I waited for the crowd to leave then walked down to the locker room. I’d never been welcome there, not really, but the atmosphere in the room shifted when I walked in. Not exactly anger, just a tension I couldn’t name.

“Looking slow as shit.” All eyes were on me. “But good control on magic. That could have been a madhouse out there. Glad no one else dropped gloves. I’m gonna go check on Kudrar. Anyone with me?”

No one said anything. Slade tipped his head so far to one side he looked like a sweaty little orange owl. He was frowning at me like I’d just spoken in tongues.

Finally, “I’ll come with you.” Quiet but firm.

Big D grunted.

“Anyone else?” I scanned the room, holding eye contact until each player found something else to look at.

And the second strangest thing happened. Every Canidae head swiveled toward Big D.

So I squared off from him and held his gaze. “You with me?”

His gaze was iron and ice. He did not look away. “No.”

And just like that, everyone went back to ignoring me.

Except Slade. “I’ll drive,” he said. “I’m going with you. I’m taking you.”

That was fine with me because my wolf was howling, begging for a fight. It was better I didn’t get behind the wheel. We left the arena behind us and piled into Slade’s Toyota Camry.

Keeping the wolf locked down was taking all of my concentration and some deep breathing exercises.

Slade didn’t say anything, and I left him to it until he almost drove into the median separating oncoming traffic.

“What the hell, Slade?” I gripped the chicken bar above the door and leaned as he rocked the damn car up on two wheels.

We tipped one way, tipped the other, before skidding back down to smooth pavement.

Slade didn’t even break a sweat. “What?”

I opened my mouth, closed it. Pointed out the window. “Watch the damn road.”

“Grow a pair.”

I sputtered and stared at him. Which turned out to be a mistake. He had this weird thing of staring out his side window for several dozen seconds too long before he returned his attention to the traffic in front of him. He was more interested in the signs and businesses and people and trees and trash cans than actually driving.

It wouldn’t be so bad if he didn’t also constantly fiddle with the buttons and screens inside his car. Heat, cold, up, down, volume, windows, seat settings.

I was horrified.

“If you kill us, I’m dragging you down to hell with me.”

He snorted and went on twitching, as if he couldn’t get his hands on the world around him fast enough. He constantly moved hands, feet, face, head, shoulders, elbows and knees. It was hypnotic, just this side of spastic, but didn’t seem out of control.

Maybe he was doing it to see if I’d crack.

In case that was his deal, I sat back and did everything to appear like I was there to enjoy the show.

By the time we reached the hospital, he had settled down, though if that was because he’d run out of interesting sights and things to fiddle with, or because he was done screwing with me, I had no idea.

The woman at the desk wouldn’t let us see Kudrar since we were friends, not family.

But it was a busy place and we were two determined hockey players. We found an Employees Only door or two, shoved through and took a few out-of-the-way stairwells, following our noses.

Kudrar’s room was big enough to hold several beds, all separated by curtains.

We sniffed our way to his curtain and slipped behind it. Kudrar was still in man form, pale as hell, but he breathed steadily, which was good. His heartbeat sounded good too, both on the machine and the low dull thud my wolf senses picked up.

Slade stood stock still for a moment, as if he were listening with every sense he owned, and then he sort of relaxed. He strolled over to mess with a machine and watched me from the corner of his eye.

I walked to the head of the bed and put my hand carefully on Kudrar’s shoulder that wasn’t bandaged. From the wrappings on his head, his shoulder, his arm, and the cast on his left leg and sling under his hips, he was a mess.

“Hey, Hugo, it’s Duncan. Just came by to say you’re going to be fine. And everyone on the team wants you to get better. You need to take some time and heal up the right way, okay? We can’t be down a good winger for too long. You were the only one out there with hustle tonight, buddy.”

I didn’t know if he heard me. His heartbeat seemed to even out a little more, like maybe some of his pain had lifted. I kept my hand on his shoulder. Contact always made me feel better when I was sick.

