Coach didn’t say anything as I took to the ice. Didn’t even look at me.

I did a slow once-around the boards just to get my stride and breathing in order and figure out how bad the broken collarbone was going to limit my puck handling.

Answer: pretty bad. The shoulder was swelling. Under that swelling it was also healing a lot faster than any unmarked could heal.

If I didn’t move it too much, the bones would set. The fracture would mend. I’d be fine in a few days, a week at most.

I scooped up a puck and did a bit of careful work, keeping my left arm involvement to a minimum. From the corner of my eyes—well, eye—I kept track of the goalie coach running the big Iowa boy and the extra-bendy backup goalie through drills.

The wolves all kept to themselves on the other side of the ice. The cats were all over the place, taking up all the room they wanted, fast, unpredictable.

I gave an involuntary shiver. I wanted to fight them. I wanted to avoid them.

I was a mess.

The coach and assistant coaches got drills running. Pucks banged the boards, slapped the open net, pinged posts and smacked goalie pads. Passes, shoves, shouts and chirps filled the air. It sounded like a hockey club. Better, it felt like a hockey club.

About damn time. And it was about damn time I took my place in that.

I angled across the ice, caught a back pass that had gone astray, gave it forward to one of our wingers.

Who completely ignored it, and me, like I wasn’t even there. Like I was nothing.

Okay. Whatever.

I got in line for the drill, dug in hard and sprinted to the goal, ready for the pass.

The pass never came. The guy running the drill with me never looked my way. When he got near enough to shoot the net, he hucked it at the boards instead.

“Nice shot, asshole,” I snapped.

He skated back in line as if I were invisible.

And that was just the beginning. I talked, yelled, bumped shoulders, tapped sticks, picked pockets, hustled. Nothing.

Like I wasn’t there.

They made their point painfully clear. I was a ghost. I was not a part of the team. And not even their captain telling them to knock that shit off and fucking play did anything to change it.

Normally, I’d just bullshit my way through this kind of thing. But the broken bones, the hitching pain, the lack of vision in one eye made everything around me too sharp. Too hot.

The lack of physical contact, audible contact, visual contact twisted my guts. I didn’t step away from the drills, didn’t sulk my way out of practice. I was there, giving a hundred and fifteen percent. I passed, rushed, took the shot. I threaded the puck through pucks scattered on the ice at speed.

But I did it alone.

When Coach Nowak blew the whistle I was sweating, shaking, and sick to my stomach.

I also had a hell of a headache.

I missed half of Coach Nowak’s rant, but tuned back in for the finale: “So get the fuck off the ice and show up to win tomorrow,” he said. “You give me anything less than a W, there will be cuts. None of you are safe.”

The team tromped off the ice, and I stood there, partly in the way on purpose, waiting for one of them to slam a shoulder into mine as they walked by. Waiting for any sign that they saw me at all.

Nothing.

It did…weird things to my head. As a man, a logical thinking being, I knew what they were doing was bullshit meant to put me down. But being shut out so hard right on the heels of losing my family, my brother, my team—

—pack—

—sent all kinds of mixed signals to the beast. They were my team, my pack now. And they wanted me dead.

I wanted to yell, lash out. Make contact. Violent contact.

That might be the migraine talking.

I really needed to get my shit together.

I might have made a sound.

Coach Nowak stopped in front of me, darkness and challenge in his eyes. There was cat behind his gaze and a cruelty that cut to the bone.

I wanted to fight him too. Maybe him most of all.

It took everything I had to drop my gaze and look away.

“That’s what I thought.” He spit at my feet and walked down the corridor that led to his office.

I closed my eyes. Breathed. Ignored the burning shoulder, chest, ribs, face. Ignored the howling, raging beast. Ignored the heavy darkness that felt like shame and made me want to find a hole in which to bury the world.

I would not start a fight just to know I was seen.

Just to know I was a part of something.

