The bus ride to Tacoma was odd. I got looks of both admiration and wariness. No one wanted to know they had a teammate who could go crazy at the drop of a glove.

Fighting was a part of hockey, especially here in West Hell. But even so, fights weren’t usually because a player had lost track of reality.

Shifting while on the ice showed a loss of control over the magic inside. We were used to that: Canidae and Felidae ready for a tilly. But to see a man lose his shit and beat the crap out of a player in man form?

That was not normal.

I didn’t duck their stares, but didn’t challenge them either. Just kept my gaze steady, put in my headphones and eventually closed my eyes for the ride.

The league had suspended me for three games. Weird that I got a lighter sentence than Hazard, when I’d done and intended to do more physical damage than he had with his magic the other month.

But he had used magic, and I’d just been a man losing his marbles. If I’d shifted and tried to eat Hazard’s head, then I probably would have gotten a five game suspension.

Hockey logic. Gotta love it.

I thought Coach Nowak would have wanted a word with me after we got to Tacoma, but he just told me to get the hell out of his sight and turned to the media waiting for him.

I went back to my hotel, fell into the scratchy sheets, and dropped into a deep, deep sleep.

The team skate had been planned for late morning, so I got there early enough to get changed into my gear and get on the ice before anyone showed up.

I heard them come in, saw some of my teammates walk past the ice to the lockers, saw the equipment handler come out to watch me doing easy laps before he shook his head and walked away.

By the time the team finally hit the ice, I was done with my warm up and had found a spot in the stands where I could watch the team, but not be too close. About half way up, center ice.

The players knew I was there. Coach Nowak knew it too. But I was holding still and being quiet. There wasn’t any reason for him to call me out. Ignoring me was more his style, unless I got in his face. And I wasn’t going to do that. Yet.

The team seemed frustrated and erratic on the ice. Well-practiced drills came off herky-jerky. Shots on net went wide, high, or hit the pipes with hammer-to-anvil pings.

It was easy to see from up in the seats, my head clear for the first time in ages, my arm itching from the quickly healing tattoo.

Being with Random, seeing Mom and Dad when they picked us up from the tattoo shop, had done something miraculous for me. Mom and Dad took turns hugging me and reprimanding me. “We don’t sneak out of the hospital at night, Duncan,” and “We’re going to find you a new apartment. No more living in a hotel.”

I felt more grounded, more whole, more me than I had since I’d decided to volunteer for Dead Man. I knew who my family was and knew they were with me. No matter where I lived. No matter where I played.

Mom and Dad were driving up this weekend to help me find a “real” place to live. They had been doing a lot of research online and had found a room I could rent from a couple who had turned their basement into an apartment.

Dad was happy because it was just a few minutes away from the arena, which meant less of me having to navigate Tacoma traffic. Mom was happy because one of the owners was a nurse and a second-marked, while the other had played a lot of rugby in college.

Coach Clay had found me and Random and Mom and Dad in the little hole-in-the-wall breakfast place, Omelettes, Omelettes, Omelettes (which served, surprise! Omelettes) and had asked if he could have a word with me alone.

Random had immediately stood, ready to defend me, and Dad had folded his arms across his chest, taking the measure of Coach Clay, while Mom, ever quick to the point simply asked, “Why?”

Coach Clay hadn’t flinched from her tone. But she wasn’t his mom.

Her tone stopped Random cold, and stopped me too.

I met his wide eyes. It had been years since we’d heard that out of her. Like maybe back when we’d strung a rope from our roof to the neighbor’s patio so we could zip line over the metal fence.

“I just want to discuss the game, and no, I’m not going to tell him he should know better than trying to turn a hockey game into a street brawl. I assume the three-game suspension is enough to remind him of that.”

I ducked my head, because even though I wasn’t his player, he was still my coach. He had chosen me out of so many others to be a part of his team. His opinion of me, his opinion of my game, my actions, and the world of hockey I was trying to navigate meant a lot to me.

“It’s fine,” I told Mom. “I’ll be right back.” I moved toward the door, because this place used to be a shoe store or something—all wood and brick, but very narrow and crowded with as many tables and chairs as they could bribe the fire marshals to let them get away with.

The morning air was brisk and welcome, bleached clean from the cool wash of rain that had fallen hours ago, clouds gray and clumpy obscuring any winter blue the sky might have to offer.

Oregon and Tacoma were only about a hundred and forty miles apart, but I swear the smell of the air, the loft of the clouds always felt different.

