Reading Time:
42 Minutes

Winter 2003

Shane Hollander knew when he came online that it was going to mess up his life. He had been home alone, and he had been unwilling to go anywhere to get help. He had studied all of it when he could between hockey games and practice. It had been something his mother had indulged him in because she had been happy that he was willing to look up things that were not hockey-related. Of course, his mother didn’t realize that he was learning about it because he was afraid that he was a Guide. If he was a Guide, he wasn’t going to be allowed to play hockey unless he was bonded. The game was too much for a normal Guide to play, at least according to those who made the rules. He had been stuck playing in the normal leagues, but if he came online, there was no chance that he was going to be able to hide it, so he would have to play in the Sentinel league. He didn’t want to come online, but as he got older, as he got closer to puberty, he knew it was going to happen. He didn’t know how or when, but he knew it. His parents couldn’t know either. He knew that they would support him in whatever he wanted, but Shane didn’t want a Sentinel.

All of the work he had put into meditation and yoga, something that helped his body be the best for hockey, even before puberty, paid off one night when he was asleep in bed. The dream turned, and he was walking into a room. He wasn’t sure where he was, and all he could see was darkness; then he turned on the light. The bed was there, and so was the woman. Even though Shane didn’t know her, he felt the utter heartbreak at finding the woman dead. He could see the way that her body lay on the bed; she was dead.

Shane woke up in a cold sweat, and he felt it. He felt his mind shifting, his body changing as the psionic energy came over him. He closed his eyes, and he sought out that new part of him, the part he had touched a few times before but never too much, and he made sure that it stayed hidden. He locked himself down, and he knew that he was going to have to work on things, but at least he could do that during yoga and his meditation. he was left alone more often than not when he was doing it. Now he would have to make sure that he was left alone.

Waking up the next morning, Shane headed down to the kitchen, and he found that his parents were already working on breakfast. He did his job and put out the plates and glasses, filling up the glasses with juice and, in his case, a small glass with juice and a bigger glass with milk. He was glad when they turned around to greet him, but they said nothing. No one was going to know.

The biggest test was later that day when his mother dropped him off.

The world was changed because while most Sentinels wanted to be in jobs that served the people of the world, there was something about being in a top sport like this that filled a part of their mind that wanted to serve the people in other ways. The shift had been small and then more as the world kind of went to shit, and even Sentinels didn’t always want to be in the military or work as cops. So the Sentinel Hockey League had been created to match the MLH. There were fewer teams but still a lot of them. There were more Sentinels who played hockey than any other national-level sport.

Guides had only been allowed to join their Sentinels a decade ago, which was good. The biggest thing was that the league was full of men and women, unlike the MLH, which was just men. Shane had been happy to see women doing just as well as the rest of them. It was Guides who had been allowed in last to the league and only if they were bonded to a Sentinel. That was the biggest bit of bias that Shane thought was fucking stupid. Guides could be just as fit as they could read the ice and the players just as well; what they lacked in utter strength was made up for in swiftness and so many other things.

The coach of Shane’s league was a Sentinel, and his wife worked as a doctor at the location hospital and was his Guide as well. Shane had liked the man and respected him enough. He just didn’t want the man to figure it out.

Shane got ready with the rest of the team and headed out to warm up the rest of the way. He skated and kept an eye out for when the coach got there. He felt the man arrive, and he tried not to react. Part of him wanted to go to him to get safety, but Shane pushed that down, locked it behind the wall that he had made for his abilities. He didn’t know what to expect, but when Coach got there and just got them going like normal, Shane waited. When the practice ran long because they were doing really fucking well, Shane waited. Then when it ended, and they were told to wash up and head home, Shane breathed a sigh of relief. He was safe.

He was safe. He had figured out how to hide what he was, and he was happy about that. He settled down into cleaning up, to wash off the smell of sweat from his body with a bunch of others around him. He was happy, and he would make sure that he could be the best at what he did, which was hockey.

—

Ilya Rozanov had known that he was a Guide for over a year before he had come online. His mother had trained him in all the ways to hide what he was when he came online. No one was allowed to know what he was. If they knew, he would never escape from Russia. He had more than enough plans in place with his mother’s help. He was twelve, but he knew that he was going to have to hide for nearly six years before the plans could be in place. The KHL wasn’t a place where Sentinels and Guides were allowed to play. If a player came online as either of them, they were pulled, the money they should have earned in their career went to their family, and they were conscripted into the military.

Sentinels were chattel to the military and the government. Guides were chattel to the Sentinels; they were forced to bond with them based on what the Sentinel wanted. Well, not wanted. Were forced to do it. Ilya would never allow himself to be chattel to a Sentinel who would use him in all the worst ways. So it had been with a lot of work that Ilya learned the best ways to hide what he was. There were pills that his mother made sure that he would get even if something happened to her. She was a Guide, forced to marry Ilya’s father. She did not want that for Ilya, which was why they had worked as hard as they had to make Ilya good at hockey. He loved hockey before he realized he was good at it. He loved playing, and he wanted nothing to take it away, so when his mother started to notice that he was not a Sentinel like his brother and father, she started to train him. He presented like a Sentinel: the rough aggression, the scenting, so many things that were instinct to a Sentinel. Ilya learned.

