Fight. Run.

“Easy,” a woman’s voice said. “You need to stay still. You’re hooked up to an IV so we can push some fluids, but you’re okay. Can you hear me, Duncan?”

The voice got distant and watery while I drifted. The wolf in me struggled, wanting out, wanting free, wanting away.

Run. Runrunrun.

The voice came back. A hand pressed my forehead, my cheek, my shoulder. “Duncan? Can you open your eyes for me? Can you let me know you’re awake?”

Yes, the wolf agreed. Eyes wide. Eyes open. To see. To bite. To run.

I tried to move my eyelids, but someone had replaced them with three hundred ton weights. The wolf in me began to panic.

I worked harder to move my eyelids, and finally did it.

Oh, said the wolf. Oh.

“Hey, there,” the woman said. “Wow, look at those green eyes of yours.”

Her blond hair was crinkly and pulled back in a clip thing. Her eyebrows were almost black and arched above liquid brown eyes that went extra wide at the edges.

Her skin was browner than mine, and she had a smattering of darker freckles across her round nose and cheeks. Cheeks that dimpled when she smiled.

Talk about wow. She was breathtaking.

I inhaled, the need to smell her, know her, to make her lilac and strawberry scent a part of me, overwhelming and sudden.

Yes, the wolf breathed her in with me. Her. Yes. Mine.

“I’m Bernadette, you can call me Netti. How are you feeling?”

I opened my mouth.

Mine. Mine. Mine.

Closed it again, stunned at the push of longing pouring under my skin. The wolf stretched, wanting, reaching.

“You still with me, Duncan?”

I nodded.

“Good. I’m the team’s new assistant trainer, which means I’m the boss right now and you need to listen to me. Got that?”

“Team?”

“The Tide? Hockey? Forecheck, backcheck, paycheck?”

Hell. I was flat on my back in the trainer’s office in the arena. Not a safe place for me to be.

I pushed up on one elbow.

“Every time,” Netti sighed. “I tell a player to lie there and rest for a second and they ignore me and start messing with the lines. Cool your jets and lie down.”

She punctuated that with a little push at my shoulder. Not hard enough to hurt or move me.

But she pressed her other hand against my chest. Right over my heart.

Everything in me stopped. All I could see was her.

Second-marked are tactile. Wolf shifters more so than other Canidae. We need family, friends. Pack.

But that hand on my chest, over my heart was more. So much more.

Mine.

She added a little pressure and I did what she wanted and lay back on the bed.

Her eyebrows quirked up. “Well, look at that. He listens. Good job. Do you remember how you got here?”

I shook my head, didn’t look away from her eyes. Couldn’t. How could brown be so deep, so rich, so warm? I wanted to lose myself in them, curled in that heat, that fire.

“You were doing drills for Coach Nowak. Do you remember that?” She held up a cup with a straw in it.

I sucked the straw into my mouth. Water, clean and cool. I swallowed, but I was drowning in her.

She took the cup away and I made a small protesting sound. She pressed a little harder on my chest, which made me happy, so I quieted. She had my total focus.

“You can have more if you keep that down. So when you were skating drills, you lost control of your shift.”

“The hell I did.” My voice came out scratched and raspy. Like I’d been screaming.

A cascade of memories tumbled through my head. The prod to my head, my neck, my heart, my spine. Over and over.

I had not shifted. Even though Nowak had shot me full of electricity. I had a very clear memory of sprawling face down on the ice and staring at my hand. My bare hand had not shifted into claws, had not shifted into fur, had not gone wolf no matter how hard the beast inside me bashed against the iron of my will.

Coach repeated the shock treatment until I blacked out. He could have killed me. I was second-marked, which made me a fast healer, but I was not invincible. Even through black out, the wolf had remained under my bloody, stubborn grip.

“Coach brought you in here unconscious and told me what happened. You overheated and passed out in drills. It’s… I don’t like his methods.” Those warm eyes glittered with fire for a moment. I inhaled again, savoring the sweet pepper scent of her anger. “He always tests the new players to see where their control breaks. Lots of coaches do it so they can make sure something catastrophic doesn’t happen during a game.”

Lots of coaches did that without a stun prod. Usually they used a hard skate and some well-placed insults.

What Coach Nowak had done was abuse, just a hair short of torture.