I moved to the left, out of the way of the door and leaned against the alley side of the building.

Coach Clay followed—not that I could hear him—and stepped past me so he could lean on the brick wall next to me. We were both staring across the narrow space that wouldn’t even be wide enough for those tiny electric cars that fit into your back pocket.

“I want to apologize,” he began.

I groaned.

“No. Let me talk, Duncan.” He waited a second. I stuck my hands in my back pockets and nodded.

“I made a mistake, and that’s on me. I should not have let you volunteer. I knew…I know what kind of a man Nowak is. What he’s been. I thought…well, it doesn’t matter what I thought.”

“Matters to me,” I mumbled.

He stuck his hands in his back pockets too. “All right. I thought you’d slip into that team like a drop of water in a stream and be one of their best players. You have this way about you that makes you easy to like. Hazard doesn’t have that. No, don’t defend him, it’s true. He’s more closed off. Prickly. I could see the disaster of letting him be a part of that team from a thousand miles away. You weren’t my first choice to send in his place.”

He paused then, scowled at the crack in the concrete across from us.

“Graves?” I guessed.

“Yeah,” he breathed, and there was more there. Things I could not quite catch before they were gone. “He would have weathered that storm without breaking a sweat. He’s…”

“Tough? Better than me?”

Clay rocked his head my way. “Don’t jump on yourself just to get ahead of it, kid. I was going to say he’s a survivor. And he’s been around. Been through a lot of shit. He’d have survived it all.”

There it was again, a weight in his gaze, a note in his words that made me feel like there was more to this conversation I wasn’t hearing.

“Okay?” I wanted him to explain so I could understand why we were in an alley talking about things that couldn’t be changed.

“It was my call, and I made the wrong one. You never should have been dropped into the middle of that, Duncan. I was wrong. I failed as your coach.”

He shifted his position, one shoulder resting on the wall. I turned to face him. His forehead was lined, and more lines folded between his eyebrows. Tension made the skin around his mouth tight, the skin at his throat twitch. He was angry about this. Angry at himself.

“You couldn’t have stopped me.” The words were out of my mouth before I had time to think them through. His eyebrows hitched up and his breathing shifted into something less short and angry, but I had said my truth.

I was not backing down now. Not ever again.

“It was my choice to put myself in Hazard’s place. I fought you for it. And I won. I don’t regret this, Coach. It hasn’t been easy, but…” I glanced off over his shoulder, searching for the right words. “I’m finding something there. Something I don’t think I would have figured out for a long, long time if I hadn’t gone.”

“And what is that?” His words were measured, calm. Waiting. Maybe even trusting, hoping.

“Who I am. Who I want to be.”

“And who is that?”

I ticked my gaze back to his. “More than a hockey player.”

His pupils narrowed, his eyes tightening. I could feel it in him, the beast buried in his bones responding to the beast buried in mine.

Alpha.

He saw it in me. And that didn’t bother me one bit.

From the slow creep of his smile, it didn’t bother him either. “Holy crap, Spark. Look at you.”

I couldn’t help it. I grinned. “Yeah.” I ducked my head, nervous all of a sudden, standing here in front of a man whose regard I really valued. “Look at me.”

He was quiet for a moment or two while I found my shoes really interesting. I was thinking it was time to go back to the restaurant. To my parents. My family. To where I still blended in and didn’t stand out.

Because what Coach saw in me…that was all about standing out.

I wanted that. I wanted to be that. But it was still new, a very different thing than me assing around being loud. This was…more.

This was stepping up for more than just others.

This was stepping up for myself.

“You want out of there, you say the word, Spark,” he said. “I’ll find a way to bring you home.”

I swallowed, my chest tight at hearing the warmth and conviction in his words. He would fight for me. And that meant a lot.

But I needed to do some fighting for myself before I dragged anyone else into it. Although…

“So I notice you’re down a right winger.”

Coach shifted his stance. “Happens I am. Why?”

“I know someone who just got cut. Could give him a shot, maybe?”

“Spark, I like you, but you are not my talent scout, kid.”

I smiled. “Whatever you say, Coach.”

But here, sitting in the stands and watching the Tide play, I figured I might be a decent talent scout if I wanted to be. Watching the Tide play made it look like they had no talent at all. Every pass was just that much too fast or a hair too slow. Every drill was either one step too far, one skate over the line, one shot too wide.