I breathed. Breathed. Was the last off the ice. I’d held still long enough my joints had rusted stiff.

The locker room was empty when I got there. I pulled off my gear, teeth clamped hard as I grunted and hissed through each painful catch of bone and tendon.

I needed a shower, but couldn’t face going into that open space with my back turned. Didn’t want to be naked—

—vulnerable—

—here longer than absolutely necessary.

So I shucked everything into my bags and headed for the parking lot.

But before I even left the locker room, my phone pinged.

Hey Starpower. Stole your # from records. Didn’t see you after practice. You good?

I stared at the message and unfamiliar number for a long minute.

Who?? I texted.

Netti. From PT?

The memory of her smile, her perfume, her hand warm and strong pressed on my chest poured over me like sunlight through rain.

“Get your ass in here, Spark,” Coach Nowak yelled from his office.

I thought about ignoring him. Like he and the entire team had ignored me. Just savored that tiny rebellion for a full, long beat. Then I walked to his office, paused at the door.

“Yes?” My voice was dust and grit.

Coach Nowak leaned against the edge of his desk, arms crossed over his chest, a scowl stamped into his face.

His sharp features were stone-edged, a lot of snow leopard prowling behind his eyes.

“What the fuck was that out there today?”

I had no idea how to respond to that. I was supposed to be a part of his team. That’s why I was here. That was the only reason I was here.

“I’m here for every practice.” I gazed steadily over his shoulder. “I’m here to play the game any way you want me to.” I kept my tone neutral, for the same reason my body language was relaxed.

He waited until I was sweating. With the pain spearing me on every breath, it really didn’t take that long.

“Let me make this clear.” His voice rose just above a snarl. “You are garbage. A poor excuse for a player and a worse replacement for Dead Man. You are nothing, Mr. Spark. The moment you fuck up—and you will—I will burn your career to the ground.”

I breathed through my nose as evenly as I could. “Can’t fuck up if no one will pass me the puck.”

Groan. Why couldn’t I keep my mouth shut?

“What did you say?”

And now that I’d said something, there was no way in hell I was going to stop.

I slid my gaze to meet his. Straight on stare with none of that bullshit meekness.

“No one wants me here. I don’t give a damn. I’ll play the game just as hard for you, Coach Nowak, as I would for any team whose jersey I wore. I’ll play my ass off for you. But I can’t do jack if the entire team ghosts me. I don’t care if they hate me. You need to tell them—”

He moved faster than I thought he could. One second I was standing in front of him, the next I was slammed up against the wall, his arm pressed against my throat.

I groaned, from pain, yes. But to my shame, also with relief.

This was contact. This was someone else in my space. Someone else in my world.

Here I was seen. A part of something, even if it was just violence and anger.

“You tell me what I should do with my team, boy, and I will feed you to a chipper, you understand?” He pressed hard enough he could cut off my air, maybe even kill me if he were in the mood.

Everything in my brain screamed at me to say yes. Tell him I understood. Tell him I wouldn’t speak up again.

But he was touching me. It was pain, but it wasn’t more pain than I could handle. His anger fell like a blanket weighting the air around us.

I could feel that. The air, his anger, the clench of his muscles and twitch of his pulse as he fought to keep the beast inside him from breaking free.

As he fought not to kill me.

There was something in that, some kind of acknowledgment I was alive, here, right here. He could see me. See I was solid, real.

The wolf in me shivered for it.

I nearly threw up. I didn’t need other people’s attention to know I was real and alive. I wasn’t that needy.

But I had spent all of my life belonging, knowing where I fit into a family, a brotherhood, a school, a friendship, a sport.

And now I was so adrift, so suddenly unanchored, I couldn’t find my equilibrium.

I might be a creature who needed contact, but I was also a hell of a contrary dude. “Just do your fucking job and play me.”

His smile was sharp and cruel.

“You are a stupid son of a bitch.” He leaned harder, cut off my air, landed a punch to my ribs that eliminated the question of if they were broken or not.