Until he came online, he would be safe even if his mother ended up dead, which was possible because his father wasn’t a good man and he saw his Guide as a tool to be used. She was tired all the time, and it wasn’t a good thing. Ilya hated him, and he would never forgive him if he ended up being the reason that his mother died.

Which was why when Ilya came home from practice one day to find that the house felt cold, not just from the cold hair outside but a coldness he had never felt before, not even when his mother wasn’t home, out with his father helping him keep his senses on track while he did his job, which was something she was forced to do even if she needed to take care of the boys when they were younger. Ilya had many memories of eating whatever he could find in the house that sometimes wasn’t meant to be eaten uncooked because his father had taken her away before she could make him something for when he got home from school.

It was why Ilya knew how to cook better than his brother. His brother had never once tried to cook anything; he just forced Ilya to make him something, seeing his little brother as lesser than he was, even when Ilya started to act like a Sentinel the closer he got to puberty.

Ilya went to his mother’s bedroom, and he knocked, not hearing anything. He nudged the door open, and he found her. She was on the bed, and she wasn’t lying like she had fallen asleep like that. No, she was lying like that, like she was dead. Ilya still went over to touch her wrist, to check her neck next, and then check her breathing. He was calm as his whole body felt like it was on fire. He pushed that down, further and further until it was a small ball in the center of him like his mother had taught him. It wasn’t safe, and his body knew it despite coming online as a Guide. He found the phone off to the side of the bed, and he called for help.

His father’s work phone just kept on ringing. There was not a lot of hope that he would answer it, but Ilya kept on trying because if he got anyone else to come and help him, he was going to be in trouble. He kept on, and then finally it was picked up, only to be slammed down again. Ilya swallowed, and he dialed the general help number that he had been taught in school. Ilya told them where he lived, that he had tried to call his father and that he hadn’t been able to get in contact with him. Ilya didn’t cry because his father would listen to this, and that would mean that he would be beaten to make sure that he didn’t cry again. Men were not supposed to cry. Sentinels were never supposed to cry, not even the women ones.

It was only when Ilya made sure that they understood that he tried to get in contact with his father that he told them that he found his mother dead in bed. There was nothing else to say, so Ilya just did what he was told, doing the checks that he had already done, and then telling them that she was cold. The line went silent.

It was hours later that Ilya was left in his bedroom by his father. His face was hurting from where his father had slapped him for making him feel like a fool. Even his brother was pissed at him. If Ilya hadn’t called for help, no one would have come, and his father hadn’t planned on coming home that night. His brother barely came home anymore, staying out all night and sleeping through school. Ilya would have been left with his mother’s body for too long.

The next day, Ilya is kept back from school and left alone in the house. He locked the door to his bathroom, and it’s in there that he opened himself up to what was happening. He had to get control of what was going on because anything less would mean that he, at best, would never be allowed out of Russia and, at worst, his father would kill him for being a Guide.

No one was going to think that he was anything at all. He would escape, and he would join the MLH because they protected their people. He would be better than the rest, but he would make sure not to get outed. He could live his life hiding. To make sure that his mother’s death wasn’t in vain.

December 2008

Shane had felt the pull to Rozanov, but he thought that it was because Rozanov was like him. Being lauded as a generational talent before they were even eighteen years old. Having so much pressure put on him at a time in their life when their own bodies were enough pressure. It hadn’t been hard to find him outside when he heard one of his teammates make a snide comment about him smoking. Shane didn’t know many Russian words, but he had picked up a few of them and was picking up more with one of the kids on his team back home speaking it after moving to Ottawa for his father’s job. Shane was pretty sure that they had moved to get the kid out of Russia and be pulled into the military when he came online, because if he bonded with a Canadian citizen, Canada wasn’t going to let their citizen go back to Russia to be abused.

Shane had thought he was going to be alone at the top of the MLH, and then he had started to hear about Rozanov. Shane wanted to have a good relationship with him because, for the most part, they were going to go through the same things. They could lean on each other at the top. Unless Rozanov was a fucking asshole. Which he was supposed to be, but Shane knew that there were levels of being an asshole. He was himself one when he wanted to be, when he felt safe enough to do so. It was the kind of asshole that his team loved when he turned it on others. Even on them sometimes when one of them was being extra.

Still, Shane didn’t expect to find him outside of the facility right under a No Smoking sign. Shane felt like that should have said everything. He was having issues lighting his cigarette, and Shane just watched him as he turned a few times like he was trying to get rid of a draft or something like it. Shane knew how to light a lighter like that, but he didn’t smoke. Cigarette smoke was one of the scents that most Sentinels just avoided for the life of them and shut down their sense of smell because the smell was like it was meant to piss them off the most.

