We had a problem. Since Kudrar was still in a hospital bed, we were down a winger. Coach had exactly four players he could call to cover Kudrar’s shifts tonight.

A guy named Busk, a guy named Keller, a woman named Lundqvist. And me.

Busk was wheeling on a knee he’d strained a few games before I’d joined the team. Doctors didn’t want him playing on it, not for a full hockey game.

Busk was a hell of a player and would be one of those superstars who made a mediocre team a winning team. He’d be first line, captain and leader one of these days. The smart move would be to let Busk cool his heels and literally heal.

Keller was a fourth-marked, cheetah. He carried the second line and was the second highest scorer on the team. Lindqvist was also fourth-marked but she was a lion. She played third line with her lion husband. Breaking up that powerful combination would be suicide.

Tonight’s game was basic. It might put us in better standing for the Broughton Cup run, but it wasn’t the last chance we had to get there. Risking any of the other left wingers on a low-level game seemed like a pretty dumb move.

Especially since I was uninjured and ready to gear up just like all the other players.

I might not have Busk’s potential, Keller’s speed, or Lindqvist’s line chemistry, but I could play.

And I wanted to play tonight. I had something to prove. Coach Nowak didn’t think I could hold my own.

Well, there was only one way to find out.

Nowak walked into the locker room and stood with his hands on his hips, which pulled his suit jacket back and made him look bigger.

“Take this win or I’m cutting. I can build a better team, a hungrier team pulling out of the damn beer leagues. Either you win, or you’re out. Not one of you are safe.” He paused to make eye contact with Tabor Steele, then Big D, then Paski.

“Don’t make me prove exactly how many of you I can replace. I don’t care what your contracts say. If you don’t bring back a win, you better start looking for another club.”

He waited for comments, or arguments. Got none of either. “Read the lineup.”

He strode out of the room.

Tabor Steele stood. “All right, men and women. You heard Coach. We’re bringing the win home. No matter what it takes. Give it everything you have tonight. Like it’s the last damn time you’re ever gonna be on the ice. Because it might be. Leave it all out there. This night is our night to win!”

Players tapped sticks on the floor, slapped shoulders. At least the captain could get a reaction out of them.

As Steele read off names, I was startled to hear mine, right there on the fourth line.

Everyone else was startled too because they all stopped what they were doing to stare at me.

“Fuck to the yes,” I said. “About damn time, boys.”

Slade gave me a slight nod. Everyone else went back to pregame prep.

I got busy with prep too.

I had a game to win.

I was ready, practically out-of-my-skin crazy for a chance to get on the ice. But if I’d thought Nowak putting me on the fourth line meant he was going to play me, I was so very wrong.

Line change after line change, he sent out the other wingers and left me on the bench, fresh, plenty of air, plenty of gas in the tank, while my teammates came back sweating, bruised, and tired.

I looked like a fresh-faced noob, a total loser, made all the more clear by the battle-worn players around me. The longer the game went on the more obvious it became that I wasn’t out there to help the team win. I was there as a punishment to the team for losing.

Coach was delivering a very clear message to the players: I was a liability. With me on the team, they’d have to work three times as hard to hold their own and five times as hard to win.

It was a dick move.

By the start of the third period it was physically painful to watch my team going through this. To feel their exhaustion and pain as a ghost pain I couldn’t squirm away from.

The only reason I hadn’t barfed was because I hadn’t eaten anything but a heavy protein and vitamin shake. Those things went down and stayed down.

I opened my mouth to tell Nowak to just fucking cut me from the team and put anyone on the bench instead of me. Hell, put in the equipment manager.

Before I could say anything, Slade hit my ankle with his stick. Hard.

He wanted me to shut up.

I wanted us to win. I stood, but Slade grabbed my arm and forced me to stay still.

He was a lot stronger than he looked. He pressed his lips together and shook his head, bright eyes on nothing else but the battle on the ice.

God dammit.

I sat on the bench for nineteen excruciating minutes.

And then, finally, Nowak yelled my name. Told me to go in.

We were down by three. One minute left.

Here’s the thing about hockey: it wasn’t over, it wasn’t a win or a loss until the final second ticked off the clock.

I’d seen teams score two goals in ten seconds. Seen them tie it up, and pull the win in overtime.

