The first voice I heard was Dad talking to the doctor outside my room.

Blurry memories floated at the edges of my awareness. The arena, the ambulance, the handler and paramedic, the former armed with a stun prod and tranquilizer gun, the latter with the big syringe full of enough knockout juice to keep me down for days.

“It’s not a full dose,” the paramedic had said. “Just enough to keep you out while we get you somewhere secure.”

“Random?” I asked.

The paramedic shook his head and stuck that needle in my arm, and then everything went black.

And now here was my dad’s voice. Asking to be left alone with me. No, not asking, telling. The other voice was deep and authoritative, which meant it was probably a doctor.

I lost track of time, but then Dad’s hand was on my face.

“Duncan, you’re okay, son. This is going to all work out. If you feel a little disconnected and dreamy it’s because they have you on a lot of drugs and fluids and glucose. You’re underweight, son. Dehydrated, stressed. You’re going to stay here at the hospital at least one full day, to see how quickly you recover.”

I opened my eyes and made a little happy sound.

Dad looked amazing. He wore a collared shirt under the red Mr. Rogers sweater I liked to tease him about. His glasses, his hair styled off to the side, darker than mine, but with a slight flip at the front because he’d been digging his fingers through it, all looked so familiar, so much like home.

He was worried, it was coming off him in waves.

“There you are.” He smiled, and it didn’t wobble even a little. My dad was a rock. I might beat him on muscle and height, but he beat me by a million on mental and emotional steadiness.

Nothing ever threw him. He was the guy everyone else turned to when things went to hell. A steady presence in the classes he taught, the community boards he was a member of, the library he loved, and the life of his family.

He pressed his hand over mine and it was warm. But it also trembled just a little before he squeezed my fingers.

“You’re okay, Duncan. Underfed, under-hydrated, under-slept. But nothing permanent. Nothing that can’t be fixed.”

I wanted to say something, because there was a big thing I was forgetting, something huge and dark that was just on the edge of my memory.

Random.

I sucked in a hard breath and my eyes went wide. My heart started beating really fast too, the machine in the room wild with it.

“He’s fine.” Dad used his “dad” voice. Firm with reason. No blame, just the truth. I trusted him. He would not lie to me.

But I had hurt Random. I had hit him.

I opened my mouth to scream, but there was no sound.

Only the pinch of a needle and darkness again.

Mom came in, kissed my forehead. Held one of my hands as she read my charts, then held Dad’s hand and kept her palm over my heart.

They talked. I listened in. But every time I heard my name or Random’s, I threw myself toward the foggy relief of the drugs.

My teammates came in—Thunderheads, not Tide. JJ and Thorn and Watson and the Terminators all in a row. Each of them touched me, my arm, my shoulder, the top of my head.

Coach Clay was there after they left, looking tired and furious and haunted. He ran his hand over his face and breathed hard into his palm before standing above me and just staring.

I returned the look, though he went in and out of focus.

Finally, he dropped down to sit in the chair next to the bed.

“Forgive me, Duncan.”

That was…a surprise.

“I never should have let you stand in for Random. I know what he is. What kind of man Nowak is.” His scowl was fierce, as was the baring of his teeth and narrowing of his eyes. “I thought the game, having it, having a win, would trump his need for revenge.”

I didn’t think he was talking about Random. I swallowed, but even that took concentration and time.

Coach Clay stared off in the distance for a while. I didn’t think he knew I was actually following what he said.

Maybe I wasn’t. The drugs were strong, and I was doing everything I could to keep reality out there at arm’s length, squishy and unfocused.

When I opened my eyes again, I knew it was night.

And I was not alone in my room.

But it was not Dad or Mom or Coach in the room. It was my old defenseman.

“Are you listening to me?” Graves asked.

I turned my head a little. He sat in the chair where, to my fuzzy sense of time, Coach Clay had been only a moment ago.

The shadows in the room had changed, and so had the sounds of the hospital. Time had passed.

I studied Hawthorn Graves, the eldest member of the Thunderheads, and he studied me right back.