“Ilya Rozanov?” Shane asked as he finally got close enough to where he didn’t have to yell. He held out his hand for Rozanov to shake.

Rozanov looked up at him and then tried his lighter one more time. It caught, and he inhaled the cigarette into his mouth.

“You are an amazing player to watch.”

Rozanov was still just looking at him. Shane knew that he understood a good chunk of English from the few interviews that he had seen him doing over this whole thing. Still, he was just staring at Shane.

“Shane Hollander.”

“Team Canada,” Rozanov said. He finally held out his hand, and they shook hands.

“Yeah, Team Canada. I don’t think you are supposed to smoke here.”

“Not a lot of places where I am allowed. This was the one place no one was,” Rozanov said.

Shane realized that he had not let go of Rozanov’s hand, and Shane was upset that he hadn’t noticed that. He didn’t know if he needed to pull his hand back.

“You are like me.”

Shane jerked his hand back. No, neither of them were anything. If it was, that was impossible.

“Shut up,” Shane said.

“No, not going to. Mama said that I would meet someone like you one day.”

Shane swallowed, and he didn’t notice that Rozanov was moving until he was there in front of Shane, making him back into the cold wall. He inhaled and exhaled.

“Why do you hide?”

“I want to play hockey,” Shane said.

“You don’t think that you would bond with a Sentinel?”

“I don’t want a Sentinel. I just…” Shane looked away, and then there were fingers under his chin, so soft and smelling of smoke, but only as gentle as his face was moved to where he was locking gazes with Rozanov again.

“You are afraid of a Sentinel?” Rozanov asked.

“I’m just not sure I want a Sentinel.”

“Hmm,” Rozanov said. He dropped Shane’s chin.

Shane wanted him to touch him again. He wanted that hand back, even if it smelled like cigarettes. Then Shane noticed that the smell of smoke was only from the hand. The cigarette was down at Rozanov’s side, and the suck he had taken on it had been pushed out of his mouth to the side where it wasn’t going to get on Shane too much.

“Too bad we cannot bond. Then we would both be safe.”

Shane’s mind kind of blanked on that. He had never thought about a bond with another hockey player like that. He had never thought that he would be allowed to, to be honest, not just because bonding with another player meant that he would be chained to someone who was so much less than he was, even for a Sentinel; it was that he would be under their control in some ways that he didn’t like. He had only good interactions with Sentinels, but if he bonded, he would be found out as having been online for years. They would all find out, and he would be in trouble.

“Maybe we help each other,” Rozanov said.

“How?”

“Do you trust me?”

Shane nodded. Rozanov raised an eyebrow at that. Shane laughed. “Yes, I trust you.” There was no reason that he did, but he did.

“Good. I’ll see you on the ice.” Then Rozanov was gone.

Shane felt like his world was on its side. He tried to understand what Rozanov was going to do. He knew that he was a Guide like Shane was. Now that he wasn’t overwhelmed with the presence that was him, he could remember what it felt like to be around another Guide who was online. It had been there, but only when Rozanov was touching him. If they could bond, it would be the best thing. They were the same, both too good for their own good when it came to this sport.

There were those pundits who said that they could be even better if they were Sentinels, and Shane wondered if that was true. If they were bonded, would they be better than those who were made to be good at sports like this? He stayed where he was until he had to go back inside before his mother tried to find him. He was shocked when he found that his mother hadn’t noticed he was gone.

Shane watched Rozanov practicing on the rink. He wasn’t sure why he watched him, but he noticed that he looked at Shane a lot, so when Shane came back, the further the competition went, he made sure that he was where Rozanov could find him easily.

Then it was the final, Russia versus Canada. Or, as the news likes to talk about, Canada’s Shane Hollander versus Russia’s Ilya Rozanov. It was the kind of shit that Shane was used to, but it seemed that Rozanov was not, so Shane tried to be there for him in the only way he could, being silent beside him. He realized that Rozanov faked it, though, some of the questions, because the news people asked long-winded questions that were hard for Shane to even follow. He wondered if they did it because of xenophobia. He was pretty sure that a few of them did because of the looks when it took Rozanov a few seconds extra to answer it.

Shane felt shame for the fact that they had not won, but the team had been a little bit off over the last day, and Shane had tried to whip them into shape with the help of the coach, trying to find what was going on with a few of the members on the team who usually were better than they were. He wondered if it was the stress.

“See you at the draft,” Rozanov said as he held out his hand to Shane.

Shane nodded, and he felt like throwing up at the smug look on Rozanov’s face, but he took his hand and shook. Then he felt it. The pressure that he remembered from when he had come online years before. He felt it, and he tried to get it under control because his own body was rising to meet the same thing that was coming from Rozanov. He felt it swirl and swirl, and he knew that there were those around them that were moving back.