But a team as tired as ours, as angry and frustrated and demoralized as ours, had almost no damn chance to get the puck to the back of the net three times in sixty seconds.

I took my place at the face-off. I got into position for a drill I’d watched them run, but of which I’d never been a part.

I was there. I was ready.

So was my team.

We lost the face-off. The puck got caught in a four guy scrum along the boards.

Seconds plummeted off the clock like hail in a windstorm.

The puck squirted free and Steele snagged it up. He flew across the ice to the net, took the shot. A heavy ping rang out as the puck ricocheted off the post.

The horn blared, signaling the end of the game. The Brimstones’s home crowd went wild.

We left the ice, one more loss on the board.

I dreamed hard dreams full of fire and pain and bones breaking.

I dreamed of teeth and clever fox fingers and piercing fox eyes.

I dreamed of Hazard’s laugh, of Dad’s pancakes, of Mom’s horror novels with the dog-eared pages. I was a piece of all of those things. I was me, and I was all the people I loved. I was myself and I was my pack.

I dreamed of Hazard’s broken wrist when he was twelve. And it was my broken wrist.

I dreamed of Slade’s bared teeth. And his anger filled my mouth.

I dreamed I stood in front of the darkness, the thing that wanted to hurt and destroy those who I cared for. I stood in front of the darkness, and would not let it pass.

Coach Nowak’s arm pressed across my throat, his hatred hissed like acid through my brain. He melted into a monster made of coils and scales, muscles and fang and pain. And when he rose up to strike, I lunged for his throat. Not to injure. To kill.

I startled awake. The drone of the bus engine hadn’t changed, but something had brought me out of restless sleep.

No hotel beds for us. Not after that loss. Exhausted, the players had fallen asleep almost as soon as we’d packed everything onto the bus. If the highway signs were correct, we were still in Oregon.

I shifted so I could see up the dark aisles. Coach Nowak sat in the front row.

Slade stood spine-straight next to him. His face was even paler than normal, red slapped across cheeks and down what I could see of his neck.

He was furious. That was what had woken me—his hard, clear emotion clanging out like a bell in my head. An emotion I could feel as if it were mine.

I was out of my seat before I knew I was moving. I stopped next to Slade.

“This doesn’t concern you, Mr. Spark,” Nowak said. He was both angry and happy that the target of his anger was holding still enough he could eviscerate him and watch him squirm.

Slade was not squirming though. He was holding unnaturally still.

I’d been around the guy for long enough I knew his natural state was constant motion. I’d never seen him so motionless.

I took a couple steps closer and crowded Slade out from in front of Nowak, standing in front of him instead.

“This does concern me. What’s going on?” My voice was low, demanding. I saw Nowak’s pupils dilate in recognition. He glanced over my shoulder at Slade, then back to me and scowled.

“If I wanted to speak to you, you’d know,” Nowak growled. “Go back to your seat, Spark. You don’t belong here.”

A surge of hot and righteous and powerful rose up my spine and filled my head, stretching, owning. A part of the wolf in me, a part of it I’d never known, suddenly woke and became something stronger. Something surer.

“What did you tell Slade?”

It was strange to be calm and enraged at the same time. A rush of determination to protect Slade—

—pack—

—filled me and it was powerful. Nowak had done something to hurt him. I wanted to smack that smug look off Nowak’s face and break his arms.

Slade made a sound behind me. Just a whisper.

I pushed my way forward another step, made myself bigger, blocking Slade from Nowak’s view. “What. Did. You. Do.”

“I don’t negotiate with gutter trash. You don’t have the balls to fight me, boy? Do you? Want to come at me right here? Think you can take me down? Go ahead. Take a shot. Let’s see if you’ve got a spine under that worthless skin.”

He was baiting me. I knew that.

But for a glorious full few seconds, I calculated how many fines and jail time I could rack up if I beat the living crap out of my coach.

Too many.

Plus, Hazard would probably visit me in jail every day just so he could sit on the other side of the glass and stare at me judgmentally.

I missed him.

I turned slightly to demand Slade tell me what had happened but he was no longer there.

“That’s what I thought,” Nowak spit. “Get out of my sight, Spark. Before I make you regret every choice in your pitiful life.”