There were players on the ice, yes. They were going through the drills, yes. But they were not doing any of that together. There was no click. No sync. No groove or rhythm that everyone fell into.

I kept my eyes on Steele. He was the Captain. He should be the one pulling them all together. But he just looked tired. Like someone who had been yelling into the wind for so long, he knew it was hopeless to keep shouting.

No one was guiding that team. No one was holding the center of it, grounding it. No one was mashing all the separate pieces together to show it what it could be.

I could see a dozen ways the players would work better together. Could see the lines that joined them, the commonalities that tugged at them whether they knew it or not. The positions they played, the countries they were from, how magic marked them, all played into the game.

Other things too. Who liked pineapple on pizza, who hated ice cream. Who went for the craft beer and who preferred Budweiser. Things that could join them.

Join us.

But someone had to stand up and insist that all those strings could knot together and become this one thing we all created.

Pack.

This could be a pack. It wasn’t. Not even close. But there was a subtle pull there, a reaching out that happened now and again. The supportive stick tap, the insult that made someone laugh. It was there, this thing the team could be.

And I knew how to fix it. The Tide could be a team that moved together, planned together, played together.

Every player down there had forgotten one thing: hockey was a hell of a lot of fun. No matter what else I did I was going to show them hockey could be fun again.

“There he is. I thought you were a ghost. You done taking swings at your ex-teammate and causing the media stir of the century?”

I bit back a groan as my heartbeat kicked up into a gallop.

“Hey, Netti.”

“Oh,” she said, sitting next to me. “You do remember my name. So why have you been avoiding me?”

“I haven’t—”

Her eyebrows were deadly weapons, cutting right through my bull.

“Do you know what I thought when I first saw you?” I said.

“How lucky you were to have a great assistant trainer?”

“That was the second thing. The first was how gorgeous you are. And then you started talking and giving me shit, and I couldn’t keep my eyes off of you.” I cleared my throat.

She was silent. Apparently in shock.

“I wanted to ask you out. I still want that. But this team, my headspace.” I tapped my forehead. “Not very healthy right now. And when I ask you out, and I’m going too, Netti Morandi, I am going to be the best person I can be.”

She blinked a couple times. “You don’t think you’re at your best now?”

“I’m getting there.”

“And you think I’m going to wait around for you to ask me?”

“I hope so. But no, I don’t expect you to.”

“And you think I’m going to date you. After I told you I don’t date hockey players?”

“Yeah, I’m still working on that part.” I smiled.

“Well,” she said, her eyes twinkling, her face lit with curiosity. “You keep me in the loop on how that’s going for you, all right?”

“It’s a promise.”

She held her palm out. “Give me your phone, Superstar.”

I did so and she thumbed through it and tapped something in. “I’ve updated your contacts with my info. So you can keep me in the loop. And I better see you in my office after the next practice or I’ll break your knees. Capisce?”

She handed me the phone, then stood and walked away.

I couldn’t stop smiling.

I sat in my car, staring at the apartment building. I shouldn’t be here. This was none of my business. The figurative angel and devil on my shoulders were having it out, half of me voting to turn around and forget this, the other half insisting this was important. This was the start of the thing that would make all the rest of my plan work.

Before either shoulder deity had presented the winning argument, my phone buzzed. I pulled it off the dash holder and thumbed it on. Message from Hazard with a link.

I clicked on it. A title lit up the article:

Unbreakable brothers

Beneath that was a picture of Hazard and me in the tattoo shop, each with a fist clenched to hold up our sleeve, tattoos facing the camera, our smiles and the determined look in our eyes just blazing.

I scanned the text, which wasn’t half bad. Dart did a quick recap of the fight, of our hospital stay, and that neither of us had come out of it seriously injured. Then he went on to quote us, which would never not be weird, and filled in some opinions of his own.

He thought whatever had happened on the ice had something to do with the Dead Man’s draft no matter what we said. But he was sure we were both happy to be there together, at the tattoo place. That it wasn’t some kind of a publicity stunt, even though Hazard had called him and offered to give him the exclusive.

He made a big deal about us sneaking out of the hospital, but also letting our parents know what we were doing so they didn’t worry.

He said we were in turns annoyed, joking, and tormenting each other. Just like any other brothers.

He said that the fight on the ice had been left on the ice. That we had already gotten over it. And he hoped, for the sake of both our struggling teams, that we had leveled the playing field and were going to put some of that fire into our game play.

Hazard’s text popped up.

Good, right?

