said, which was not a no.
“Are you worried about that?” Shane had asked Ilya.
Ilya had looked down at Crash and shrugged, which was also not particularly helpful, from Shane’s point of view.
“He will not let himself be separated from me,” Ilya had said. “And we’re never going back to Russia. So.”
That wasn’t really good enough for Shane. Or the internet. Who theorized that, sure, maybe Russia wouldn’t have much luck legally getting Ilya separated from his wolf, and maybe the Russian government or KHL representatives or whoever was coming couldn’t exactly take a stroll and just pick up Crash and head back to Russia. But there were other things they could do, especially if they were willing to just kill the wolf and make it look like an accident. Poison, naturally, had been a fan favorite theory.
It had made Shane twitchy. He had been nervous anytime they were out in public then. It wasn’t as if anyone ever touched the wolves, because at the end of the day, they were still wolves. But Shane was afraid someone would. That they would feed Crash something, and it would be poisoned, and they would never know, and Ilya would lose his wolf, which would make him lose his career, and then what?
“Shane,” Ilya had begged. “You need to stop with this, please. Look, he is fine. I am fine. The wolves, they are smart, you see. He knows how to watch for danger. Lakey watches out for him, too. She would know if someone wanted to hurt him.”
It had been the only thing that soothed him. He would watch the wolves whenever they went out in public together then, the way they moved together, sides brushing, people parting around them. Their two brilliant, beautiful predators.
Shane had never had a good read on people. But Lakey did. So, he tried to trust that she wouldn’t let anything happen to Crash. Or Ilya. She had chosen them long before Shane did, after all.
(“Does he, uh, like me?” Shane had asked, toward the end of the week of that first stay in the cottage. Shane and Ilya had been sitting on the dock, while Lakey and Crash romped joyfully in the water. She was blissfully happy.
“What?” Ilya had asked blankly, staring at Shane with confusion.
“C’mon,” Shane had cajoled. “You know that Lakey likes you. She’s liked you since the beginning. Did Crash like me when we met?”
Ilya had stared at him for a moment longer and then had burst out laughing, the boom of his laughter startling every living creature in a mile radius from them. Lakey had spun in the water to see what the fuss was.
“Oh, Shane,” Ilya had said, wiping tears from his eyes. “He would pout so bad. You are the only one I have been with, with a wolf, and he likes this. And, oh, when Lakey goes into heat, he is so moody, so jealous.”
The mention of a heat had wiped the laughter off Ilya’s face, perhaps because they had both been realizing that was not likely to get any easier now that they were together.
Shane had cleared his throat.
“But that’s him liking Lakey,” Shane had protested, and he didn’t know why. He sounded whiny to his own ears. He had Ilya’s love, by his own admission. But there was an extra layer of vulnerability knowing that Lakey had always been drawn to Ilya and Crash. He needed the comfort of knowing that it had been the same for them.
“Lakey thought you were pack since her first heat,” Shane had said, nervously. Didn’t know why exactly.
And Ilya’s had face softened again. He had rubbed a thumb over Shane’s cheek.
“This is funny,” he had murmured. “Because Krusheniye was mad with me for keeping him from our pack.”)
…
Shane can’t sleep. He’s too worried about the puppies. He watches Ilya in the low light of the cottage bedroom for awhile, but he’s too restless, and he doesn’t want to wake Ilya up, and he knows he eventually will with how he’s moving and sighing.
He pushes himself up and heads down to the living room without turning any lights on. He sits on the couch and listens to the faint sound of the world moving around the cottage. He’s surprised when he hears something move in the dark near him—and it’s not Ilya or Lakey, but Crash, barely visible. He’s surprised to see Ilya’s wolf out of the makeshift den. He’s barely left Lakey’s side.
Crash thumps down in front of him, head heavy on Shane’s knees, and sighs. He stares up at Shane. Shane can’t help but smile faintly. He rubs at Crash’s ears, watches as the wolf’s eyes list halfway closed.
Shane lies back all the way on the couch and gestures at his chest.
In practice, he’s the one who’s always telling Ilya that the wolves can’t be up on the furniture. It’s a lot of work to keep the house clean, what with all the fur. Ilya had slept with Crash nearly every night when he had lived in Boston. But it was too much to expect two hockey players to share a bed with full-grown wolves.
