Slade didn’t show up for practice the next day. No one asked where he went. Coach Nowak didn’t say anything about it. Just ignored that he’d been there, a part of the team for most of the season.

The bench in the locker room next to me was empty.

No one looked at it. No one looked at me. It wasn’t just that there was no eye contact—there was no contact at all. No one spoke to me. No one touched me. No one touched my equipment.

When I hit the ice, there was no hole for me in the drills, no room for me in the lines.

If I thought I’d gotten the cold shoulder before, I was getting the cold everything now.

I was a ghost to them. No matter how much I chirped, taunted, yelled, or bothered the players, to a person they refused to acknowledge me in any way.

Even when I broke down and shoved Big D out of pure frustration, hoping for a fight, needing a fight, he stared blankly over my head like I wasn’t even there and kept moving.

The only person who met my eyes was Coach Nowak. As I left the ice near the end of practice, fuming, sweating, exhausted with bitter rage, his gaze clicked to mine.

There was an unholy joy there.

I clenched my jaw to keep from just lunging at him.

I’d been up all night, Slade’s words rolling like barbed wire bundles through my head. I could accept there had to be at least some truth to them. Otherwise they wouldn’t have hit me so hard, right?

If I wanted to change how I helped, why I helped people, I had to back away from other people’s problems and deal with my own shit. I wasn’t an alpha, born to protect. I was delusional, selfish.

Which meant I didn’t ask Coach why he had cut Slade.

I didn’t ask why he wasn’t playing me.

I didn’t try to become a part of the team.

I just…didn’t do any of the things I naturally did.

But, damn it all. The one thing I wanted, the one thing I couldn’t give up was the need to play hockey.

So I dropped my gaze from Nowak’s and left to the locker room to change, shower, and go back to my hotel to wait for tomorrow’s game.

I texted my dad and told him and Mom not to come up. I told them I’d be down there for back-to-back games in a couple weeks. I’d see them then.

I read it four times to make sure it sounded happy. Added a bunch of hearts and smiley faces. Hit send.

Another text popped up. This one from Netti.

Come by my office before you leave for the road game. I need to see you.

I read it over and over. Why did she want to see me? I was nothing here. A phantom. A ghost.

Please, Duncan. I’m concerned about your health.

I only read that text once. I was fine. Didn’t need her telling me what to do. I’d been a hockey player for a long time. I could look after myself.

I turned off my phone, shed all my clothes in the dark. I dove down into my wolf shape as fast as I could, so I could run.

And forget.

Eat, sleep, practice. Speak to no one. Touch no one.

Repeat.

Suit up for the game. Sit in the crowd, sit in the locker room, sit on the bench.

Repeat.

Maybe forget to eat. Maybe shift into wolf and run, run, run instead of sleep.

Repeat.

My alarm blared a heavy metal song by a group whose name I couldn’t remember. Didn’t care. I thumbed it off. I could crush my phone if I squeezed hard enough. Maybe the broken pieces would cut. I’d feel that, wouldn’t I? Feel that pain?

I licked my lips, my mouth stiff as if I hadn’t moved it in hours, days. I was keeping water down. But that was about it.

Maybe I was sick. Maybe I should go see Netti.

I pushed that thought away. I didn’t have a fever. Didn’t have a headache. It was just…numbness. I was numb. And that was fine. Better than the alternative.

This was a good place to be. Quiet. Alone. No one touched me. I didn’t need touch.

No one spoke to me. I didn’t need words.

No one needed me. I didn’t need anyone either.

There was hockey. Snips of it. Minutes at the end of games. Minutes, sometimes, when someone was injured and pulled off the ice.

Those minutes didn’t even add up to one period of play in a regular game but they were enough to make me want, and not enough to satisfy.

I felt like I was crossing a desert with only a teaspoon of water cupped in my palm.

The moments on the ice lit a fire in me. Made my blood pump. For those spare minutes, I was alive. Breathing. Real. And I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t have time to think of what it could be.

Then the moment was gone and I went back to my hotel room, stripped, and shifted into wolf. To run.

The alarm blared out the metal song again and I stared at the phone in my hand for a moment before turning the alarm off instead of just on snooze.

I rubbed my face with one hand. Beard had grown past the itchy stage, but I scratched at it anyway. My hair was longer than I usually kept it, falling well below my collar.

It didn’t seem to matter.

I turned the shower on hot and got in. When the water ran cold, I rubbed soap over my body, rinsed, and got out.

I dressed, my hands shaking as I knotted my tie. We were on the road again today. Just like we’d been on the road for most of the month. I’d forgotten where we were headed, and I didn’t care. My job was to dress, drink a shit ton of water, and show up so I could be ignored.

I could do that. I’d been doing it for weeks.

Coach Nowak stood at the front of the bus, and snapped his fingers.

I hunched farther down in my seat, eyes closed, listening, but otherwise not engaging.