Graves had this look in his eyes that always read as second-marked, wolf shifter, until suddenly it didn’t. I’d been curious about it before, about what he really was, because even though his paperwork said wolf, the man himself did not fit that mold.

The wolf in me knew that on a level I didn’t have words for. He wasn’t the same as me. Nor was he something I knew like coyote or fox.

But he was familiar. Recognizable on a spine-deep level.

Like a nightmare.

“Duncan I’m going to say this once. You’ll hear me.” Graves’s voice was low, and carried a bit of an accent that I still couldn’t tell if it was from Kentucky, or Texas or some place more Southern. Definitely cowboy of some kind.

I licked the inside of my mouth and moved my lips so I could speak. It was just…the way he looked at me made it clear I had his full attention. All of that hard, strange focus. It made me want to respond. To agree.

I huffed in acknowledgment. I was listening.

“You’ve made very poor choices,” he began.

Well, this wasn’t going to be one of my favorite conversations.

“Going to the Tide was stupid, but I understood it. Still understand it.” He added a nod, as if he knew I wanted to argue with every word coming out of his mouth.

“Still, it should have been me. Because I would not have broken.”

Like a finger snap, the fuzziness, the dreaminess, the distance and soft edges came into hard, cold focus.

“Fuck you.”

Hey, first words out of my mouth and they were good ones.

He didn’t move, didn’t shift his lounging position. “You know why I wouldn’t have broken under that asshole’s treatment?”

“Because you’re an ass?” Two for two. I was on fire.

“Nope. Because I do not deny what I am.”

That was news. “Bull.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You got something to say? Say it, kid.”

“You’re not a wolf.”

He paused, then nodded. “All right. What am I, then?”

“I don’t know.”

He leaned forward. “Team looks to me like an alpha. Am I an alpha, Duncan?”

He was something. Power. Chaos. Strength. He had a way of drawing us all together, a way of making us work like we were bound together. Like we were a team.

Those were all things an alpha, a leader should be.

But…

No. That wild thing shifted in his eyes and I knew he was not an alpha.

“Do you know how you can see what I am not?” The question took my brain few minutes to unpack. But when I got it, I finally got it.

“Because I’m an alpha,” I croaked.

He nodded, pleased, eyes twinkling. “It’s why I thought you’d be able to handle Nowak. Why you wouldn’t put up with someone torturing you like that.”

I didn’t know what to say. If he was going for a pep talk, he was failing spectacularly. I didn’t need to be reminded that I was weak. That I broke.

“I failed you,” he said.

That was not at all what I expected him to say. I frowned.

“I thought you knew,” he continued. “That you’re an alpha. But you didn’t know, did you?”

I shook my head, and really, it didn’t hurt as much as I’d thought it would. Thank you, second-marked healing abilities.

“I forget how young some of you boys are, with how you play out there, all attitude and power.” He settled back in the chair.

“I’m not that young. You’re just old.”

That got a twitch of an eyebrow out of him and a half nod. “Half true,” he conceded.

Graves’s words, this conversation grounded me. I’d been blown apart, all the bits of me flinging away from my center, arcing out and out, getting farther and farther away from what I was, who I was.

Every choice I’d made, the silence, the shifts, the friendship, the runs, the endless isolation was a bomb that had gone off weeks ago, even though I was still reeling from the shockwaves.

I could own up to stupid decisions. I was the one who had volunteered in Random’s place. I was the one who had refused to answer my parents’ calls, who had lied to them, pushed them away. I had gone into this team with the idea of cutting all ties with the Thunderheads, with my team, my friends, my family.

I knew, in my gut, that if I would have reached out to Coach Clay or Graves or any of my teammates, told them what was going on, they would have been there for me, at my side. They had my back.

We weren’t just friends, we were a team, a body, a unit.

We were family.

“Coming around to your senses finally?” Graves asked.

“I fucked up.”

“Yes, you did. Tell me how.”

“You know.”

“That’s right. I want to know if you do.”

“I thought I had to do it alone.”

“Yes.”

“I thought they were my team.”

“Yes.”

“I thought I was just one of them, just like anyone else, equal, not equal-but-different.”