I rubbed my hand over my head and cupped the back of my neck. This wasn’t the time or place for a fight. This wasn’t the time or place to lose control on my wolf.

I strode down the aisle. The thing I hadn’t told Slade was that my ex-girlfriend had done more damage than I’d ever admit. She’d been in half shift with no control over her beast.

Huge mountain lion fangs nicked something important at the base of my skull when she bit down hard and shook me.

If my dad hadn’t come home for lunch and knocked on my door to find out why I was not at school, I could have bled out, paralyzed and unable to call for help.

It was why I never got into a fight without a tight hold on the wolf. It was why I didn’t let something like a hot-headed hockey player force my shift on the ice, why I laughed off other people’s anger.

Slade sat next to the window, stiff, staring at the dark and nothing ahead of him.

Only his fingers moved. He had woven them together on his lap. But his pinkies, hidden mostly from view, rubbed at the sides of his hands.

Something told me this was an old habit for comfort. A way to be moving that no one would see. That no one would complain about.

It about broke my heart to see him so closed down.

Maybe because he reminded me a little of Hazard, and this friendship could someday make him a—

—pack—

—brother to me.

“Go away, Spark.”

“Tell me what he said.”

“Go away.”

“Slade…” I reached over and touched his elbow. You’d have thought I’d just set him on fire. He jerked and scrambled to put his back against the wall, his knees up in the seat between us.

“Go away,” he snarled through bright teeth. And then, in almost a whisper, “Please, Donut.”

Hurt, confusion, and anger rolled off him. The wolf in me wanted to comfort, protect, guard. But his need to have me step back and give him room to process was a bright scent of crushed pine around him.

If he were Hazard, I would have bugged him until he spilled the beans.

But Hazard and I had been brothers for a long time. I understood him. I knew when to push and when to back off.

Slade was new to me.

So I followed my gut and gave him space. I sat right across the aisle and I leaned against the window, turned so I could keep an eye on who was coming down the aisle, and also on Slade.

I stayed vigilant. And for the rest of the trip, he did not move away from his defensive posture, hands clasped, only the slightest movement of his pinkies giving away that he was alive.

“Gotta get moving, Slade.” It was five in the morning, still dark and wet out. We’d just reached Tacoma.

He nodded, the motion jerky as if his whole body had gone temporarily numb. He didn’t look at me.

Players stretched up out of seats, rolling out kinks in shoulders, testing bruises. I couldn’t hold up the line for Slade, so I started forward.

Paski was the first guy in front of me. He looked back at me, his gaze flicking to Slade. He smiled and stared straight at me, as if to say, “I did that. Do you see what I did?”

I didn’t want him looking at Slade. I didn’t want anyone looking at him. So I pointed forward. “Front of the bus is that way, dumb nuts. Need a map?”

Someone behind me snickered. Paski made a kissy face and marched out the door. I strolled along behind him like nothing was wrong.

Everyone scattered across the dark parking lot, headed to their cars.

The defensive coach was yelling: “No skate today. Tomorrow at five o’clock show up ready to lose your balls. No skate today. Tomorrow at five o’clock…”

Coach Nowak was gone.

I couldn’t confront him and make him talk. The only person who had the information I needed was Slade.

I waited for him to get off the bus. And waited. And waited.

I cursed and climbed back on the bus. Dawn hadn’t brought much light into the darkness yet, so if I didn’t have good night vision, it might have been easy to miss him.

He sat in shadows, in the same seat. He slumped, head turned toward the window, eyes squeezed shut.

He wasn’t asleep—his breathing was too shallow and short. His body was hunched up as if he were in pain.

“Everyone’s gone,” I said quietly. “You need to get off the bus now, buddy.”

He didn’t move. I thought about shaking him, but instead, I settled in the seat next to him, my hands motionless on my thighs.

It took some time before he spoke.

“He cut me.”

For a wild moment, I thought he meant someone had physically injured him. A wall of rage slammed into me. Then my brain caught up with what his words meant.

Nowak cut him from the team.

“When?”

Another long pause. “As of today.”

That wall of rage turned concrete, became a house of rage, a fortress of rage and I was standing in the center of it all. “What about your contract?”

Slight huff of air.