Netti removed her hand, and I whimpered a little from the loss of it.

She turned to her tablet on the desk against the wall, her back to me.

Missing her touch, I turned my attention to the small, clean room. A desk, the table thing I was lying on, medical equipment including a defibrillator, and restraints mounted on the wall.

The framed certificates were for a Gerald Waite, who had a bunch of other initials behind his name, most of them having to do with physical therapy and sports medicine both for human and marked.

“Where’s Dr. Waite?” I asked.

“He’s been let go.”

And left all his certificates on the wall? “Today?”

“Last week.”

That was about the time Nowak would have decided to Dead Man Hazard. Had the doctor not seen eye-to-eye with him on that decision?

Or was I just making up conspiracy theories because I hated the bastard?

“Why’d he get fired?” I slid feet from under the covers. If I was sneaky, I could find my shoes and put them on before she noticed.

“I can hear you moving back there. Just don’t unplug your lines yet. And forget about the shoes. I have a couple other things I need to fill out before I can release you, okay?”

“Since you asked so nice.” I leaned back and stared at the back of her head. I liked the scrub top she was wearing: black with unicorns and planets and skulls scribbled on it. The jeans that hugged her ass were even better, and the knee high boots were a big plus in my book.

“Stop staring at my ass.”

My gaze snapped up. She hadn’t moved, but somehow, even without seeing her face, I knew she was smiling. I could feel the happiness in her.

Mine.

“Sorry.” I pushed down the wolf’s demand to run to her, hold her, keep her. “It’s just…you’re so…I’m just…I want...”

Home.

“Want?” she asked.

“Can I have some more water?”

“Since you asked so nice.” She glanced over her shoulder with a smile. “Cup’s right there. Drink it slowly.”

I drank it slowly. My heart skipped every few beats, which was fine with me. Blood, oxygen, none of that mattered as long as I was the target of Netti’s smile.

Because, damn, that girl had a stunner.

“So did you really volunteer to take the Dead Man fall for the wizard or did the wizard talk you into it?”

“I volunteered.”

She flashed another smile. “Sexy. Okay Starpower. Let’s get you good to go.” She took a step, then stopped, her eyes shifting to the door. Two seconds later a man stepped into the small space.

I instantly hated him.

He had to be in his fifties or sixties, his once-blond hair going gray, and built solid like he’d played a sport all his life and hadn’t given up his conditioning. His face was arranged a little too close together, eyes just slightly too near his nose, lips just a little too near his pointed chin that was shaded with stubble.

“Spark,” he said, thrusting his hand toward my solar plexus. “I am Doctor Sheridan.”

I took the hand, shook. He did that crushing squeeze and hard eye-contact thing I’d seen a million times before from unmarked who thought they had to establish dominance with a shifter, as they would an animal.

I lifted one corner of my mouth and stared him down.

Because. Fuck. Him.

It took every damn ounce of my control to draw my hand away and not slam a fist in his face.

“That’s good,” he said. “We need to understand who’s in charge here. Who is in charge here, Mr. Spark?”

Inhale. Exhale. Try not to punch. “Bernadette?”

She snorted and that did everything to put me at ease.

I gave her a wink.

Well, well. Didn’t she look cute when she rolled her eyes? And was that a blush? I grinned. She lowered her eyebrows, judging me silently, then turned to the doctor who stood with fists planted on both hips, legs spread, like a total jerkwad.

Wrestling. I was gonna guess he’d been a wrestler.

“I am in charge here,” Doctor Jerkwad said. “I will be signing off on all your medical needs. You only play in this game if I say you play in this game. Do you understand me, Mr. Spark?”

What I understood was that Doctor Jerkwad and Coach Asshole were cut from the same cloth.

“Oh, I understand you,” I said.

“Would you like to see his vitals?” Netti said, saving me from the glaring I was getting.

Dr. Jerkwad leaned against the desk, which put us at roughly the same height since the exam table I was sitting on was tall. He took the screen from Netti and looked over the info there.

“You’re slow, Mr. Spark.”

Not what I expected.

“You weigh one eighty. I want you down to one sixty.”

I blinked. I hadn’t weighed that since middle school. I was six foot three inches tall, and carried the extra muscle mass common to wolf shifters. One sixty would take me down to bones and sinews.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen,” I said bluntly. “I might be able to drop down to one seventy, but losing twenty pounds is going to rob me of strength out there.”