“Because?”

“Because I’m alpha.” I met his gaze. Hawthorn Graves’s hard eyes glittered with approval.

“You are.”

“I fucked up because I screwed up the Tide’s team dynamic by going there and not being what I could be. What they expected me to be on an instinctive level. What I am.”

“That team was already screwed up. You have some choices to make, Duncan Spark.” The way he said my whole name put a shiver through me. He had some serious Obi-Wan Jedi shit going on.

I couldn’t help but grin at him.

“What’s wrong with your face?” he asked.

“Nothing. Just happy.”

“You’re in a hospital because you lost your mind in the middle of a hockey game. You put your brother in the room next to you. There some reason to be happy I don’t see?”

A wave of sickness rolled through me. I had to swallow several times so I didn’t just barf into the wastebasket. Random was hurt. I’d beat the shit out of him.

Heat washed over me as I simultaneously started shivering. I was freezing. Burning up.

A hand pressed down on my shoulder, grounding me, keeping the bits of me that were flying apart stuck back together.

Graves leaned over me, his eyes softer than I’d seen them before, his expression worried.

“He’s going to be fine.”

Hearing it from a man I knew wasn’t going to just say something to make me feel better, the man making me face my truths, meant everything.

“Breathe, Duncan. You got a lot of life left to live. So does Random.”

He exhaled slowly, noisily so I’d pay attention and follow along.

I did. “Which room?”

He tipped his head to the left. “He really is going to be fine.”

“How? I…I didn’t hold back.”

“You forget he’s a wizard, kid?”

“Of course I didn’t forget.”

“Oh? You forget he knows how to take care of himself?”

I narrowed my eyes. “People need to stop telling me what I think about him.”

He met my gaze, evenly. I knew this, this right here—what my relationship was to Random, who I was to him, how I saw him—was a hill I’d die on. This was where I drew the line of what people assumed.

Slade had been wrong about me. I made choices to protect the people I loved because I loved them, not because I needed them to be weak so I could be strong. That was clear to me now that my brain was working again. I’d been a fool to believe it was ever in me to do someone harm that way.

Graves’s eyebrow twitched. “That’s right. People don’t get to tell you who you are to him, or who he is to you.”

“Damn straight,” I said, my voice low, steady, and powerful in a way it normally wasn’t.

Alpha.

“Damn straight,” he agreed.

I snuck out of my bed a couple hours later. Mom and Dad had come in again, and finding me awake, I’d gotten an earful of love and reprimands. Mostly love, because my family knew we all made stupid, hurtful mistakes and we deserved to move past those mistakes and be better people.

Still, I knew how much this mistake hurt them, seeing one of their kids lose his mind and hurt their other kid.

It hurt me too. Killed me.

Which was why I was walking barefoot and bare-assed—the hospital gown not doing much to keep my back door covered—one room over where Random should be.

I didn’t knock first. I just stepped in.

The room was identical to mine. He was in the bed, sleeping. It was a couple hours before dawn and no one else was in the room. Mom and Dad had gone home to shower, change, and let their respective workplaces know they were taking some time off.

I couldn’t even take another step. I had to get my breathing under control so I wouldn’t fall under the panic that raged in the margins of my awareness.

But finally I walked into that room and stood beside his bed. It felt like it had taken me a million years to get there.

“Took you long enough.” Random opened his eyes. He hadn’t really been asleep.

“How long you been awake?” I asked. All the other things I wanted to say felt too big to shove into words.

“Since you opened the door.”

“Oh.” I picked at a hangnail and resisted the urge to fidget from foot to foot.

I wanted to run out of the room. It was paramount I get away from him. Get away from the guilt eating at me. I’d hurt him. I’d broken him.

“Duncan,” Random said. “Sit down, okay?”

I blinked a couple times. Sit. He wanted me to sit. I looked for a chair.

“On the bed, you idiot.”

I moved woodenly, pressed first my fingers then palm onto the mattress, my gaze locked on his eyes, watching for even the slightest wince or twitch of pain.

He made a face at me. “Sit.”

I swallowed down the knee-jerk reaction to tell him that I was not his damn dog.

