“He was a Dead Man,” I yelled into the pillow.

“Get off my head,” Random said. Or maybe he said “get off my bed.” Hard to say since I was currently sitting on top of his bed, my mouth mashed against the pillow Random had covering his head.

He was pretending to be asleep. Wasn’t that cute? He was also pretending that I was bothering him.

Brothers, right? Always joking around.

“I. Will. Kill. You.”

“What’s that, buddy?” I yelled into his pillow. Right over his ear this time just to make sure he really heard me. “Did you say something? I can’t hear you with this pillow over your head.”

That did it. Elbows and knees went flying. There was a slap and push, then a pretty decent take down move I didn’t know he had in him.

“What the hell?” I asked, as my not-as-favorite-as-usual brother held my arm behind my back and shoved my face into the floor. “Where did you learn that?”

“My girlfriend. All her brothers were wrestlers. Can you hear me now, Duncan?”

“What? I’m not sure I quite heard…ow, ow, okay! Fine. I can hear you.”

He stopped pinching that point on my wrist he always, always found, and relaxed the angle of my arm. Slightly.

“Stay out of my bed.”

“I wasn’t in it. I was on it.”

“Nope. All I want to hear is: yes, Random. I will stay out of your bed, especially on a Friday when you are trying to catch as much sleep as you can before we take a road game.”

“Do I have to repeat it back word for word, or can I sort of ad lib that one? Because it’s a lot to remember and really, doesn’t sound all that much like me.”

He patted the side of my head. “You are such a dim dim.” He shoved off and shuffled back to his bed, falling into it with a sigh before burrowing under the covers and pillows.

I rolled over and stared at the ceiling. No dead jelly fish here. The ceiling was a nice clean white I’d helped my parents paint when they decided to “freshen” up the house by way of twenty gallons of paint and way too many weekends of masking tape and Duncan sweat.

“He was a Dead Man.” I folded my hands on my chest tapping my fingers in rhythm to the song in my head: “Hungry Like the Wolf.”

“Who?”

“Coach Clay.”

Random rolled to one side, tucked his fist against his temple and stared down at me. “He was a Dead Man? When?”

“Way back. I think that’s why he left the Topeka Twisters. He got picked by the team in last place, the Sacramento Rush, so it makes sense. Kind of.”

“Kind of?”

“The timing doesn’t match up. He left a month before Dead Man week.”

“Maybe it was a different week that year.”

“Yeah. No. Maybe. I don’t know.”

He flipped onto his back and scratched at his head. “Okay, so coach Clay quits his team for some reason, doesn’t immediately get fired for it—which, weird—and then a month later the team in last place picks him up under the Dead Man draft even though he wasn’t a working player on the team.”

“Something like that. Could be a loophole in there. Like his old team kept him on as a healthy scratch or something.”

“Hmm.”

“I watched some vids last night.”

“Did you see the one with the big fight?” he asked.

Of course he’d already gone looking for this stuff. “Harsh,” I said.

He hummed again.

“There was another clip,” I said. “Him and Nowak working a shift.”

“And?”

I got to my feet easily because my bruises were already mostly healed, and stared down at him. “They were…I don’t even know how to explain it. They were amazing together. Like two parts of the same body, you know. They had this chemistry on the ice. Worked plays like magic, man.”

Hazard wiped a hand over his forehead and left it flopped there. “Yeah, I saw it too. They…clicked.”

“Yeah.”

“You know who they remind me of, Dunc?”

I waited. Was pretty sure I knew the answer. Hoped I knew the answer. Hoped he saw things the way I saw things.

“You and me.”

Yes! I grinned. “Aw. Did you just pay me a compliment? Did you just say we are great together? Like you can’t live without me. Oh! We should move in together and date.”

He threw a pillow at my head. I ducked and it crashed against the far wall. Brother had a good arm.

“We already live together,” he said. “You are constantly in my room even though I never invite you, and we are planning to move out together.”

“All we need now is that date.”

“Genevieve might have something to say about that.”

“Something like, ‘Wow, look at those two hot hockey players together. The shorter one is sort of ugly, but that tall guy is the stuff dreams are made of.’”

“One, she does not sound like that, two, she likes the shorter, more handsome one just fine, thank you.”

I opened my eyes wide. “Sure thing, buddy. You got nothing to worry about. You’re totally tolerable.”

He pointed at the door. “Out. Now. Get me breakfast.”

I wanted to stay and bother him, but my stomach rumbled. Breakfast sounded good.

Even though I hadn’t gotten much sleep, I was full of energy buzzing beneath my skin. I’d need a quick jog before I was trapped on the bus for hours.

I followed my nose to the kitchen: coffee, eggs, sausage, and my dad’s aftershave.

“Morning, Duncan.” Dad stood at his normal spot, leaning one hip against the counter right in front of the coffee pot. He held a cup out for me.