The pain was hot and clean and shone like a wicked, twisted sun.

I turned toward it, held it, let it rattle the last of the air out of me.

Before I could push him off, before I could fight back, something pounded the side of my head and everything went deeply, gently, black.

I woke in the corridor, just a few steps from the exit door. I was on my knees. I didn’t know if I’d crawled, or if Nowak had dragged me here.

It was dark outside.

Hours had passed and I didn’t remember any of them. I reached out for the wall to steady and brace as I pushed up to my feet.

“Shit,” I exhaled. Pain rolled foot to head like a freight train grinding over broken rails.

It hurt. And by “it” I meant everything. I blinked pain sweat out of my eyes and spit on the concrete floor, hoping that would be enough to keep me from losing my lunch.

Not that I’d had lunch.

I didn’t move, taking time to decide if I was going to barf.

Nope.

My legs weren’t broken, my arms both worked. Breathing sort of sucked, but that was the broken ribs, so not a surprise.

One eye wouldn’t open all the way and my jaw had swollen so that even the thought of biting down made me shudder.

All-in-all, not the worst I’d come out of a hockey practice.

“Winner,” I muttered. Then I huffed a laugh because if I couldn’t laugh at my own stupid ass and the situation I’d gotten into all on my own, then what was the point?

I turned a slow circle searching for my gear bag, found it to one side, still packed, which was something at least. Picked it up with a moan, and staggered out the door.

It took several steps and a lot of cursing before I figured out how to walk and breathe at the same time, but I finally got it. I made it all the way to my car and leaned there on the trunk, one arm braced straight against the metal, head hanging, gear bag somewhere by my feet.

It was raining. It took me a while to figure that out, but when I shivered from the wind licking my T-shirt against my skin, I realized I was soaking wet.

So it was either raining hard, or I’d lost some time again.

I tipped my face skyward. It was coming down like Niagara.

Fantastic. I opened the trunk and hefted my bag. My hands were shaking from the cold and pain. Maybe shock. Still, I got in the car, ready to drive even though it took three tries to buckle the seatbelt.

I am nothing if not determined.

“Yeah,” I muttered as the engine turned over and I flipped on the windshield wipers, hoping it was rain blurring my vision and not damage to my eye. “You’re a real Stanley Cup champion, Spark.”

My voice sounded as bad as the rest of me felt.

I wiped water off my face, shucking my longer bangs back out of the way so I could drive. Then I found my way home.

I showered, rinsing off the sweat and blood. I didn’t look over the damage in the mirror. Hopefully my marked DNA would do enough healing overnight I wouldn’t have to worry about it by morning.

But if the stab in my ribs and the weird hitching pain somewhere between my lungs and heart meant anything, one night’s sleep wasn’t going to put me back together. Or at least not in top playing condition.

Tomorrow was going to be hell.

I fell into bed and pulled the covers over my hips. My phone on the side table next to the bed buzzed. I stared at the caller: Dad.

I knew he wanted to talk. Everything in me wanted to hear his voice.

But I knew, I knew, if I answered that call, if I heard him say anything at all, even one word, I would beg him to let me quit. I would beg him to let me come home.

I couldn’t do that. If I backed out this early into the Dead Man deal, they’d send Hazard here in my place.

I refused to let Hazard go through this crap. I was already here, already hated by the team. It had to get better. Eventually.

So I lay there and watched my phone buzz. Watched the last lifeline to home slip away.

He called back two more times. Then it was late enough I knew he wouldn’t try again until morning. Maybe later than that.

The phone went dark and stayed that way.

Hazard didn’t call.

But then, I didn’t expect him to.

The next day I got the same silent treatment.

But I came in with a brand new attitude. I didn’t need these jerkknuckles to tell me how to play hockey.

They didn’t want to pass the puck? I stole it.