But I couldn’t say those things anymore because we weren’t brothers anymore because I’d broken him. We couldn’t be friends. We couldn’t be teammates.

I dipped my head and sat on the edge of the bed, facing him. Ready for the punishment I deserved.

“Jesus, you are a mess,” he said. His voice was a little raspy, but it was still all him. And fuck me, but I was happy just to hear him talk. To know he was alive.

“Look at me.”

But I couldn’t move. I couldn’t bear to find out what I’d see in his eyes. Hatred. Pity. Loathing.

“Duncan, what the hell, dude? Don’t you like me even a little anymore?”

I jerked, my shoulders going all tight and stiff, because of course I liked him. He was my brother. I’d follow him to hell if he asked me to—even if he didn’t. But I didn’t deserve him. Didn’t deserve to have him anymore.

He was gone. We were done.

“I can’t—” That was all I could get out. Then there wasn’t any more air. There was only guilt, choking and so thick, I thought my lungs would harden from it.

“Stop it.” His voice was stronger, certain. “Look at me Dunc. Now.”

I did as he asked and lifted my head. How could I not?

“Do you see this?” He pointed at his face, made a small circle with his finger indicating all of it, forehead to chin to forehead. “Do you see my skin? I have a bruise right here.” He pointed at the left side of his jaw, slanted his head so I could see it better.

And yeah, I saw it. Zeroed in like it was the most important thing I’d ever see and there’d be a test on it later.

It was a big bruise covering his cheek, but hadn’t reached his eye yet. A pointy wash of black stabbed down under his chin and dribbled across his neck. Blood moved, and a hit to the face often colored lower than the impact point.

I didn’t remember hitting him in the jaw. But I hadn’t cared where my fist was landing so long as I could hit something.

“Random,” I said, my voice tightened to a whine. I wanted to hide.

“No. Shut up. We’re going to do this my way. My way.”

I nodded. Yeah. Whatever he wanted. Any way he wanted to make me pay, I deserved it.

“Good. Now look at my neck.” He lifted his face, stared at the ceiling. I did as he asked. Other than that one black bruise on his left side, his skin looked normal to me.

“I—”

“No,” he ordered. “I’m not done. Sit there. Look at my arms.” He had on a hospital gown like mine. Short sleeves, and that weird industrial blue only the hospital ever used.

I stared at his right arm, including the shoulder when he shoved the sleeve up higher and twisted so I could see it, then the left when he repeated the same move.

“But—”

“Shut it.” He crunched up and pulled open the gown in the back so he could push it down to his waist.

“You don’t—”

“Look at my body, Duncan. Look at my skin. You see this?” He pointed at his collarbones, his chest, his hard-muscled stomach. “You see any bruises there? Anything at all on my ribs? Breaks? Swelling?” He twisted for that too, to show me his sides.

I opened my mouth, shut it. He was glaring at me. Angry. But he was not done.

He kicked off the thin blanket and dropped his long hairy legs on top of it so I could look at them too. There were a couple smaller, faded bruises on his shins, one on his thigh that looked pretty new, though it was already brown whereas the one on his jaw was a hard, bloody red-black.

“Nothing’s broken.” He rolled his feet in a circle to show me his ankles were working. “Nothing’s broken.” He twisted his hands in circles and waggled his fingers at me. “I need to you see this. Need you to see me.”

He shoved his legs back under the covers, then sat the rest of the way, pulling his legs up toward him, crossing them like he always did, and squaring off to me.

“Do you see me, Duncan?” He dipped his head to better catch my gaze. “Do you see me?”

I let my gaze wander over his shoulders, bare chest, arms. Took my time because what I saw didn’t make any damn sense. I’d felt him breaking under my assault. I’d hit him hard, and those hits had connected. I’d been there when they hauled him off the ice on a stretcher. My knuckles still hurt from all the impacts.

“You. I broke you,” I choked out. “I hit—”

He nodded, his nostrils flared. “Yeah, you did, you asshole. Jesus, you can land a punch. But c’mon. Seriously, dude? You think I’m gonna lay there and let you pound the shit out of me?”