This was what Rozanov wanted. He wanted to bond with Shane, which should be impossible because they were both Guides, but Shane wanted it to. He gripped Rozanov’s hand even tighter, and he held on as the words around them faded away and it was just them, staring into each other’s eyes.

There were a lot of things happening at the edges of where they were, but Shane could only focus on Rozanov. He should feel anger at Rozanov for doing this, but it was perfect. Shane could play and not have to worry about taking an injury and it being found out that he was online. He had no idea what the fuck to do about this, though. He knew that they would be tested, but now Rozanov was stuck here in Canada. Shane was not going to Russia.

“It’s where I want to be,” Rozanov said, and it took a few seconds for Shane to realize that it was in his head. He closed his eyes and stepped closer to Shane.

Shane allowed the handshake to drop, and finally, he was being wrapped in Rozanov’s arms. They were both sweaty and smelled, but it felt so fucking good. Shane didn’t know what to do, so he just held onto him as the psionics around them started to die down.

His mother was the first to get to him, but she didn’t touch him, and she came up behind him, where Rozanov could watch her.

“Shane?” his mom asked.

“I’m good, mom,” Shane said. He turned his head to Rozanov’s neck, and he inhaled the scent of him there; the sweat was there, but there was something else as well. He groaned when he felt that he was getting hard. The whole thing with guys was still confusing because he was supposed to like women. Sentinels were accepted to be with Guides no matter the gender, but there were still a few holdouts for the normal people about the whole only men and women are supposed to be together ” thing, especially in the MLH and the rooms that feed into there. There were Sentinels and Guides in those ranks, so the homophobia was more seedy because they didn’t want to offend the kids who were latent and make them feel like they needed to defend themselves if they came online around another guy because they had found their match.

“That’s good. I’m going to help you two get into the lockers. I told them that I should be the one to approach. Rozanov, I am not sure where your family is.”

Shane felt the spike of fear, and then it settled down inside of Rozanov. He might need to start to think of him as Ilya. Maybe. He would wait on that.

“I am alone, just my team. Coach is who is in charge of me, and I figure that he is calling my father now.”

The fear was still there, and Shane knew that his mother would make sure that it went away. Shane could never tell her that they were both Guides. And he didn’t care about that. This was what he wanted, no matter who it was to.

—

Ilya looked at where Hollander was sitting down and looking at his hands. He knew that he created a mess, but with his father in Russia, there was nothing that he could do about this. He had no power here, and this was going to be the thing that freed Ilya from Russia. He hadn’t been sure how he was going to do it before he saw the beautiful boy who came up to him. He knew that Hollander was an online Guide as soon as they had gotten near each other. When the first touch happened, Ilya’s Guide pushed out to want him. It was a new feeling.

There was no reason that they should feel like that to each other. They were both online Guides. It was easy to push the psionics on the ice and make people think that they had both come online and bonded in the same instant. Hollander had wanted it, to not have to deal with Sentinel ever. It had been a little scary to think about what might have been done to Hollander to make him fear it, but then when the bond had happened, something that had been hard to fake, Ilya was glad that whatever bond they had was there. It felt like a small echo as he felt the way that Hollander had settled down. The emotion and the words in Hollander’s head were too much; they would get it under control, but Ilya found it. He was afraid of being bonded to someone who was lesser than him. Even a Sentinel would not be as good at the sport as him.

It had been something that made Ilya laugh.

“Rozanov,” the woman who had come down to talk to Hollander said.

Ilya looked at her to see that she had a smile on her face and she looked happy. Ilya was pretty sure that she was his mother; they shared looks, beyond the racial features that Hollander had inherited from her. There was enough of her in Hollander that he knew they were related.

“My name is Yuna Hollander; you can call me Yuna. I have the locker room cleared now, and you two can go and shower.”

Ilya nodded, and he looked at Hollander, who was stripped down much like Ilya, to just their performance wear that they both wore under their pads. The jerseys were somewhere, discarded for someone else to take care of. Ilya stood up, and it was like a string connected them like puppets because Hollander stood up as well.

They were in the Canadian secondary locker room because there was no chance of him going into the main Russian one again. His stuff had been collected for him. This locker room had been full of junk, which was why they were going to the main one. This place used to be something bigger than it was now, and it was easy to see that they might not have kept up anything for this area to make the water something that Ilya wanted to deal with, all from the shower heads.

“Shane?” Yuna asked.

“I’m good, Mom. I’m just…”

“Trying to figure out the new headspace?” Yuna asked with a smile.

Hollander nodded. He didn’t reach out to touch his mother, which was good because that was going to have to come later. Ilya poked at him until they headed into the showers. They both looked around the nooks and crannies of the area to make sure that no one was there. Then they turned on the water at two side-by-side showers. The sound was loud, and Ilya felt like it should be softer than that. He knew that his hearing was slightly better than it should be due to being a Guide, and he could use his psionics to make sure that he had the level of hearing that would make him a Sentinel to the tests. He wasn’t sure what kind of tests were going to be needed. He hadn’t looked at what Canada did for that. He hadn’t looked at what any country did because he hadn’t been sure who he was going to end up bonding with. He had come to this to find someone. He had a feeling that there were more like him. Others who hid who they were to be able to play. He hadn’t expected it of Canada’s golden boy, but now he knew that it was.