People tell me I look a lot like my dad, and I like it. I’m a little taller than him, wider at the shoulders and chest. He’s got more of a runner’s build now, though he used to speed skate. He also wears glasses and unironically dresses in Mr. Rogers style sweaters.

My reddish hair and freckles? Those are all from my mom.

“Mornin’, Dad.” I swooped in for the cup, and kept going for a one-arm-across-the-shoulder hug. He smelled good. Like pineapple and vanilla and home. His squeeze was firm and long.

“Did you sleep?” he asked near my temple.

I had no idea how he could always tell when I was up most the night.

“Not really.” I sat at the table in front of a pile of eggs, toast, and turkey sausage. “Mom already at work?”

“Hours ago. Did you get Random up?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna eat then go for a run. I think he’s in the shower.”

“He’s right here.” Random strolled into the kitchen. “Morning Mr. Spark.”

“Still want you to call me Sean, son. Have a seat. Eat while it’s hot.”

Random blushed and mumbled something that had Sean in it—which, what a dork—and then sat and helped himself to whatever I’d left behind.

Here’s a thing about hockey players: we burn a shitload of calories.

Here’s a thing about shifters: we burn even more than that. So it took shoveling a lot of fuel into the burner to keep us going.

Wizards were a little different in that magic wasn’t constantly burning through them. It only consumed calories when they used magic. But when they cast spells, it caught like a wild fire and burned the holy hell out of everything in their bodies.

Second and fourth-marked—shifters—were always on a low simmer, magic banked and burning, burning, burning.

I shoved as much protein and carbs in my face as possible. Hazard took it a little slower, but wiped out a respectable plate of food.

He might skip lunch before practice, but I wouldn’t. I’d need something, even if it was a heavy bar to get me through practice, and then I’d need something right before the game to make sure I didn’t run out of gas.

Food, food, food. My twenty-four hour job.

Staying fed had another side effect: it kept the beast quiet and happy. A hungry wolf was not a happy wolf. The hungrier a Canidae or Felidae shifter became, the harder it was to suppress the beast inside us. And since the beasts were already hyper-alert during a hockey game from the violence, adrenalin, and physical output, going into a game hungry was throwing out a welcome mat for trouble.

I cleaned my plate while Dad and Random talked about training, the trip, and the team we were playing against: Bend Brimstones.

They had taken some time finding their legs this season, much like our team had. But now they were burning up the standings, winning game after game, racing us for a place in the playoffs.

They played a hard, physical, rough and dirty game.

They were fun as hell.

I gulped the rest of my coffee as I carried my plate to the sink.

Winter in Oregon meant dark mornings, and lots and lots of cold rain. It was dismal running weather, but hey, what’s a guy gonna do? If I didn’t burn this energy now, I’d go crazy in the meditation session.

“Wanna run?” I asked Random.

“I’ll do it before practice,” he said. “Go.”

I waved at the two of them and bolted out the back door.

I stretched on the little concrete path that led from our backyard around the house to the sidewalk.

Inhale the slick, sweet taste of rainy drizzle, exhale. Inhale the biting cold air until the lungs sting, exhale. Twisted, bent, rolled my shoulders, feeling my way through the newly healed bumps and bruises from last night, feeling my way through my body.

A hitch here, a tightness there. My calf was sore from a blocked slap shot. Not too bad, but I’d need to be easy on it. By tonight, it should be almost fully healed.

I trotted down to the sidewalk, cracked my neck both ways, bounced on the balls of my feet, then started off.

About a half mile from our house was a path that wandered between a stand of trees and circled a field. A creek ran through the woods and field. The footpath made a two mile loop.

My eyesight was sharp, even in this darkness before sunrise, with street lights and porch lights, the edge of the foothills graying up toward dawn. I couldn’t see in the dark as well as an actual wolf. But even in pitch fricking blackness I could see shapes, could track movement.I jogged the next half mile, clearing my head and getting in the rhythm: feet and lungs, muscles and brain all working together.

The wolf in me responded, reaching for this, craving the run. It was the best way to tame my beast. Give it the dark of the sky, the slap of foot on solid ground, the drum of a heart beating, beating between each steady, even breath.

I loved it. This was the only other place I felt as free as I did on the ice. This was the only other place where me and the wolf snapped together and became one thing instead of two.

My shoulders relaxed, my mind calmed.

This might be what Coach was hoping I’d find by meditating. But holding still was a punishment, not a reward.

I would do it. After I ran.

The sidewalk gave way to softer ground. The cold green of mud, brown grasses, and old pine needles reached my nose, filled my lungs. I inhaled a little deeper, letting winter in, wanting it to blow me open, wanting it to howl through me until I was empty. I growled with joy I couldn’t contain any longer, tipped my head down and ran.