“But…” The world had tipped off a cliff I wasn’t sure how to hold onto it. “How?”

“Magic.” He wiggled his fingers again and gave me the biggest shit-eating grin in the world. “Remember? I’m a wizard, Harry.”

I blinked. Just. Everything in my head went sort of white noise. How could he have done anything with magic to keep me from hurting him? I’d felt those punches connect. Hell, I’d reveled in them.

“Whoa, okay, you’re going a really horrible gray color,” he said. “I think you might need to lie down, Dunc. ’Cause if you pass out, I’ll have to call people in to get you off the floor. I’m on a weight restriction for the next twelve hours or so.”

“I can’t— I don’t—”

“Right here, dude.” He moved over so there was room for me to collapse. He patted the side of the bed by his pillow, shifting to lie back too, on his side.

We’d shared a bed more times than I usually admitted in mixed company. It wasn’t a sexual thing—I so didn’t want to get it on with a guy I considered my brother. It was more that I’d adopted him, brought the sad lonely little Random Hazard home to my parents. And they’d let me keep him.

He was mine, which meant I was supposed to look after him. And as a kid, I’d had to make sure he was sticking around. So sometimes I hung out in his room talking, or playing video games when my dad wasn’t watching. And then I just stayed there, sleeping on one side of the bed while he slept on the other.

Mom had told me it had more to do with the fact that I was an only child, and needed siblings, a pack. That it was as necessary as breathing for a second-marked.

I stretched out next to him.

He settled facing me, but took all the pillow, propping it under his head so he could stare down at me judgmentally.

“Tell me.”

“This bed isn’t even big enough for one of us,” I groused.

His eyebrows shifted upward. “Well, if you would have used your words instead of your fists earlier, we wouldn’t be here, would we?”

At the reminder of what I’d done, all the words in me dried up.

“No,” he said, “no. You don’t get to clam up. You have to talk.”

“Why aren’t you in traction?”

“Not what I wanted to start with, but fine. When you lost your ever loving mind and went insane, I pulled magic around me. It shielded me.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“I don’t think you were seeing anything really, am I right?”

“Yeah,” I breathed. “Still got in one shot.” My gaze tracked to his jaw.

“One punch let me know you’d cracked.”

“Or I was just really pissed at you.”

“You’ve never been that angry at me.”

I clenched my teeth. Evidence to the contrary was right there on his face.

“That,” he pointed at his jaw, “wasn’t anger at me. You couldn’t even see me. I was something else. Or everything else. I was a wall you were trying to punch your way through.”

He was very insightful, my wizard brother.

“So,” he said. “Talk to me, Duncan. What’s wrong?”

I sighed, not even knowing where to start. Suddenly, I was just tired. Tired of all the choices I’d made, all the things I’d done.

Tired with the noise in my head. The doubt.

Sort of tired of being me.

Hazard snapped his fingers in front of my nose and little green and purple sparks flicked and kindled into a tiny flame.

I grinned. “Cool.”

“Got your attention?”

“Do it again.” I loved when he did magic. Especially the shiny stuff.

He rolled his eyes, but I could tell he wasn’t mad. He snapped again, and this time the sparks were red and yellow, the flame a little star.

“Spiffy.”

“Talk.”

I inhaled, exhaled. “They hate me.” I waited for his reaction.

“Just keep going. Say it all. I’ll have an opinion when you’re done.” He settled his pillow into a more comfortable position. “Go.”

So I told him. Sometimes I could look him in the eye when I went over something, like making friends with Slade. But other times, most of the time, I stared at my fingers, picking at the seamed edge of the hospital blanket.

I got through it all. And I do mean all. I was good at being truthful with Random. We’d had a lot of years to build that trust.

“Finally being on the ice, playing…” I blew out a shaky breath. I was sweating, and freezing, like I’d just broken a bad fever and still didn’t have my feet under me yet. “Just playing the game, Ran. It was…” I let go of the blanket I had destroyed and pressed my fingertips into the corners of my eyes, wiping away the moisture there. “It was like breathing again. And it was hell.”