Slade made his way around the small space, brushing fingers across everything. He turned away from the machine he shouldn’t even think about messing with.

“Good?” he asked.

No, not good. Nothing was good. A teammate, my teammate, was broken. Even if none of them liked me, now that I was on the team, I wanted to protect them. On the ice, and off.

Which was fucked up, since they’d made it pretty clear they hated me.

“Not really good, no,” I admitted. “But good enough for now.”

Slade stood on the other side of Kudrar and bent to study his face. I didn’t know a lot about fox shifters, didn’t know if he had senses I didn’t possess as a wolf.

He pressed his forehead to Kudrar’s, just a brief moment. His lips moved silently. Maybe a prayer.

Then he straightened and shoved his hands into his back pockets, as if by locking them there he would remember not to touch anything.

“Done getting your germs on everything?” I asked.

He pivoted, and walked toward the opening in the curtain.

“Yes, Spark,” I said in a snotty tone, following him. “I’m done being gross, thanks for asking.”

He threw me a quick grin, an even quicker finger and strode more quietly than I expected from a hockey player in work boots.

We left the hospital the same way we came in—quietly and unnoticed—and then were across the rainy parking lot.

He unlocked his car and we both climbed in.

“Why’d you come to see him?” he asked. He started the car, backed out of the parking lot, rolling his window up, down, up, down, a quarter of an inch.

It was annoying as all hell.

I was starting to like the guy.

“You mean why tonight?”

“Why at all?”

“Because he’s my teammate and he got mauled within an inch of his life. Why? There gotta be another reason?”

He slid a look my way. “Could be another reason.”

I had no idea what he was talking about.

He stopped messing with his window and started messing with mine, rolling it down a half inch, to let in rain and a slap of cold air, then up again.

Jerk.

I jabbed at the button and held it so he couldn’t mess with the window anymore.

He chuffed a laugh and got busy changing the rate of the windshield wipers.

“Kudrar got hurt,” he said, like that was news.

“You are the most annoying person I’ve ever met.”

“He looked for you. When he got hurt.”

I thought I was the only one who saw that.

“So?”

“So. That’s what I mean. He knew where you were…he knew you would see him and…look, that isn’t a little injury. He’ll be out of the game for the rest of the year.”

“Yeah.” Even being fourth-marked and very quick to heal, it was enough to lay him out. “We’re gonna be down a winger.”

He gave me a weird look like he expected something different. Something better.

“It was a shit fight and the coaches should have been out there to de-escalate the situation,” I said. “If not the coaches, the captains. And if not the captains, then…someone.”

The alphas. That’s who should have stepped in. The alphas of the teams should have helped their teammates keep the beast instinct in line. Should have tipped the scales toward fight, not kill.

But this wasn’t my team, not really. I didn’t have a say in what happened or didn’t happen on the ice.

You could. The wolf deep in my brain said. You should.

I ignored it.

“Don’t be stupid, Spark. You might be a loser, but you know.”

“Know what?”

“He looked for you. Out of everyone in that arena, you were the one he needed to see.”

“Because he was hurt.”

“Because he thought he was dying or crippled.”

“Okay?”

He stopped messing with the speaker balance: front, back, right, left, middle. Front, back…his hand stilling on the steering wheel. “How long have you been playing hockey?”

“Since I was five.”

“You ever play on a team that was only second and fourth-marked?”

Only shifters. Only Canidae and Felidae.

Every team I’d been on had included a mix of people. There’d always been sensitives and non-magic people too since all the teams below the WHHL were mixed.

“No.”

He stabbed through the preset stations, then hit something that let the radio just wander through whatever station it could get reception for. I turned the volume down because I didn’t care if we were listening to trombones or talk shows, but I didn’t need to hear any of it at full blast.

“It’s a…” He paused for a second and focused on just driving. He glanced at me, then away again.