“Can you go back to the minors?”

“That’s…” He rubbed his fingertips over his forehead. “I’d commit manslaughter. So. No.”

Even though it was only a brief motion, it was good to see him moving. A still Slade was an unnatural phenomenon.

“Really?” I asked. “You found some way to piss off every player on every team in the minors? What do you know? You do have talent.”

He rolled his head to the center of the seat and rearranged legs that had to be numb from being crunched up for so long.

“Fine,” he said. “It might only be involuntary manslaughter for most of them.”

His eyes opened and he licked his lips like he was coming back to fill his bones and skin in stages. “Going back is not.” Short shake of his head. “No.”

“So what are the options here?” He didn’t have to tell me why he wouldn’t return to an entire league. But I wanted to know where he was going so I could find him.

He was too stubborn and strong not to land on his feet, but it could take time. A lot of time.

“I’ve been kicked out of hell,” he said. “Who the fuck cares?”

“I care,” I growled.

He stared at me, his eyes glittering in the dark. “I’m not your brother, Spark. I’m not your teammate. I’m not your friend.” Each statement was colder than the last.

The wolf in me would argue every point, but I swallowed down my words. Convincing him that he was somehow mine, a part of the group of people—

—pack—

—that I refused to let go of, people who were my friends, my family whether they liked it or not, wasn’t something he could hear buried in this fresh pain.

“You’re full of shit,” I said lightly. “I happen to like people who are full of shit.”

“We’re not friends.”

“Yes, we are.”

“I hate you.”

“Too bad.”

That got a tiny mean smile out of him. “I finally figured out why your coach let you volunteer for this team. He hates you.”

A sharp stab hit my heart. I missed the hell out of the Thunderheads. My need for that family was a physical ache that made it hard to breathe.

“Talk to me,” I said.

“I’ve got nothing to say.”

“I’ll drive you home.”

“Why? I’m off the team.”

I stood in the aisle and scowled down at him. “Like this team means shit-all to me? To our friendship? Get your head out of your ass.”

All the shadows of him darkened, his eyes hardened. He didn’t like hearing that. I knew he’d come back swinging.

“We are not friends. You know why? Huh, Duncan? You know why we’re not friends? You know why Nowak cut me?”

“No.”

“You. You’re why. You showed up here like some kind of martyr hero and you fucked up my career.” He said it like it didn’t mean anything, like those words weren’t a cracked lid on a pot of lava about to explode.

He said it like it didn’t matter because I didn’t matter.

That stab in my heart twisted, bled.

“I fucking hate you. You want me to talk? You think you’re so noble coming here to save your poor pansy orphan brother’s life? Fuck you. You ruined mine. You fucked up the most fucked-up team in the league. There are twenty-four people on this team, and you dropped into their lives like a steaming pile of shit.

“You’re poison Spark. Everything you touch rots. You think that wizard couldn’t cut it without you? Told yourself he was too weak to handle it so you swooped to the rescue?

“Bullshit. You jumped in to save the day because you need him to be a victim so you can be a hero. You like that he’s weaker than you. You like taking away the power he has over his own life. You like making decisions for him and making yourself look good. Fuck you, for making me a victim so you can feel big. Fuck. You.”

My heart was too heavy to beat, the knot in my throat choked off my breath.

How dare he tell me who I was, who I loved. How dare he tell me it was wrong. How dare he try to make me into his enemy.

A part of me screamed and screamed. Was he right? Was that all I did? Had I tried to make myself bigger and better because I could help people? Because I could jump in and save them instead of letting them save themselves?

Had I been taking away Random’s choices for all these years? Had I been forcing him to be smaller than me, weaker then me so I could feel important?

Had I been doing that to everyone I knew, my teammates, my friends, all my life?

The idea of it, the shape of that concept that almost, so very nearly fit into my life shook me to my damn core.

I wanted to run from the idea of it, from the almost truth of it, but it sank teeth into my head, gave life to my deep, cold fears, and would not let go.

Slade stood and slapped the side of my shoulder hard enough I’d bruise.

“Shove your unwanted help up your unwanted alpha ass.”

I moved so he could push by me, hands clenched into fists at his side, touching nothing as he passed.

I stood there for a long, long time.