He didn’t say anything for a little bit. Long enough for me to get my breathing nice and steady. Long enough for me to clear my eyes and dislodge the weight on my chest.

I finally looked back at him, half expecting him to be asleep.

But he was watching me, frown lines above his nose and crinkling the corner of his eyes.

“Okay. So you’re an alpha.”

I snorted. “That’s what you got out of all this?”

“Well, that and the fact that Nowak tortured you.”

“It wasn’t torture.”

“Bull. Shit.”

The look in his eyes was fierce. “If I had done something with those letters, or reported him when he threatened me in the diner…”

“No,” I said. “You do not get to second-guess yourself. You do not get to take the blame for what that asshole does. Got it? What he did to me was cruel. It would have been torture if he kept it up, I agree.”

“Jesus—”

“I’m not excusing him,” I said over his protest. “It was an utter shit move. Against the rules.”

“Totally,” he said on a hard exhale. “Those prods are only to be used sparingly. Not to physically incapacitate to unconsciousness.”

“What he did to me is something I can use against him. But I don’t think anyone I go to will listen to me alone. One voice isn’t enough. One player isn’t enough.”

“Can you ask the other players if Nowak ever did something like that to them?”

“We aren’t really on speaking terms. Not even when they were speaking to me.”

I could go—”

“Maybe,” I said, cutting him off again. “I have a video.”

He went dead still.

“How?”

“One of the players.”

“That’s proof, Duncan. Player abuse. Nowak can get canned for that.”

“Can he? It’s one event. And if you and I go to the commissioner with it, do you think they’ll listen to us, or write it off as justified? Everyone knows I like to fight on the ice, that I’m a hothead. Especially after tonight. And you and I are kind of a package deal. They might think we’re both out to destroy Nowak’s reputation so I can come back to the Thunderheads.”

There was a tug in my chest. I still missed being on the team.

“We can give it to Coach Clay,” Random said.

“He’d go to the commissioner too. Same problem. The Dead Man pick will make him look biased.”

Random chewed on his bottom lip. “Nowak told me he has people. In the league. Even high up. That he can kill any bad press.”

“You think he was telling the truth?”

The nod was immediate.

“We need to think this through,” he said. “Be smart about what we have. If we want to take Nowak down…”

It was my time to nod quickly.

“…then we need to keep our evidence somewhere safe and not let anyone know about it until we have a plan. I still think we need to talk to Coach Clay. He’s on our side.”

“I agree. But not yet. I don’t know who Nowak has on his payroll, and I don’t want anyone to know I have the vid until we know who will make sure it gets seen by the right people.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea. I think we tell someone. We have to do something, Duncan. So he can’t hurt you.”

I snorted. “He can’t hurt me. I won’t let him.”

“You already let him.”

“Yeah, but I got things figured out now. Alpha things.”

“He’ll hurt other players. Like that guy, Slade.”

“He didn’t deserve getting cut,” I said. “That was a shit move.”

Random was quiet. I knew he was sorry I’d lost a friend, but that was a part of hockey too. One day you’d be set, a part of the family, a part of the team. The next day you were gone.

There had to be a team that needed Slade. He was good.

“Go back to the alpha thing,” Random said. “What’s your plan?”

“I’m not an alpha. Not yet. It’s like…I know what I am, but until I do something with it, claim it and own it, I’m not really that thing yet. I’m still just potential.”

“All passing, no shots, no goal.”

“Yeah. No goals, no goods.”

“So what are we going to do?” he asked.

“We?”

He sighed. “You think I’m letting you do anything without having your back ever again, Donuts? Don’t be stupid. We’re a team. You and me. No matter where we’re playing hockey. No matter where we live. No matter what else happens.”

I didn’t expect those words, a little high handed and derisive, would do so much to settle all the sharp edges inside me.

“Okay.” I swallowed. “You and me. No matter what happens.”

“You and me,” he agreed like we’d shook on it. “Now, what do you want to do?”

“About?”

“Hockey, alpha, that asshole Nowak.”

“Big questions.”

“Yeah. But if we figure those out, everything else will be easy street. Start with hockey. You still want to play, right?”

