"You can't skip a heat," Dicky says. "If you could I'd schedule mine for bye week and the offseason every time." "It's like, some pills to delay it, for game day, and then to make it happen faster, after," Miro tries to explain. "I took those once," Tyler calls from inside the trainer's room, where he's getting an ice pack strapped to his hip, "during the 2013 playoffs. They're a fucking trip, but they do the trick. Better make sure you've got an alpha who can handle it."

"We've got a special request tonight," the PR rep says, clipboard in hand. The way she says it, you can hear the implied capital letters: Special Request, the publicly friendly way to say some fans shelled out a lot of cash to watch you fuck.

"The bond's fucked up, boys," Jamie says. There are nods around the room, from all the vets. "We gotta fix it." He says it like it's a general statement, like collectively they're all going to do something to fix it. Jason knows it's really directed at him.

In any case that's old news now. Roman is in Europe and Miro isn't assigned to anyone anymore. He chose to be with Roope, and Roope is a possessive kind of dom. He hasn't brought anyone else into their bed in the year they've been together, and Miro is okay with that. He likes belonging to Roope. But it's not like he never thinks about it. And today, he's thinking about it.