They didn’t want to run drills with me? I tripped them, hooked them, boarded them full speed no matter how hard it knocked the wind out of my lungs and made my bones scream.

They didn’t want to play hockey with me? Who the ever-lovin’ fuck cared?

I was there to compete, fight against an adversary.

If they didn’t want me to play with them, I was more than happy to play against them.

So I did. Hard and loud.

I threw insults, laughed at botched plays, gave them hell.

The more irritated they grew, the happier it made me. It wouldn’t do a damn thing to forge bonds, but I was having fun.

Sweet revenge.

I took a break when the others did, gulped water while coach gave them shit. He wasn’t looking at me, and since I’d had a good hard stare at my injuries this morning, he was smart not to make eye contact.

I could walk into any police station in the country with these bruises, explain what he’d done and there would be a pile of lawyers ready to take him to the mats.

If I had proof. As it was, I was stuck in a he-says/he-says situation.

West Hell was a shit league for safety measures.

We played hard—no, we played deadly.

But one rule remained steadfast: coaches did not touch their players in violence. The stun prod was only to be used in self-defense, and then only when a player was shifted.

The taste of copper and ash clung to the back of my throat as I swallowed the last of the water.

No proof he’d beaten me. No proof he’d electrocuted me pre-shift until I blacked out.

He could get rid of me. I’d looked into that too. It was called a grace clause. The coach had until the trade deadline right before the push for the Broughton Cup to release the Dead Man as barter for a higher standing in the trade.

So there was a way out, but I couldn’t be the one to pull the trigger.

“Spark.”

Hearing my name for the first time that day startled me enough I jumped.

Hugo Kudrar, fourth line left wing and fourth-marked leopard if I smelled him right, had skated over to me.

His mop of yellow hair fell almost to his shoulders and his brownish eyes were just a little close on either side of his straight nose. His mouth was wide and expressive, softening the harder lines of his cheekbones and eyebrows.

He smiled, and transformed a face that seemed easy to scowl into one shining with light and friendliness. I had heard he was a serial dater, and yeah, when he put on the grin, I could see what the women saw in him.

“Kudrar,” I replied warily.

“Someone’s gotta cross the street right?” He held out his hand. “Sorry I was a dick yesterday.”

“Just yesterday?”

The smile cranked up to a grin. “You got hustle. Keep it up. Coach Nowak isn’t what I’d call friendly, but he’s not stupid. He’ll play you.”

“Eventually.”

“Lotta season left. So you got ribs that match that face?”

I pulled my shoulders back, ready for a fight.

“Why? You like it?”

“Naw. Black and blue aren’t your colors, dude.” He glanced over at the team, considering what he was going to say next.

Lots of guys and a few women on the team stared over at us. No humans, no sensitives.

It was weird. All the misfits of hockey sifted down to these rocky depths. There were plenty of sensitives who wanted a shot the league and more than enough humans who liked the pure violence in this kind of play.

But somehow none of them had ended up on Nowak’s team.

“He hate everyone except second and fourth-marked?” I asked casually.

“Naw. He just hates second and fourth-marked the most.” He turned to me, his back to the team. With all the cats and wolves on the ice, there was no way he’d be able to speak quietly enough they wouldn’t hear.

“Let’s go out for beer some time. Me and you. Build team spirit. Mend the rip between cat and dog, eh?”

I had no idea why he hadn’t tried that with any of the other wolves on the team, but hell, maybe he had. He was risking a lot by reaching out, so I reached right back.

“Why me?”

That surprised him. He gave me a full, considering look, lot of beast shining through his gaze. Not like he was sizing me up for a kill, but like he was confused.

“You got that thing. That wolf thing. It’s. You know. And I think the team could use…” He shook his shaggy head. “You know what I mean, Ace?”

I had no idea what he was talking about. “Probably not, but you can tell me over food. Name the time and place, I’ll buy the beer.”

“Attaboy, Sparky. Like I said, good hustle.” He slapped my ankle and skated back to join the team. Most of them were glaring at me. I just waved and smiled.