“It’s a thing,” he said. “When someone is hurt. I mean really hurt. Not just a fracture or break or bruise. When it’s a big thing, a hard thing, when instinct is telling you it’s not just bad, it’s passing horrible and it might even be the…ending of…something. You…you look for the person you know has your back. You look for the person you…trust. The one who will stand over you and…stand against others for you. You look for your…”

Alpha, the voice in my head supplied.

“…leader,” Slade finished.

Yeah, I knew exactly what he was implying. But I also knew how team dynamics worked.

Big D should be alpha.

Even as I thought it, I knew that wasn’t right. The wolves fell into line and did exactly what he wanted, but the cats stayed to themselves and ignored him.

An alpha was the touchstone for all the shifters, not just half of them. An alpha had to be a friend to all, even the unmarked. An alpha had to be a protector of all.

Big D was there for the wolves, but he didn’t give a damn about the cats.

And that was the thing about an alpha, wasn’t it? It was more than being the big guy, the tough guy like Big D. It was more than being a leader who could get everyone moving together like a captain. It was about being a person other people could be vulnerable with.

Being the one who could be trusted to take care of shit they couldn’t deal with, take care of them if they were injured, not the little hurts, but the big stuff.

The world-ending stuff.

Holy shit. Me? Slade thought I was that guy?

No. There was no way anyone would rely on me like that. Sure, I’d always been there for Random. But he was my brother. There was nothing I wouldn’t do for him.

Including throwing my life away so he could live. Including coming here.

Alpha, the beast in me insisted, smug.

No. I would do anything to keep Hazard safe. And yes, okay, I would to anything to keep my parents safe, and my friends, and Random’s girlfriend, and her band mates, and all the guys and gals on the Thunderheads.

But that didn’t make me a big ole protective alpha.

“Nothing?” Slade asked. “You got nothing to say to that?”

“Nothing to say to you.”

“I wasn’t the one who looked for you in the crowd.”

“You were the one who volunteered to take me to the hospital.”

“Not my fault you’ve made yourself what you are.”

“Like shit I have.”

“Sure. You’ve totally backed down, not gotten in our faces, not practiced against us which, you know, only makes us play harder and better as a team. You haven’t stood up to those assholes Paski and Zima, taken their hits—yes, I was watching—and refused to give them what they wanted, which was you fighting them.

“You stood up to Coach Nowak first day. Fuck, Spark. I saw him stun you. I saw you take fifteen jolts from that sadistic ass.”

“That’s…you’re…that’s nothing to do with…you don’t get it,” I said. “No one on this team gives one fuck about me. And honestly, I do not care. I came here to…”

“…play hockey,” he mouthed along with me because he was a jerk like that.

I scowled. He laughed.

“Play the game,” I insisted. “And no one has let me do that one thing. That one thing I came here for.”

“Yeah? You think that’s the one thing you came here for?”

“What the hell else would I come here for? Tacoma’s kind of a dump, dude.”

“Are you in love with him?”

“Who? Kudrar?”

“The wizard. Hazard.”

This time I laughed. “Hard no. He’s my brother. Like I basically adopted him when he was six. And if I were going to fall for a guy it’d be one who wasn’t so mopey.”

“Yeah, you like a guy who’s full of laughs?” He batted his eyes at me.

“Probably. But since I’m not into guys, it doesn’t matter. What the hell does Hazard have to do with anything?”

“Everything.”

“Explain that, or I’ll set the station on static and lock it there.”

He tapped his fingers against his thigh, thinking. “We all know why you came here, Spark.”

“Really? Fill me in, buddy.”

“You took the fall for Hazard. He was Coach Nowak’s pick, not you.”

“So?”

The fingers tapped, tapped, tapped. “You threw your life down the crapper for him, for your brother. That got all of us asking why.

“If you’re just here to play hockey, you would have been better off down with the Dunderheads. But you volunteered to take the fall. Not to move your career forward. Maybe not even just to keep the wizard from playing on our team.”

“I liked it better when you made no sense in smaller sentences.”