Ilya slips them food when he thinks Shane’s not paying attention.
When Shane’s pretty sure that Ilya and Lakey aren’t paying attention, Shane lets Crash up on the couch with him.
Crash doesn’t have to be invited twice. He hops up and spreads the entirety of his weight along Shane’s. It’s nearly crushing, but it’s comforting too. Shane starts to rub at the fur along Crash’s neck, feels the wolf snort out a heavy breath into his ear.
Shane’s nose isn’t like Lakey’s. He can’t pick up the same scent that she does. He only really knows Crash’s scent through her. All the same, he still knows that over the years, Crash’s scent has shifted subtly. No longer quite gasoline set alight. No, these days it’s more akin to the bonfires they have here when they’re up at the cottage. Undercurrents of gasoline, still. Not entirely gone. But mellowed, perhaps.
(“He felt safe with you,” Ilya had said abruptly, in the days leading up to their wedding.
“What?”
“You asked me once,” Ilya had answered, the muscle in his jaw clenching furiously. “How Krusheniye felt about you, not Lakey. He liked being with you, because he felt safe.”
Shane had stared and not known what to say, which he knew was the wrong reaction. After all the time that they had been together, after everything they could feel through and with the wolves, Ilya still grew nervous about exhibiting a vulnerability that could be construed as a weakness.
“He had not had that with many people,” Ilya had continued. “He did not like my father or my brother. He would be quiet and behave, because he is a good Russian wolf, and he understands these things. But safe? No. And Boston was good, yes, but very different from what we knew, so he was always on alert, I think. Always looking for danger. But with you, he did not have to do this. So, safe, with you.” Ilya had paused. “And then of course he very much wanted to fuck Lakey.”
Shane had laughed, but it was rough, because his eyes were flooded with tears from Ilya’s confession.
“We love you,” was what Shane managed to answer back. And Ilya had smiled.
“We love you too.”)
…
Shane pads down to the indoor den where Lakey has beached herself. The puppies are due anytime now. Whenever they put a hand on her stomach, they can feel them wriggling.
Shane lies down next to her, and she half opens her eyes in acknowledgment of him.
Gently, he strokes her head and down her neck, admiring her and how far she’s come from the ball of fur that had chosen him all those years ago. He’d been scared. Excited, of course, because he finally had his wolf, but scared, because she was a she, and that would make him different. There is no hiding in the pack with a female wolf. Probably, if he knew then what he knows now of just how set apart he would be, it would have terrified him. Now, he can’t imagine doing a single thing without her. She’s made him so much braver than he ever imagined.
“Mom figured it out,” Shane tells her quietly. “How we’re going to keep the puppies. So, you better be extra nice to her next time you see her. Apparently, it’s well-documented by wolf experts that if you forcibly remove puppies from their mom, the puppies will refuse to bond, ever. Mom even found someone who studied the trend in wolves used for athletic teams and flew them out to talk to just about everyone at the league.”
Probably Crowell would have tried to still get away with it, but paired with a losing fight and the promise of bad headlines if something went wrong, he had apparently relented. And Shane and Ilya are still paying an exorbitant amount of money to maintain legal rights to the puppies.
Lakey blinks slowly back at him, content, and echoing back what she’s been telling him from the beginning: mine.
Shane smiles faintly at her.
“Yours,” he agrees. Ours, he thinks moreover. Lakey’s and Crash’s. Shane’s and Ilya’s. He keeps petting her, slow and methodical.
“We’ll run out of room, eventually, you know,” Shane comments. Two full-grown wolves is enough on the best of days. Ilya may be vibrating with excitement at the notion of puppies, but Shane is guessing that it’s going to be a practice in patience for all of them. And honestly, who knows how many more litters Lakey and Crash could have together after this one.
Lakey does the mental equivalent of rolling her eyes at him. Not always, she tells him. She won’t need to keep all of the puppies. She wants them to have the same purpose and joy that she’s found in her time with Shane. Playing good hockey. Building a good team. It’s just these—this first litter, because she’s spent so long wanting them, waiting for them, with Crash.
“Yeah,” Shane echoes, and if his voice is a little choked, what does it matter when he’s speaking to the wolf who can feel everything in his heart. He leans his head against hers. “I get that.”