“There is media on site,” he said. “National broadcast. So button your jackets, keep your mouths shut, smile, and represent the dignity of your team.”

No one argued. No one ever argued with him. Not even me. Not now. I’d gotten good at not caring.

I stood and grunted at the cramp in my back. Had I pulled something? Broken something?

No. For whatever reason, maybe vibes I was throwing off, no one on the teams we’d played had made any significant contact with me.

Maybe I really had turned invisible.

In those rare lucid moments when I could think clearly, I knew that was weird. But I’d made a habit of not thinking too hard and just kept my head down and did as I was told.

I pulled my duffle over my shoulder, made sure my headphones were stashed inside my suit jacket and took my turn down the aisle, like the last man going to the gallows.

The light, the noise, slammed into me like a physical thing. I shuddered and had to wrestle the wolf in me down and back, pushing the instant fight or flight reaction away.

A reporter was talking into a microphone and bright lights shone on her even though it was sunny at three o’clock in the afternoon. The cameraman behind her slowly panned across the players exiting the bus.

“First game between the rivals since the Dead Man draft, in which Tide coach Don Nowak chose the only wizard in the WHHL, and instead got his adopted brother, Duncan Spark,” the reporter said. “That very controversial substitution has this league, and many others, questioning how to value a first-marked wizard in sports.”

My heart was pounding wrong. Like it was shoved up too high against my collarbones and stuck there. I blinked sweat out of my eyes, then wiped it away. I was almost to the door of the bus. I had a feeling the camera wanted a good long look at the volunteer Dead Man.

Shit.

I smiled, but it felt fake as all hell.

“Mr. Spark! Duncan!” the reporter shouted. “How does it feel being back home, playing against your old team for the first time?”

Coach Nowak stood by the arena door, watching. I knew he had good hearing. He’d just told us all to keep our mouths shut.

So I should keep my mouth shut.

I locked gazes with him across the distance. That man was an asshole. I might not be the person I thought I was, but there was no doubting he was a monster.

I bent so my mouth was near the microphone she held.

“It’s gonna be a fun game. I hope I play.” My voice was shot. Too low, too rough, as if it hadn’t been used in weeks. And really, it hadn’t. Still, I threw the camera a steady look and smiled for the audience.

The reporter sucked in a short breath and started in on the rapid-fire questions.

I tuned her out and strode to the arena. Nowak couldn’t do anything to me in public. So I was surprised when he slapped my shoulder.

That contact hurt. I growled and jerked away. After weeks of zero physical contact, that slap was like a gunshot at close range.

He watched me, all the muscles in him tensed, ready to go to physical blows.

And…I thought about it.

I actually considered getting into a fight with him. One, because he was an abusive asshole and I’d wanted to punch him in the face since I met him. Two, because I would feel something.

It would be touch, even if it was pain. I would feel my flesh, even if it was bruising.

I would be in someone’s space and I would no longer be invisible.

“Told you to keep your mouth shut, Spark.”

I breathed hard, shaky breaths as my body trembled with the need for contact, the need for violence, the need for acceptance, and praise.

I hated it. Hated that the lines were blurring in my head.

If he hit me, at least he was paying attention to me. At least I was part of the world, and by proxy a part of the team.

But no. That sounded wrong. I knew it was wrong.

Still, the need was a deep, instinctive yearning and I huffed out a breath trying to push away the sudden rise of tears in my eyes.

Fuck these emotions. And fuck him for playing me.

“Screw you,” I growled. “You’re lucky I didn’t throw you to the media dogs.”

His eyebrows pinched and I could see the moment he realized we were on my old turf, my hometown, my people. That here, I could trash his reputation if I wanted to and people would listen to me.

“You’ve got balls,” he admitted. “Let’s see you show some on the ice.”

“You’d have to fucking play me first.”

His face lit up bright with a manic smile that made me take one step backward, watching his hands, expecting a gun or a knife.

We weren’t the only ones who had good hearing. The reporter, the cameraman, maybe even the scatter of people who were hanging around to watch the team unload, also could have sharp hearing, could be marked.

He had a reason for being outside the door, in the sunlight. He wanted to be seen and heard.

I set my stance and squared my shoulders. Preparing for whatever he was going to hit me with.

“You’re playing full shift tonight, Spark,” he said with that snakebite smile. “Fourth line. Don’t let me down.”

The breath just shot out of me like I’d been punched in the chest. That was the last thing I’d expected, and a part of me, okay, all of me, didn’t believe him.

It was like he’d pushed me into deep, deep water, the sand shifting beneath my feet. I didn’t know what to say. Didn’t want to ruin this opportunity, but knew there had to be a razor buried in this apple.

I clenched my teeth and nodded.

He grunted then dipped his head toward the interior of the arena.

It went against every instinct in me, both man and wolf, to have him at my back, but I walked into the building.

If I brushed my hair away from my neck and left my hand there, covering my spine while I walked, well, no one but one ex-girlfriend and one ex-teammate would know why.