I winced. “They’re gonna suspend the hell out of me for attacking you.”

“Of course they are. Welcome to the club. But after that. You still want to play?”

He sounded nervous. Like I’d give up on the one thing that made my blood sing.

“Yeah, I still want to play.”

“Thunderheads or Tide? Or a different team? If you had a choice.”

“If I could pick? Thunderheads. All the way.” I couldn’t quite meet his gaze because this was one of the things I had to take as my responsibility. “I screwed up with the Tide. I wasn’t a good teammate. I didn’t, couldn’t, figure a way to fit in.”

“Like they gave you a chance.” He was angry for me, which was nice, but kind of moot at this point.

“Doesn’t matter. It’s on me. I’m still a Tide. It’s my job to find my place there, and make a difference for the team.”

“Not every player fits in every team, Duncan. Not even in the NHL. You know that.”

“Sure. But I’m an easygoing guy. I can make friends with anyone. You know me. I’m good at…”

“Belonging?”

That one word knocked the wind out of me.

“Yeah,” I said, trying not to sound too desperate for that. “Belonging.”

“Where do you belong, Duncan?”

“With my team.” It was instant, easy. I knew that truth as well as I knew my own heartbeat. “But I can’t come back.” Which cemented that, in my heart, Thunderheads were still my team.

He snorted. “Coach Clay’s been working on how to get you back since the day you walked out, you idiot.”

“Really? He… Really?”

“He could just wait until Nowak cuts you, if he cuts you,” he went on like this wasn’t my life, my career he was talking about. Like it was obvious that at the end of it all I’d be back on the team, my team.

It was that confidence, so casual, just tossed out there like he didn’t even have to think about it twice that settled the part of me that had been running hard and fast, flat out, trying to save my family.

Random hadn’t let go of me, even though I’d let go of him, thinking doing so would make him safer. I’d expected his anger to be permanent. I’d expected my one chance to be on a team with him to be over. He refused to entertain those thoughts.

“The rules say he can’t buy you off the Tide. Not until the next trade right before the actual playoffs,” he said. “So if we make it that far, to the playoffs—hell, even if we don’t—Coach Clay will put an offer down for you.”

I knew what I had to do. I knew what would settle my debt with my teammates. I knew how I could make up for my dumb choices. I was an alpha. It was time to be an alpha. Time to be the Tide’s alpha.

I heard him as he rambled on about trades and Coach Clay and handling the press, but so many things were clicking into place that I was having to hold really still while the entire world rearranged itself and settled.

“I can’t come back,” I blurted out.

“Like hell.”

“Not yet. Not until… I’m an alpha, Ran.”

“You keep saying that.”

“It’s big. More than I thought I could handle. But it’s why everything went crazy. I’m a part of the Tide. Not the way I was trying to be. But the right way. As their alpha.”

It was his turn to blink and wait for words to make sense. “What are you even talking about?”

“I have to go back.”

“I think you’re suspended.”

“Probably. After that.”

“No,” he said firmly. “You don’t have to go back and be an alpha for a team that hates you. This is you trying to save people again, Duncan! Jesus, learn from your mistakes.”

“Ouch, buddy.”

He was scared for me. It was all over him. But I wasn’t in that broken headspace anymore. Couldn’t return there if I tried. Denying and ignoring what I was—alpha—had messed up all my signals. On a team full of shifters, it had messed up their signals too.

Hell, I was lucky none of them hadn’t just shifted and killed me out of mercy. I knew instinctively that the moment I stepped up as alpha for them, for me the team would settle into something different. Better.

He rubbed his eyes. “Sorry. That was out of line. Can’t you just…be an alpha here? With me. You know your mom and dad want you home. They haven’t even touched your room.”

“They haven’t?”

“Well, your mom might have painted it.”

“Uh-huh.”

“And then she said it needed new shades. And a closet organizer. And art.”

“Hasn’t changed a thing.”

“She didn’t move the bike in there yet.”

“Outstanding.”

“There’s a treadmill. And yoga mats. And a water cooler.”