“Bored?”

“So very.”

He stopped tapping his fingers and stared straight at me. For a long time. Too damn long for a guy who was navigating traffic. It was late and there weren’t many people on the street, but still.

“Hey, I know a fun game,” I said. “It’s called keep your eyes on the damn road before I push you out the door.”

The smile on him was wicked.

He turned his attention to the street again. “So you’re telling me you put yourself in danger and possibly tanked your rookie year for funsies? Because you’re shitting yourself if you think Coach Nowak wanted the wizard for his game play.

“All Nowak wanted was to break him, ruin him. I don’t know why. But I…understand men like Nowak. If there’s something shiny someone else has that they can’t have, then they’ll make sure it’s crushed and destroyed so no one else can have it.”

“Hazard’s strong on the ice,” I argued. “Drafted by the Avalanche.”

“I know, Spark,” he said like I was completely missing his point. “I played against him. I know he works. You know it too. But you volunteered. Took his place. ’Cause you knew Nowak would break him.”

I made a noise of protest and he held up one hand. “Maybe not break. Maybe just injure. Change.”

It was true. If Random had joined this team, I would have lost my brother. It wasn’t like I could always stand in the way of the hits that would come at him.

But this…this had grabbed me deep in my gut. If I let him go to the Tide, he’d never be the same.

And I couldn’t let that happen. Not when he had just come out of hiding and been honest with himself and other people about what he was. A wizard. And a damn strong one. One who should be playing in the NHL, not down here in the Hell leagues.

One who could use magic to crack open the world if he wanted to. If he lost control.

A magic ability still untested gave him a vulnerability, like a fault line threading a tectonic plate. Hazard could handle a few personal earthquakes, but if a big one hit at his most vulnerable place, if say, some kind of sadistic coach did everything in his power to harm him, I thought Hazard might blow.

And test the lengths of what a rogue wizard could do to the world.

None of us wanted to see what that looked like.

So I’d thrown myself into the ring. But that’s what buddies did, right? That’s what—

—Alphas—

—brothers did?

“Hey, wolf.” Slade snapped fingers in my face. “Do you understand what I said, or should I draw pictures for you?”

“Fuck off, Slade, I’m thinking.”

He laughed and it was a good, genuine sound. He messed with the radio, and wonder of wonders, settled on hard rock before turning it up loud.

He pulled up alongside my hotel. As I reached for the car door, he cleared his throat.

“What?” I asked.

He stared straight ahead, more focused on the road now we weren’t moving. Idiot.

I followed his gaze. The street was empty and wet.

“Okay, then. G’night.”

“Wait.”

I paused. “Dude, spit it out, or I’m gone.”

His focus, his weird stillness felt like anger. Then he muttered something and nodded.

“I saw what coach did to you. The stun prod.”

My shoulders clenched, my spine straightened. “I know. You said.”

“I recorded it.”

“The hell?”

Slade pulled out his phone, thumb and fingers tapping. “I recorded it. I was there. In the stands. I recorded it.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s an asshole. And you’re not the first.” He tipped his chin up. “I just sent it to you.”

“Dude, you don’t have my phone number.”

He scoffed. “Your locker is right next to mine.” He said it like it was impossible to think he wouldn’t break into my locker and go through my private belongings.

My phone vibrated. One message.

“Put me in your contacts under Waxwings.”

“Waxwings?”

He raised one eyebrow. “My first name is Icarus.”

“Yeah?”

“The myth? The guy who flew too close to the sun?” He paused.

I nodded, then shook my head.

“Read a book, Spark.”

“I’ll wait for the movie.”

“Get out of my car. You’re stinking it up with stupid.”

I opened the door, but didn’t get out. “What do you think I’m going to do with this?”

“That’s on you.”

I waited, because, seriously, I didn’t have any idea what I should do with the thing.

It felt like I had my thumb pressed into a grenade, trying to keep it from blowing.

