Page 83 of The Price of Ice

“No,” he said, barely biting back a grown, and saw her stiffen a little, but it didn’t stop him. It felt like nothing could, once the wound was reopened. “It started during heat, and then one of them did it in the locker room. He just— He used will and he made me stay still and he raped me.”

Her face was softly upset, a mask of polite empathy. Maybe it was the only way you could look someone in the eye and ask, “How?”

For a moment, Kallen couldn’t breathe, let alone speak, and then, like it’d been a challenge, he held her gaze and spat it out, vicious and graphic, “Rammed his cock down my throat. Made me swallow.”

She tried not to react, but he caught the little flinch anyway. “Did you ever consent to sexual contact with this individual outside of heat?”

“No.”

She nodded and her fingers curled and uncurled next to the recorder. “It sounds like sexual assault.”

He snorted.

“Is there a chance you might be pregnant?”

“What? No!” At that, he leaned back, repulsed.

“That’s good,” the officer told him. “It has been used as a defence by alphas in similar situations,” she explained, and Kallen suddenly felt like a dick; she hadn’t been asking him because she didn’t believe him, but because she knew other people wouldn’t.

“There’s video,” he said, softer now, and a little desperate because this what he was here for. “If you can get an order to get it. There are cameras in the locker room and one of them must have caught it. My lawyer says it can be done.”

Her dark eyes were direct and attentive on his, and when she nodded, her lips curved faintly upwards. She grabbed a piece of paper from the satchel she’d placed on the corner. “Write down the dates and times.”

She’d still made him write a full report of his testimony, including the names of everyone involved in the attacks and who he’d complained to and what he’d been told. He’d thought it would be difficult, but it felt good to do it, using all caps for their names to ensure everyone would know, and going into a level of detail he hadn’t believed himself capable off, fuelled by anger that bordered on hatred.

If Evans wanted to clean up the team, Kallen wanted to scourge it, burn it to the ground until nothing remained. Unless there was something clean underneath after all, but other than the children they were raising to feed into their fucked-up machine, he doubted that very much.

What had happened to Coleridge? It suddenly occurred to him to wonder. The White Cats hadn’t been patient like other teams, they’d started recruiting as soon as the omega before Kallen had announced his retirement. Somehow, Kallen had forgotten all about him until this very moment.

Except that was a lie, wasn’t it? He just hadn’twantedto think about the man he was replacing, not about the decade the other omega had spent with the team or the three pregnancieshe’d had for them. One of them by McKinley, which would have entitled him to sexual access to Coleridge for the duration. The officer wasn’t wrong, everyone knew an alpha who’d impregnated an omega needed to have sex with them while they carried their child to term.

Just like everyone knew no alpha could resist an omega in heat.

But both Levy and Benny had.

Coleridge could very well still be in the Den, raising the children there because his contract specified that he couldn’t sue for custody. Yet another thing Kallen had convinced himself not to think about when he’d signed his life away to be allowed to play.

Had they done the same things to him? Yrovsky hadn’t been with the team then, but everyone else... Fuck, Levy had been there a couple of months before him. Had he...?

His stomach convulsed.

The knock on the door startled him back to the present. It was the officer coming to check on him and Kallen nodded when she asked if he was okay. He wasn’t, not even close, but it was what it took to hand her the pages and walk out of there.

HIS DAD WAS ALONE INthe waiting room. His mum had gone out for a moment to get them a hot drink and something to eat. Glancing at the clock revealed he’d been inside for over two hours.

“Son.” His dad was on his feet at once, alert and worried, and Kallen looked at him and didn’t know what to say.

They’d come with him, and his dad had said those things about the team. But he hadn’tdoneanything. Maybe he hadn’t been able to. Just like Levy hadn’t found the strength to walk outon the team, or how it’d taken Kallen nearly a year to realise he had to.

He kept his gaze low. “Can we go home?”

“Sure!” His dad agreed, and if his mum hadn’t taken five more minutes to return, they might have walked off without the copy of the report Mr Evans needed.

As it was, Kallen let her take it and followed them to the car in silence, and when they got to the house, he waved away any offers of a snack and went straight upstairs to collapse on top of the covers.

He was done, he decided. He’d done his part. He’d done enough.

THE NEXT MORNING, HEwoke up with the sky still dark, stomach rumbling and body desperate to move. It was only to be expected when he’d gone to bed so early. He remembered what he’d done, what he’d written, but it had faded a bit, that utter despair pressing him down.

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