“You okay?” Hollander asked.

“Da,” Ilya said.

Then Hollander was moving closer to him. There was no reason to, but Ila turned to face him, not letting his eyes move down his body even though he really wanted to look at him. He wanted to see what he looked like and see if looking at him got Hollander hard.

“Why?” Hollander asked.

“I wanted out of Russia; you were hiding what you were. My mother taught me how to fake things long ago.”

“You aren’t upset about not seeing her again?”

“I said my goodbyes to her grave when I came to this. I wasn’t going to go back,” Ilya said.

Hollander swallowed, and he looked like he wanted to throw up. Ilya knew that many Guides held some fairy tale about finding the perfect Sentinel who kept them in their heart and loved no one but them, but he also knew that it was the kind of thing that was not going to happen for them. The best they could do was be discreet about those whom they found to fuck. They wanted to play and would be bound together, but that didn’t mean that they had to be bound that way.

Ilya liked both males and females. He settled down to finding someone who could fit him based on wanting to hide as much as he did. He hadn’t cared what the sex of the person who he was bound to was. He didn’t know if he had been cursed with the fact that Hollander looked like he did. He was pretty, and he pushed every single one of Ilya’s wants. He had freckles across his face that made Ilya want to touch them, to lick them, even come on them.

“You knew it.”

“I was going to make it happen. If I hadn’t found someone whom I could bond with as a Guide or fake being the Sentinel of, I was going to come online and make it known that I feared going back because if my father got his hands on me and knew I was a Guide, he would kill me. No son of his is allowed to be a Guide.”

“I’m sorry.” Hollander looked like he was sorry. Not that he had fault in it but that he was upset that Ilya had gone through that. The echo between them was going around inside Ilya’s head, and he knew that he needed to figure out how to hide it. It was the kind of thing that made it hard to figure out his words because he could hear Hollander in his head. It wasn’t horrible.

“We will be safe, yes?” Ilya asked.

“My parents would never do that. Ever. We need to talk to Mom to make sure that no one from your team gets their hands on you.”

Ilya nodded, and he turned back to his shower, catching the sight of a hard cock. Ilya smiled to himself because maybe Hollander was a little more like him than he thought.

—

Shane rubbed his face as he tried to settle down to get some sleep. Ilya was in the bedroom next to his, and he wasn’t sure how he was supposed to sleep like this. Ilya had asked without saying a single word that he was willing to share a bed, but Shane wasn’t. He had no idea what the fuck to do. The Sentinel league was a lot more accepting of same-sex pairings, but he wasn’t sure if he wanted Ilya for Ilya or if it was the bond between them. He didn’t feel much from Ilya. It wasn’t hard to understand that they were both freaked out.

It had been a massive thing that Ilya refused to share space with anyone from his coaching staff for his national team without others there. Even when his father ordered him over the phone to go with his coach so that they could talk without the lesser people hearing, he had denied it. Shane hadn’t had long to tell his mother that Ilya’s father wasn’t going to want him to stay, that he would force it if he could. Despite the manhunt that would happen if Ilya was taken, Shane knew that they could get out with ease using a private charter that got them to Russia or at least to the far part of Canada that was closer and then make another hop.

They were in a hotel in Regina, moved up from a suite with two rooms to a suite with three with ease. The hotel staff even made sure that they were unbothered when moving their things up a floor, but didn’t touch their things. The territorial response from Ilya had been more than enough to make people afraid of him. A newly bonded Sentinel was overprotective until the bond settled, or at least until they were fully bonded. That hadn’t happened yet, at least not to the eyes of the world that were looking at them at the moment. The scouts who were checking them out, and then the ones who were dropping off. They had not been on the radar of SHL before this, so they were being looked at for it now. There was no chance that they were not going to be drafted there. It was still a little ways away, so they had no clue who had the first and second pick because it was kind of impossible for them not to go in one of those two spots. The big thing was cap space. There were teams that would only have the space for a single entry-level contract. Even as a bonded pair, they would still have their own contracts that would pay them both equally given their talents. They could be drafted this coming June, and then it would be the following year that they would be picked. Pairs that bonded after being drafted were allowed a short time to get used to being bonded, but given that they were seventeen right now, they could not actually play for a year. They would spend that year getting used to being around each other, to living in their own space once they turned eighteen.

A knock had Shane standing up and opening the door between his and Ilya’s rooms. He wasn’t shocked to see Ilya looking as awake as he was. He didn’t know what to do about this, but he wanted to have Ilya in bed with him, even if it was just holding him. He didn’t want to have to deal with not sleeping on top of everything else.