I texted him back. You need to lift, bro. Look at that stick arm. Then I added. It’s good. Yes.

I got back a middle finger emoji and an angel face. Don’t be alone he added.

Because that was something we had talked about too. Me pulling away, trying to handle it all on my own was part of my downfall. To make sure that wouldn’t happen again, Mom and Dad and Random set up a schedule for who would text or call me at what time of day. When and if any of them didn’t get a satisfactory answer out of me, there would be consequences.

They hadn’t specified what those consequences were, but from the matching smug smiles, I knew that one: they’d been creative in thinking up punishments, and two: I wouldn’t like them.

But they weren’t going to have to worry about that. I wasn’t going to be stupid. Not again.

I got out of the car and crossed to the apartment. Stopped on the doorstep and blew the air out of my lungs like I was heading out onto the ice for a game.

I rang the bell just as the locks slid and clicked.

“What do you want?” Slade crossed his arms over his T-shirt and scowled at me. His red beard was thicker. Other than that he looked exactly the same as I’d last seen him.

“I talked to Coach Clay. Of the Thunderheads.”

“I know who Coach Clay is.”

It started to rain, just an innocent seeming drizzle that would soak everything through in a couple minutes flat.

“I sent you his number,” I said.

“Bored now.”

“I’m going to send it to you again if you delete it.”

“Go away, Duncan.” He pushed the door, but I got a shoulder on it and leaned.

We pushed, each of us on one side of the door, throwing our weight. It was stupid, but like hell I was gonna lose a door-pushing contest.

“You asshole,” he growled.

“Let me talk. Jesus, you’re strong.” I pushed harder, not about to be outdone.

He let go of the door and stepped back in one quick move. “Fine.”

I fell into his apartment, the door slamming loudly against the wall, my knees and shoulder skidding across the carpet.

“Jerk move. What are you, five?” I picked myself up, dusted at my knees. I had landed on my non-tattoo arm.

He was halfway across the room, one foot propped on the ball of his foot, like he was ready to push away in a hurry.

“Talk,” he demanded.

“They need a right winger. Fisk got injured and they’re looking for someone to fill that gap.”

“Plenty of colleges and minors to pull from.”

“Or there’s you. You want another chance at this game, I just gave you one. Do it or don’t, that’s your choice. But you would be insane not to want to play for the Thunderheads. They’re the real thing, Slade. Hard hockey and smart hockey. Clay’s trying to pull the league away from the kind of shit Coach Nowak insists on doing.

“You want hockey, real hockey, pro hockey, you stop being a stubborn ass and call Coach Clay.”

“And what? He’ll just sign me up on the spot because you said so?”

“Oh, hell no.” I grinned. “You’re gonna have to prove he should give you a chance. I said you should do this. I didn’t say it would be easy.”

“You think I can just call him?” Every syllable of that was doubt and derision.

“I know you can.”

“Why do you give a damn?”

“Because you were right. You’re off the team because of me. Nowak knew what that would do to you, knew what it would do to me, and was betting it would all work out just like it did. Still, I owe you.”

He opened his mouth, but I narrowed my eyes and growled.

He immediately shut up, his chin lifting. Not enough for me to see his neck, but almost as if he were resisting the urge to bare his throat to me.

Wasn’t that something?

I kept my voice level. “You had my back when I most needed it. My first day, when Coach put me flat out on the ice and shocked the hell out of me.”

His gaze flicked down to the phone clenched in my fist. I knew he was thinking about the video he had shot of me getting stunned over and over. “You do something with that?” he asked.

“Not yet.”

He shifted on his feet, just the slightest sliding of weight from the toe to the side, to the heel. I didn’t even think he did it consciously. He was a creature of continuous motion, this one.

His eyes, dark yellow, pulled upward to meet my gaze. No tipping of the chin this time, not a nervous line in his body. He was all fire and edges.

“What are you going to do now?” he asked.

I cleared my throat and then said, in a deep, serious tone: “What I should have done to begin with. Defeat the bad guy.” It was such a cheesy line. Such a hero-in-a-movie kind of thing to say. And I couldn’t have been happier that I’d finally had a chance to use it.

“You’re stupid,” he muttered. But he was smiling too. I took it as a win.

“You too, buddy.” I waved and headed to the door. “Call Coach Clay or I’ll kick you so hard your insides will be on your outsides,” I called over my shoulder.

He barked a laugh and flipped me off.

Yeah, it was good to have friends.