Practice wrapped up like it had yesterday. Everyone left the ice and I stayed behind, skating, messing with the pucks, banking shots to slither to a stop closer to the equipment handler.

Talking to Kudrar had set off a little fizz of hope in my head. The need to play, to prove what I could do and who I could be built in my blood like a soda that had been shaken too hard.

When I left the ice and stripped to shower in the empty locker room, I knew either Coach Nowak would play me like Kudrar had said, or he would cut me free.

At least I wouldn’t be stuck here in neutral.

I grunted as hot water sluiced my skin. The bruise from my neck to ass was magnificent shades of purple and black with weird red spots.

The bruise across my swollen ribs was even more colorful.

But hey, I’d stopped pissing blood. Things were looking up.

“Nice ass, Spark. You get the number of the truck that ran you over?”

I threw a quick look over my shoulder. Netti leaned on the doorway to the showers, the grin at odds with the concern in her eyes.

“You should see the truck.” I wiped my hair back and resisted the temptation to cover my neck with my hand, or turn all the way around. Just because she was a trainer and had probably seen every player naked, didn’t mean she needed a Full Monty in her face.

I was a classy guy. I liked to go on at least one date before I bared all.

“After the shower, come see me.” She didn’t wait for me to answer, just walked away.

I turned off the water, dried, and dressed, all the while talking myself into and out of going to see her. I didn’t need her questions about my injuries, and sure as hell didn’t want her pity.

Also, I was sort of ducking Dr. Jerkwad of the diet-pill scam. What a loser.

The idea that maybe she wanted to see me for a personal, not professional reason flapped through my brain. But she’d told Dr. Jerkwad she didn’t date hockey players.

I almost left the building, but curiosity steered me to the exam room door. I peeked in. No Dr. Jerkwad.

“You wanted to see me?”

She stood at the desk, tablet in hand. “You haven’t been in here after practices. So I decided to come to you. I was going to ask why you haven’t come by, but after seeing those bruises, I’m gonna change my question to who did you get in a fight with?”

Would she believe me if I said two guys on the team jumped me? Would she believe me if I told her Nowak got in a couple cheap shots too?

Maybe.

Would she be in any danger of losing her job if I told her those things?

Also maybe.

But the big question, the one that kept my mouth shut was, would she go to the press and get me pulled so that Hazard had to replace me?

That seemed possible. But it wasn’t like I could say I’d fallen down a flight of stairs.

“New neighborhood,” I lied with all the charm I had. “New bars. Got a little too opinionated about the Seahawks.”

“Is that right?” Her eyes were searching, flicking across my face and down the rest of my body, watching my breathing, my movements as if she could see the injuries through my clothes.

“Were these people at the bar members of the team?”

I shrugged. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something too. What do you say we have coffee sometime?”

That had the effect I wanted. She stopped cataloging my injuries and stared me straight in the eyes. “I don’t date hockey players.”

“I’m not really playing right now, so…”

“Neither am I.”

Well, that was crystal clear. She wanted none of me.

“All right then.” I tapped the doorframe. “See ya, Netti. I’ll come by after next practice.”

“Spark,” she started. “I need to see you for—you have to come in, or you could get cut. I know you can hear me.”

But I was already down the hallway and heading out into the cold Tacoma air.

I dropped down into an open seat up in the nosebleed section. Healthy scratch meant I wasn’t playing. No surprise. But Nowak couldn’t keep me from showing up to watch the game if I felt like it.

The crowd was totally into it, howling and shouting and waving blue flags that were supposed to make it look like the entire audience was made of water.

After a few songs, and the audience shouting: “goat eyes”—well, probably “go tides,”—the Tacoma Tide and the Redding Rumblers came out, spinning tight laps on their sides of the blue lines. Goalies dropped to the ice, stretching and contorting.