I chuckled, really the first time my chest didn’t feel like it was strapped and buckled down tight. “Good to know nothing’s changed. My bed get shoved into the garage?”

“No, it’s against one wall. New comforter and pillows.”

“Pink with bows?”

“Bows? Your mom?”

“Yeah, what was I thinking? So patchwork quilt or something fuzzy?”

“Fuzzy.”

“But the bed’s still there.”

“Yes. That’s what I’m saying. There’s still a place for you. Even alpha you. As long as your majesty doesn’t mind climbing over some yoga blocks.”

“His majesty approves of blocks.”

“But?” He was serious again. So was I.

“But I have to take care of what I started, Ran. It’s important to me. It’s the right thing to do.”

“No.”

“Yes.”

“I thought I was important to you. I thought the Thunderheads were important to you. I thought being here was important to you.”

“It is. It still is, always. But so is fixing what I screwed up.”

“You didn’t start that shit show, Duncan. They wanted you hurt and gone the moment they had you. They didn’t want you. They abandoned you. I hate them for that,” he added in a vicious whisper.

“Yeah, I wasn’t a fan of it either.”

“So why the hell go back?”

“For one thing, I owe it to my teammates.” I shook my head. “No, you can’t argue me out of this. I damaged that team. Not from being there, but from letting Coach Nowak define who I was to them.

“I thought if I worked hard and did what I was told, I’d fit in, no alpha required. But that’s not how it works. No one can tell me how I fit, how I belong, what I can bring to the team. That’s on me. Nowak sure as hell can’t tell me, because he’s an asswipe, and we both know it.”

“You just told me you did everything you could to fit in. They wouldn’t even talk to you.” His voice was rising and his eyes were doing that sort of glittery yellow thing they did when magic got the upper hand of his emotions.

He was this close to losing it in some huge, wonderful, terrifying way.

I loved it. Like seriously. My brother was this big ole magic bomb always set to explode. How lucky was I?

Still, it wasn’t like him to be this volatile.

I had a quick moment to wonder if maybe I was a part of why. Maybe Random wasn’t at his best, controlling his magic, his temper, when I wasn’t around.

Maybe I grounded him too. Just like knowing he had my back, was a part of my world, a part of my—

—pack—

—family put the ground beneath my feet and rooted me there, strong and steady.

It was a big concept to acknowledge something that had been unconscious between us—

—alpha—

—and to accept it now as a conscious thing. My new reality.

It was tantalizing, the idea of being the guy Random would turn to, rely upon. Even more alluring was the idea that maybe that draw was there with my team too. That maybe all those players on the Thunderheads’ roster were looking for something in me, and were missing it now that I wasn’t there.

Was that possible? Did they need me as family, just like I needed them?

I held that idea, savored it for a good long moment.

Then I put it aside.

Right now, I had something to finish. Something to settle and make right.

Random pushed the blanket off his feet and twisted toward the edge of the bed.

“Where are you going, sailor?” I asked. “This is your bed.”

“If you’re going to be stupidly stubborn about going back, I have to take care of a few things.”

“Like what?”

“The press.”

I hadn’t even peeked at the media storm I was sure I’d set off when I’d attacked Random. It had to be bad.

First wizard in the WHHL came with a lot of public scrutiny, and not a lot of it had been flattering.

“You gonna give an interview?” I asked.

“Not exactly.” He pressed his fingers to the machine by his bed, bent his head for a second as if he were listening to the monitor’s innards, then stood and pulled the sensors off his arm.

The machine kept beeping along, monitoring his vitals even though it wasn’t hooked up to him.

“No way,” I breathed. “Magic?”

He nodded. “We have about four hours before anyone’s coming in here to check on me.”

“Mom and Dad?”

“I made them go home and get some sleep. We scared the crap out of them. I told them I’d keep an eye on you.”

He pulled his jeans and T-shirt out of the duffle Mom or Dad must have brought and slipped into them. Then he put on his boots.

“You going out?” I asked.

“Nope.” He shrugged into a hoodie with the cloud and lighting logo over the front and thunderheads across the back. “We both are. Get dressed.”