He sighed. “I’d use it to keep Coach Nowak off Hazard’s ass.”

“Hazard’s fine. Nowak can’t touch him.” Coach Clay and Beaumont, and Graves, would make sure Hazard was safely far away from Coach Nowak and his stun rods and death threats.

“You think Nowak will let anything stop him from getting what he wants? What is it about his personality or actions that makes you think he’s not a competitive, toxic, overbearing asshole?”

I inhaled, exhaled hard. “Fuck.”

“Yes, fuck. He’s gone after your boy once. He isn’t going to let one bad shot keep him from rushing the net.”

And there it was. Coach Nowak was not going to lose. Not when coaching his team however the hell he wanted. Not when abusing his power in any way he wanted. And not in taking out the only wizard in the league.

This video might put a stop to that. To him. If I could convince someone in power that this wasn’t an isolated incident.

Because as much as I knew it was bullshit for Coach Nowak to do this to me, I was just as sure he had connections that could make sure this never saw the light of day. I needed more evidence. A lot more.

“Spark?” Slade’s voice brought me out of my whirlwind thoughts.

I stepped out of the car. “Thanks, Waxy.”

“Screw you, Sparkles.”

I grinned and slammed the door. He rolled down his window far enough to stick both middle fingers out, while gunning the gas and squealing down the road.

Ginger had a death wish.

The suite was quiet, and I didn’t bother turning on lights since there wasn’t anything to see anyway. Dad called and I almost answered, the phone cradled in my hand, fingers curled around the edges.

But I wasn’t ready to hear his answers. Wasn’t even ready to ask the questions yet.

What should I do about the video? What was the right play? Go wide with it and hope it took Coach Nowak down? Take it to the big wigs in the league? Wait until I got more dirt?

Those questions warred with the whole alpha thing.

Did Dad think I was a guy who could lead…

…people, a pack, a team…

…like Slade said? Or would he tell me Slade was just screwing with my head?

Come to think of it, if I were an alpha I wouldn’t have so much self-doubt about it. Alphas swaggered. They heroed around like gods. Made themselves big via fear and domination.

So not me. I’d rather annoy someone until they couldn’t ignore me.

Slade was right about one thing though: Hazard. I’d stepped up for my brother because I had to. There was love behind that decision, but even more, there was instinct.

Hazard was mine, my pack. I would do anything to make sure he survived and thrived.

The phone stopped ringing and Dad’s message came through a minute later.

Are you okay, son? We didn’t see you at the game. Call me. Text. Your mother and I are coming up there soon. Sorry about your teammate, Kudrar. We sent flowers.

My parents were the greatest. Dad always knew how to help me make sense of the world.

But I wasn’t ready to ask him to stand up for me yet. If I was an alpha, then it was time to start acting like one. To get through this on my own strength.

Dig in, push hard, win.

I could make myself a part of the team. Make my own stand on my own two feet against Nowak. Make things right for my brothers. For myself.

Also, if Dad saw the bruises I still sported, my mild-mannered father would tear the league apart, tear the team apart. I’d never play again.

Time to make an adult decision. A calm decision.

I texted back. Working hard. Team still not used to me. I’m okay. Got this. Love you. Miss you & Mom. Tell Ran he’s a jerk & smells funny.

A long minute, two ticked by. I read over my text multiple times. Had I tipped him off? What was my father reading between the lines? Did I sound needy? Weak?

Call us, Duncan. You don’t have to do this alone.

My eyes and chest tightened with tears. Because, dammit, that was my Dad. Always knew when I was flicking shit to hide pain.

I will. Just need little time.

Promise.

X my <3

Love you, son. Proud of you.

I gasped at the little sob that choked up my throat, then I lay back on the couch and slung my arm over my eyes, not caring if it made my ribs hurt.

I set the phone face down on my chest and closed my eyes. I didn’t need to cry. I just needed to sleep. I wiped at the moisture on my face, and threw myself toward oblivion with everything I had.