“Cannot sleep,” Ilya said.

Shane stepped back to allow him into the room. He knew that anything could happen between them and it would be fine. It was just sex. Shane had done some things with girls. He had never acted on what he felt for the guys he felt something for. Not just arousal, but a few of them felt like he could really like them. He had never done it because he wasn’t sure that he could stop himself, and he didn’t want to fuck up his only chance at playing hockey. He didn’t want to fuck up what he wanted.

“I can’t either,” Shane said when the door was shut behind Ilya.

“I know why I did this. Why you?” Ilya asked.

“Because I want to play hockey and I’ve always lived in fear that I would get hurt and my hold on myself would break. That I would be outed and forced to have to find a Sentinel that I had no connection with just to keep on playing.”

“And is different with me?” Ilya asked. He walked over to lean against the desk in the corner. He looked at Shane like he was trying to read him without using his abilities to do so.

“Yes.”

“Because we share the same secret?” Ilya asked.

Shane shook his head. Yes, to out Shane, Ilya would have to out himself. “Because I knew where you were and I didn’t have to look that hard. I felt the pull, and I thought it was just that I was excited to find a player my age who plays as I do. On the level of the sport, you are going to understand me better than anyone else.”

“And the fact that I’m a male?”

Shane knew that Ilya was blunt. They had talked to a Sentinel/Guide pair who had been their intake pair. Since they were underage, they were left to do the intake where they were instead of having to go to a center somewhere. Their minds would protect themselves if they were newly online pairs. Those who came online at the same time were very well paired like that. It had been perfect, set up to make it easy for them to hide themselves inside. When they were able to get to where no one would be able to hear them, they would have to talk things out more.

The bond between them was there; Shane knew it was. He could block it some. Not enough to make him not feel what Ilya was feeling and not enough to make him think he could keep anything from Ilya. Not even that he had looked at him in the shower and had felt like he wanted to lick him.

“That part isn’t an issue?”

“No?” Ilya asked. He pushed off the desk and walked to where Shane was.

Shane didn’t move, letting Ilya box him in. They were only like a month apart in age, and both of them were seventeen. They were good to go on that front; no one would think anything of them becoming sexual right now.

“Then kiss me,” Ilya said.

Shane looked at him, trying to make eye contact, but he didn’t feel like he wanted to. He kept his gaze to the side of Ilya’s face. Then he inhaled and exhaled. He wasn’t sure what he was going to do. It was a challenge, yes, and it was exactly like something that a Sentinel would do. Whatever Ilya’s mother had taught him about acting like a Sentinel, it worked. No one had questioned them at all.

Ilya said nothing as Shane took his time.

Shane waited until his heart stopped racing to do it. When he wasn’t afraid and was just curious. He had kissed one boy before; it had been at a party where he hadn’t realized that he had drunk alcohol; it had been covered up by a lot of sweet from mixers until it had hit him. They had both been drunk and never talked about it again.

Plucking up the courage finally, Shane pressed his lips to Ilya’s, and he felt the connection between them more than when they touched. He pressed his lips harder to Ilya’s and grabbed at his sides, catching his shirt and holding it to keep Ilya right there. He loved this so fucking much. He didn’t even pay attention when Ilya moved them, pressing him into the wall. It felt fucking good to have Ilya like that. Ilya was broader than him, but they were roughly the same height. It worked out well.

Shane broke the kiss because he felt so fucking much. He didn’t know what he was going to do when this was going to end. He breathed through his nose, and he kept his eyes closed, not wanting to see the look on Ilya’s face. They would have to figure things out to make sure that no one questioned a single part of this relationship. They would have to play-act as the best Sentinel and Guide to keep what they both wanted.

They would be drafted together; there was no chance that they weren’t going to go as the top two draft picks. Some teams didn’t like the top pair for some reason, but they would be idiots not to take the two generational talents. It would be shitty to be picked by the second team. The draw wouldn’t happen until closer to the draft for their draft year. They were going to be together for a long time, for the rest of their lives, if this worked the way they wanted.

“What do you want?” Ilya asked, his face still pressed close to Shane’s. He moved to where they were cheek to cheek after asking the question.

“I want to play hockey. I never thought I would find a Sentinel who I could connect with. Even the ones who are close to coming online upset me a lot. They are too dominant. I’ve played with them for years and I just…” Shane sighed. He liked this, having Ilya close to him. He had never felt like this with anyone, which was something, because he had thought he and his last girlfriend had been good, but he never felt like this when holding her. He and Ilya weren’t even really holding each other. Ilya didn’t feel like a Sentinel, but he was something close to it for his senses. It felt fucking good.

“I never thought it was right that Sentinels can play hockey but Guides cannot unless they are bonded. How is it different? They are still knocked into the boards, and the players know the risks of the game. Of course, in Russia, there is no playing sports like this for Sentinels or Guides.”

“Which is why you did this? Were you going to trap another Guide?”