Lights flashed, blue and green washing across the arena. It was hype, but nothing like the big leagues. No holographic projections, no explosions or cannons, no fucking Vegas Knights medieval LARPing in the middle of the ice.

A local woman in a tuxedo belted out the National Anthem, and then it was time for puck drop.

I leaned forward, elbows digging into knees. I grunted as pain lanced my ribs, then sat back so I could breathe and scowled down at the ice.

The Tide were off to a slow start. The Rumblers were already in third gear out of the blocks pushing hard, working together with quick passes as they rushed the neutral zone to keep the game in their offensive zone.

It wasn’t a hard-hitting physical opening, but they had speed.

Watching the Tide stand around blinking stupidly while the Rumblers outskated and outshot them made me crazy.

I yelled with the crowd at a missed drop pass that ended in a turnover, groaned at the breakaway rush on the net which our goalie managed to hold off alone because our D-men were still halfway across the ice.

Good thing Johnson was the size of a Zamboni.

Good thing he moved fast.

Goalies were beautiful freaks of nature.

I muttered and swore at every shot we took on goal that was nowhere near the damn goal, and the sloppy offensive pressure.

It was a hard game to watch. Each period was worse than the last. We got slower, sloppier, and angrier.

Which was exactly what the crowd wanted. Well, violence and a winning game would probably be their preference, but this was West Hell. Fans wanted a little blood, a little fang, and a little pain.

Heading into the third period, something snapped.

My shoulders hunched, my vision went sharp and clear, every instinct in me narrowed and fastened onto one player on the ice.

Kudrar, our fourth line left winger, the leopard who had wanted a beer with me was positioned for the puck as four players trapped against the boards fought for it.

The Rumbler covering Kudrar had had some kind of hair up his chute all game. He’d made a point to hit and check and target Kudrar no matter what was happening on the ice.

These two must have history. Part of game play was getting under the other player’s skin, getting in their head. That, and dirty hits and slashes the refs never caught.

One minute Kudrar and the Rumbler were jabbing at each other while jockeying for position by the scrum on the boards, then their gloves hit the deck and fists went flying.

The crowd broke into a thunderous roar for blood, for pain, for payback. The entire arena surged to its feet to watch two guys beat the crap out of each other.

And then the chant started.

Shift, shift, shift, shift.

The players lost it. Jerseys tore, helmets scattered, breakaway straps on skates popped as muscles heaved and stretched and twisted.

A leopard and a tiger faced each other and snarled.

The crowd lost its bloody mind.

The other players put their backs to the boards and dropped to their knees. They weren’t facing away from the cats, because good damn luck if anyone tried to get a bunch of marked to turn away from predators in their midst.

The two unmarked Rumblers and their sensitive cleared off the ice completely.

All four of the refs had stun prods in their hands, ready to put a very quick end to this if they had to.

Or they could let the cats fight it out.

The crowd was a huge, living thing. A single-minded entity that wanted pain, that craved it, swaying forward with grasping hands like an addict begging for a hit.

The snarl and growl of the cats pricked up the hair on my arms and knuckled chills down my spine. I palmed the back of my neck reflectively guarding the old scar there.

I didn’t care how stupid I looked. I was not going to get bit by some rando in the crowd who couldn’t keep it in check.

The fight should have been stopped about ten seconds into it, but the refs let it run a full minute.

Sixty full seconds of battle between two huge, feral beasts was a hell of a long time.

And there was blood.

Restless teammates already pushed to the edge of exhaustion lost control of the magic churning inside. They gave way to their beasts, though they did it with practiced moves, like someone who was sick but didn’t want to get barf on their shoes.

Players stripped out of as much gear as possible, then dropped to their knees and shifted, still near the boards. Two players on the bench hopped the board and stripped before falling to their knees.

Extra security flooded out onto the ice, and then, at that sixty second marker, something went crunch.

The entire crowd moaned, one huge hollow, “oooooooh.”

