I drove to a grocery store, picked up a few things, remembered Dr. Jerkwad saying I needed to drop a few, so I threw back some bags and boxes and picked up green leafies, lean meats, and the lowest calorie protein mix I could find.

It wouldn’t hurt me to lose some weight. It might even make my game faster. But twenty pounds was too damn much. I was second-marked. Keeping the beast settled under my skin took energy.

That beast had to be fed.

I’d just try to do it with smarter choices.

I thought about Coach Nowak, and then just…didn’t.

It was better that way. Now that I knew what he was capable of, I’d walk off the damn ice before he’d have another chance of using that stun prod on me again.

I was here to play hockey, and that’s what I’d do. I just had to keep my eyes open, my head down, and my mouth shut.

I winced at that last thing. I was shit at keeping my opinions to myself, but I would try. Not only for Random, but also for my real team—the Thunderheads. I didn’t want to rock the boat so hard Clay regretted tagging me in as Dead Man. I’d do anything else before letting him down.

On the way back to the hotel, my phone vibrated and I pulled it out of my pocket.

I’m still mad at you, asshole.

It was from Hazard. What an angst lord. But at least he’d texted back.

I replied with the kissy emoji and a dog and a donkey and a cake, because I was hungry, and waited for his response.

Nothing.

Yeah, he was angry. He just needed a little more time to get used to me throwing myself on this bomb for him. I knew taking the Dead Man hit was absolutely one hundred percent the right decision.

Because I was his big brother. And there was nothing he could do to stop me from looking out for him.

I let myself into the hotel room and unpacked the food.

The suite was dead silent. I couldn’t hear neighbors or even traffic beyond the walls. The silence swallowed me whole, drenching me in aloneness, crowding in on me with weighted emptiness.

I hated it. It made me restless. Jumpy. My life had always been filled with noise, activity, people. Standing here was like being gagged and bound, trying to breathe under deep cold water.

When I’d gone to college, I’d shared a tiny dorm room with two other guys. The dorm was full of activity, songs, arguments, basketballs being thrown at walls, hockey pucks skated down halls.

It had been the first time I had lived on my own. But I hadn’t been alone. Not really. Not like this.

I shivered and rolled my shoulders trying to shake off the instinct to put my back to a corner for safety. I’d get used to my new normal eventually.

Maybe I needed something to make me feel better. Yep, I knew just the thing to do it.

I dug the white bottle of pills out of my duffle, strolled into the bathroom and dumped them into the toilet. Watching them swirl as I flushed them down was satisfying as hell.

I whistled my way back to the kitchen, then put on some music and cranked it up as high as I thought I could get away with, filling the place with sound. Next up: grill chicken to fill the place with good smells. Put together a salad with fresh cucumbers and cherry tomatoes and pretend I enjoyed cooking for one.

I didn’t bother setting the tiny table. Being the only person sitting at it was too depressing.

So I ate on the couch and watched recaps of the day’s games.

Things were good. Fine. And they’d only get better.

But in the night, with the darkness of my room broken only by the digital numbers on the clock beside my bed, not even the hum of the refrigerator interrupting the silence, I was still awake.

Random hadn’t texted. I couldn’t stop staring at my phone, waiting. Almost dialed him a dozen times, but didn’t think I could take his anger.

Or worse, his rejection.

I wanted to move. Needed to hear someone else breathing, moving, living.

I wanted to walk down the short hall and check on Hazard, wanted to smell Mom’s perfume she always sprayed in the bathroom before she went to bed after she’d pulled a long late shift.

I wanted to hear Dad’s soft snores that started with a little hum as if he’d just found something interesting in his dreams.

I sighed and sat up, rubbing my face. Nothing felt right. It was like my skin no longer fit, my own body knotted and itchy.

The clock ticked over to three a.m.

It wasn’t like I was going to sleep.

I stood, stretched until things popped, then walked outside the room, leaving the key beneath the fake moss of the fake potted plant just down the hallway.

I walked, barefoot, in nothing but a loose pair of pajama pants, to the side door, opened it and stepped out into the cold and damp.

I inhaled, exhaled, breathing the city into me.

Tacoma swirled with scents and tastes that Portland lacked. Deep, weirdly oceanic kinds of smells: swampy greens, salty browns, rot and wood pulp and diesel and tar surrounded me along with the cabbage stink of something rotting.

But there was more just past all that. The clean scent of wind and rain and a cold that hinted at crisp, pure snow and traces of warmed sugar and coffee from the bakery at the end of the block.

I stripped, shivering from the smack of wind on bare skin. I folded my pants and tucked them beneath the stairs where I hoped they’d stay hidden and dry until I returned.

The short burst of a police siren whooped down an ally several blocks away, and the clanging of industrial trash bins being upended into a garbage truck replied. Late night or far-too-early traffic breathed an infrequent growl as commuters droned toward their destinations.

I rolled my shoulders, tipped my head from side-to-side loosening cramped muscles.

Now, the beast within me urged. Now move. Now breathe. Now run.

I exhaled gratefully, closed my eyes, and just…dove.

The gut-clenching pleasure of more sucked me down.

One moment I stood on the edge of a diving board, a cliff, a mountain, miles and miles of open air below me, with the sure sense that something thrilling waited for me way, way down there at the bottom.

All that open air, all that freedom, all that thrilling speed and falling tore through me like ice and peppermint, hard winters and shattered diamonds.

And then I landed.

Hard enough to sting.

Hard enough to shudder with the pleasure of it as I surrendered to the wolf.

Hard enough to forget what I had been before this, before the beast.

I needed it, to feel…to connect…to be…more.

Here, I didn’t have to think.

Here, I didn’t have to feel.

I was muscle and blood and movement and scent and heartbeat, heartbeat, heartbeat.

I ran, leaped, howled.

This power, this speed, this freedom, I craved it like clean air, shuddered for it like water after a fever.

Yes, the wolf around me snarled. Yes.

The city took on the shape of smells. Sidewalks and roads built out of the scent of dirt and oil and piss and food and rodents. Air and sky, mountains and holes carved from the odors of wild and domestic animals. The heady perfume of humans, old, young, sick, addicted, virile, clean, dying, tumbled out in a brickwork of bridges, buildings, bars.

And the magic, oh, the magic.

It was everywhere, seeping through cracks in walls, dripping from stones and trees, slick and thick and so, so rich.

Magic poured in jewel colors, vibrant and shining. Dull pastels caught against windows, wrapped around flower stalks. Sharp white, silver, gold, purple, hot as fireworks glittered against metal railings and light poles, making every sign neon, every car glisten.

But it was the people, oh, the people. The unmarked vibrated with energy that sang, a hundred, thousand different strings plucked and humming. The entire city a chorus of notes, a wave of sound, stretching thin, then rumbling deep before rushing up, up, sliding high and sharp. The unmarked were a song made of a thousand songs.

They were chaos, racket, life.

Always, always, though, I was drawn to those changed by magic, the marked, their magic easy to see, clear, familiar.

Wizards: cool sparkling stars and silver shine, steady, explosive, light.

Canidae: hot burning, blood-red, dark and deep.

Sensitives: flowing greens and branching, reaching rivers.

Felidae: silk and muscle, tawny golden slash and speed.

Others: broken edged, brilliant, discord of beauty, of terror.

My people. All of them. And yet…

…and yet I was alone.

I ran streets, hunted shadows, chasing the night as dawn drew gray and soggy across a cloud-heavy sky.

Without laughing brother.

Without loving father.

Without strong mother.

Miles away, my pack, miles away, my home.

I was sorrow, my heart upon the wind, a long and lonely howl.