“Trap?” Ilya asked, and there was a feeling of wrongness about that wording.

“Sorry, that was not the right word. Trap is totally not the right word, but I’m tired.”

“Then let’s sleep. We can sleep in the same bed; leave the door between rooms open. Your parents aren’t going to be upset, right?”

“Not with any of this. I never told them that I like guys, but given that we bonded, they had to feel like it was something that could happen. No gay male Sentinel has ever matched with a straight male Guide and really any of those kinds of matches. The sexuality is always a good match.”

“I like girls too, but not too many of them want to be with someone like me.”

Shane nodded. He was sad when Ilya finally stopped back from him, and then he was moving to the other side of the room, sitting down on the bed and patting the spot beside him. Shane moved over to sit beside him.

“I might get hard, but I think that we maybe need to have rules,” Ilya said.

Shane knew that he was probably going to end up hard as well. They were fucking teenagers, but he didn’t think he was ready for sex with Ilya. It wasn’t that he was some kind of prude, but the few times he had done things with girls, he hadn’t felt anything as he should. “I’ve never gone all the way with a guy or a girl. I have only kissed and messed with girls, to be honest. I knew that the MLH wouldn’t take me if I were gay. They would find a way without making it like it was about my sexuality. I knew that I needed to keep it a secret. We will be forced to train for a year before we can join the draft. What do you want to do in that time?”

“Whatever you want. You live in Ottawa, yes?”

Shane nodded, and he breathed deep before he pulled off his shirt. He had slept with it on because hr got cold, but he could tell that Ilya was one who ran warm. Ilya took off his as well, but he kept his pants on as he slipped back onto the bed and lay down, putting the spot in front of him. Shane got into the bed, and he put his back to Ilya and wasn’t shocked when Ilya pulled him close. The points where their bodies touched felt like a balm to Shane’s soul. This was nothing like the bond that Shane thought it would be. He had been told that Sentinels were greedy, and he assumed that Ilya would be greedy as well, but instead it was like a shelter in the storm. He loved this; he loved the feel of being in Ilya’s arms.

“We walk more in the morning, but we don’t touch naked body parts beyond feet and upper bodies,” Ilya said.

Shane nodded, and he tucked his head down onto the pillow, moving this and that, knowing that he had gone his whole life without it.

—

Ilya wasn’t the first to wake, but he also knew that Shane hadn’t been awake for long. He was hard, his cock tucked into the swell of Shane’s ass. He knew that things were going to be weird for them for a while. He knew that he had more sex than Shane had ever had before he had bonded with him. That first meeting had made Ilya look up more about his rival. The talks that were going around about what he was like told Ilya that he was obsessed with hockey. Ilya loved what hockey gave him, but he didn’t care about anything beyond the way that he would win at everything, but also how he would make sure that he could take care of himself.

Cutting off his family was the biggest bonus on this. He knew that his father would try and exert some kind of force, but Ilya was all about hiding behind Yuna Hollander’s back when it came to that. She was a force to be reckoned with, and the more cynical part of himself knew that he had picked the best family to go into. He knew that it wasn’t why he had picked Shane. There was something that drew him to the other man in a way that he had never thought he would feel for anyone. Especially not another Guide. He had been taught that two Guides being together was wrong. That it was the kind of thing that was going to destroy the world. And yet, here Ilya thought that they were perfectly matched. They both wanted something out of this, but there was something else under it that had made it something that Ilya wanted.

Never having to go back to Russia was something that Ilya wanted. The fact that he found someone who had just as much he wanted to hide from, just as much to lose, made Ilya worried that they were both doing something that they didn’t want. It was why Ilya had made Shane be the one to kiss him. he wanted to see what Shane did with it, and it had been so fucking good. None of the boys that Ilya had kissed before had ever felt like that. Tasted like that.

Ilya was obsessed. He wasn’t sure if Shane’s skin was going to taste the same as his mouth. It made Ilya want to do things that he didn’t think they were ready for. Sex was sex, and it was good. It was also something that they would become too enthralled with and not bolster their life the way they would need. This was going to be the kind of part of their life that would hang in the balance until it was time for them to fully settle into everything, while they also figured out how to play together.

They were both centers, and that meant that their line was going to be interesting. Unless they played different lines. That was something to think about. They would have to train against each other in both ways. If they both dominated, it was going to make whatever team took them really good. The good thing was that it was going to be easy to figure it out over the year. Ilya would make sure that they were good. He would be a terror on the ice. They had no idea who their top choices for teams were going to be, but he knew that given the league and the way it was, they would meet a lot of the teams beforehand; it was the way it was with the draft for the league. It would make things easier because there were times that Sentinels just didn’t get along with each other.

“Ilya?” Shane asked when he was done acting like he didn’t know that Ilya was awake.

“You sleep better?”

“Yeah. Mom texted that she ordered breakfast to the main suite, and we can join when we are feeling like it. I said that we were talking. She knows that we are in the same room. Neither of us woke up when she opened the door.”