Silence crashed down, plunging us in ice water.

There was stillness. Everywhere. The players on the ice. The refs and enforcement. The teams behind the benches. The coaches.

The crowd, that massive, living thing, held its breath.

Because they knew, we knew. We felt that break as if it were our bones, our flesh smashed and torn.

The cats were the first to break the silence. Players on both teams who had shifted gave out a gut-deep wail, the yowl acrid with shared pain. Felidae shifters in the crowd joined the cry.

The Canidae shifters picked it up, on the ice, off the ice, howling, howling, howling.

Knowing one of ours was wounded could result in an attack, the beasts within sensing weakness, prey. Or it could trigger the instinct to protect. To stand between one of our own and the threat.

But it was more than just base instinct and magic that drew us together. It was loss.

We mourned the pain of one of ours who had fallen and might not rise to fight again.

I didn’t have to see it to know what had happened, it was there in our voices, it was there in the magic that tied us all together on a level we could not ignore.

Still, I could not tear my gaze away from the ice. Could not look away from Kudrar, my teammate. The pain had snapped him back into human form, and he did not look good. His gaze stuttered and jagged across the crowd, up and up until he saw me.

There was something in his wild look. Maybe an apology. Maybe just pain. But he was looking at me, and me alone. I wasn’t going to let him down. If he needed me, I’d be there for him, a rock in this ocean of crazy.

I nodded. “You’re gonna be fine. We got you. I’ve got you.”

His eyes glittered with relief and then they rolled back into his head, showing nothing but white as he passed the hell out.

I looked away from him, and every Canidae gaze on the ice, on the bench, was fastened on me. They stared as if I were suddenly unveiled, as if they saw the whole of me in a way no one ever had before.

I couldn’t take it. Couldn’t take the unspoken language they shouted at me, yelled silently, asking, wanting.

What the hell was going on? I shook my head trying to clear the noise.

The beast in me pushed, paced, wanting that noise, wanting those gazes. The wolf knew exactly why all the wolves were looking my way.

Alpha.

No. Chills shuddered across my skin, tightened my stomach. The beast in me wanted out, wanted to go down to that ice where I didn’t belong so it could force each of those wolves to recognize me.

To see me.

To submit.

And then everything changed. The crowd was suddenly restless, murmuring, shouting, whistling as paramedics rushed onto the ice to Kudrar. The trainers from both teams were out there too, including Dr. Jerkwad and Netti, who was a step ahead of all the others.

Now that it made no difference whatsoever, the refs finally used the stun prod on the tiger, who dropped to the ice, shaking his head as he shifted back to man. He didn’t appear to be badly injured.

But Kudrar still wasn’t moving. There were plenty of skilled professionals there to make sure that heavy injuries…

…crushed pelvis, broken femur, shattered vertebra…

…were taken care of quickly as possible.

Shifting from cat to man would have mended some things, but not all of it. And not always in the way it should be mended.

I stayed standing while Kudrar was loaded onto a gurney, strapped in, and put on an IV line. I stayed standing while the shifted players were led off the ice so they could change back into their human forms in the rooms set aside for that sort of thing.

I stayed standing while the audience applauded the medics taking Kudrar away, and while the remaining players tapped sticks on the ice or boards in solidarity.

I stayed standing while the announcer gave a bland recrimination of the violence, recited the level of fighting that was not allowed in the WHHL and as an afterthought, gave a wish of a speedy recovery to Kudrar.

All that time, every second, every heartbeat, the wolves stared hungrily at me.

And then, just like that, the music queued back up, everyone took their place, and it was time to play the rest of the period.

Hockey must go on.

The rest of the game was strange and strained. The blood had been scraped away, new water poured to ice up the spot where a player had bled so hard and fast. The repair was so good, nothing about that piece of ice looked any different than the rest of the ice.

Except the players avoided it as if it were a pool of blood, as if it were still fouled by magic that had gone too far.

We, of course, lost.