“Is she upset?”

“No, she’s not. Her father was a Guide and her mother a Sentinel. It was why they moved here when Mom was young. She understands all of this better than most would.”

“And you never thought you could tell me?” Ilya asked.

“No, because she would stop me from lying. She doesn’t know that I was online. I never told anyone.”

“I was same,” Ilya said.

“Because you needed to escape?”

“I did not want to be trapped in that. I love Russia, but the Russia that we could be if the men in power did not make it so. I want to love Russia for how it is, but I cannot be the one to do that. So there is just escape, escape from my father as well.”

“You said he would kill you.”

“Da,” Ilya said. He didn’t want to talk about it, but he knew that he would need to now, now. “Later.”

“Of course. You hungry?”

“Want to shower.”

“Same,” Shane said. He was tense in Ilya’s arms. It was not nice to be tense like that.

“I did not think you would want to shower together. We are both teenagers, and that means that we will get erections when it’s not good to get them. I will not take you pointing an erection at me as something that I need to take care of.”

Shane was blushing, and Ilya could see it from the way his face was turned toward him. he looked adorable with the blush. It felt good to know that he could rib Shane a little bit. They would find their footing as a couple and as a bonded pair.

It was something that they would live on the balance of a knife for a while. Ilya had watched Sentinels for years, and there were many who had senses that were lesser than the rest, and Ilya was good at making sure that he was able to mimic them. His senses were entrenched in the psionic plane, and he knew that it liked him a lot because it allowed him to be as good on the ice as to be able to beat others who were supposed to be better than him.

Shane was the first to slip out of the bed, and even though he wasn’t hiding it that much, Ilya could see his hard cock in his sleep pants. He grabbed his shirt and slipped it on before looking at Ilya and smiling. “I’m gonna go into my shower.”

Ilya nodded. He would head to his shower. He needed to do it because he did feel sweaty from the tossing and turning he had done the night before. He got up and moved fast, pinning Shane to the wall. Shane grabbed his sides again, the shirt pulled to pull him close to Shane. Ilya kissed him, and he made sure that Shane knew how much he wanted him. They had time to spare before they got there, but it was going to take some kind of miracle if they didn’t fall into bed together in some way in the next month. Shane kissed like he was starving, and Ilya felt the bond forming deeper; it wrapped so deeply around him that he wasn’t sure that anyone could pull them apart. He wanted to have it, and he wanted to keep it. He wanted Shane to keep him. He wanted Shane to want him.

Shane stayed there, pressed to the wall until Ilya broke the kiss. It was good, and it was something that Ilya wanted to protect. He had gone into this thinking he would be duping the person who was with him, making them think that he was a Sentinel and denying them the right to have a real match. Now, he was dealing with having a Guide with him who was perfect for him in all ways. Shane was his equal in all ways.

When Ilya stepped back, Shane slipped into the bathroom and shut the door, but he didn’t lock it. Ilya could slip in there and watch, but he didn’t. He headed for where his shirt was and headed to his bedroom. He opened the door and checked on Yuna and David. They were sitting around a table drinking coffee. David glanced at him, smiled, and then went back to reading the paper in his hand. Ilya waited for Yuna to look at him before he closed the door to take his own shower.

When Ilya stepped under the water, he felt the push on his mind from Shane before it pulled back. He felt the pleasure as well. Then it faded away. Ilya laughed, and he worked, cleaning his hair as he felt Shane’s pleasure a little more. Shane was trying to hide it from Ilya to be kind, Ilya thought, but Ilya didn’t like that. He pushed back and tried to make sure that Shane knew that he didn’t mind.

The pleasure spiked again after that, and Ilya joined in. He was getting harder after softening, after stopping kissing Shane and keeping him pressed to the wall. There were a few seconds where Ilya thought about what he wanted to do. Then he grabbed the conditioner and pumped some into his left hand. Then he stroked his cock with it. He made sure that he was turned out of the spray, and he kept on stroking. He pushed his pleasure down the bond and was rewarded with more pleasure back from Shane. Fuck, they were not going to last long before they fell into bed. Ilya needed to figure out just what Shane had done with women before this, and that needed to happen when they were fully alone, and there was no chance of his parents walking in on them.

Shane came first, and the phantom touches on his body that echoed down the bond told Ilya the spots he loved to touch on himself when he was getting him soft. Ilya let the last few echoes fade from Shane before he came, ramping Shane back up again, and he felt another smaller orgasm from him when it happened. Fuck, Shane was so good. He tripped every single one of Ilya’s wants.

Finishing up took little time, and even when Ilya washed his cock and his ass, he didn’t feel anything from Shane. Ilya felt bad for a few seconds, but when he pushed back to Shane, he found that he was not upset but still kind of blissed out. Ilya hadn’t pushed too far, and that was good. He didn’t want to push that far.

For good or for ill, they were bound together, and Ilya planned on making the best of their lives.