“You’re second-marked. You’re plenty strong out there.”

“I burn hot. I burn hard. I need a lot of calories to be an effective player. One seventy is my bottom healthy weight.”

“Who’s in charge here? Do we need to go over it again?” He set the screen down on his desk. I could smell the anger and testosterone rolling off him in bitter waves.

The muscles in his arms tightened. He was all-in for me to take a swing at him. Looked like he’d be happy if I did.

I was not about to give him the satisfaction, or an excuse to bench me.

“You,” I ground out.

“Correct. I am in charge. I say you drop weight, you drop weight.”

When I didn’t argue, he pushed off the desk and crossed the room to a locked cabinet.

Bernadette chewed on the corner of her mouth, her eyes narrowed at Doctor Jerkwad.

She was lovely. She had this sort of soft grace about her that came through even when she was angry. She held herself with the kind of poise I’d seen in hardcore dancers.

I sniffed the air to see if I could catch more of her scent.

She stopped chewing on the corner of her mouth and turned to me, a curious light shining from her face.

Are you sniffing me? she mouthed.

I nodded in short little shakes.

What marked are you? I asked silently.

She puckered her lips in a little smile and flashed her eyes wide for a second. She didn’t want to tell me. Saucy. I liked that.

Hell, I liked everything about her.

“You will take one of these every morning with a glass of water.” Dr. Jerkwad tossed a bottle of pills at me, and I caught them easily.

The white bottle didn’t have a label on it.

That was not normal.

“What is it?” I asked.

“It is a diet aid specially formulated for second-marked physiology.”

“So why doesn’t it have a label?”

“We remove the label because we don’t want other teams to know our health strategies.”

He was lying. It drifted off each word like the stink of sulfur.

“Not dangerous?” I asked.

“No.”

Lie.

“Not addictive?”

“No.”

Lie.

“If I get pulled for a random blood test, am I going to pass it?”

“You let me worry about that.”

Which meant no.

I licked my swollen bottom lip and ran my thumb across it. “Drop weight. Take pills. That it?”

“That’s it.”

“We aren’t going to go through any concussion protocol?”

“For what?”

“For making sure Coach Nowak shocking the shit out of me didn’t scramble my brains?”

“Coach Nowak only used the stun prod on you once. Briefly.”

Lie, lie, lie.

“I blacked out.”

“Briefly.”

Did he think I couldn’t smell the lie? Couldn’t see it in the dilation of his pupils, the tightening of the thin skin around his eyes, near his mouth, beneath his jaw?

“So I imagined all this.” I pointed a wide circle at my face, which I knew was bruised. I could feel it.

“A couple bruises is nothing to write home about. This is hockey, Mr. Spark. Not a daycare.” He walked out of the room like he couldn’t wait to be anywhere else.

So. Much. Bull. Shit.

I tugged at the IV tube in my arm and just like that, Netti rushed over, her hands gripping my arm, my hand.

I was wholly her captive.

“Do not pull that out, idiot.”

My stomach did a little flip at her using a pet name for me.

Which, okay, yeah, idiot wasn’t the best pet name, but I loved anything that she said that involved me.

I grinned at her. What was I going to do, argue? Not if that meant her hands stayed on me. I shifted the hold she had on my hand so that my fingers were threaded with hers, palm to palm.

I couldn’t remember being happier.

She shook her head a little and her eyes filled with fondness or curiosity, or amusement.

“You should drink plenty of water,” she said. “You’re dehydrated. You lost a lot of fluids out there.”

“Sure,” I said. “Sure.” I didn’t want to look away from her. Ever.

Mine.

Yeah, I thought to the wolf in me. Mine.

I inhaled, hoping she wouldn’t notice. The sweet scent of lilac and strawberry and something else that reminded me of cookies, maybe ginger, filled my senses.

She shook her head again, just enough to jostle her hair and send a little more of that intriguing fragrance my way. “You and the sniffing.”

I almost held my breath, but instead I took a huge, noisy inhale. And I mean I pulled a big, big lungful.

“Oh, for real?” She glanced up. Our gazes locked. Held.

Bam. Just like that.

Something clicked between us.

It was recognition, a shared knowledge, like hearing the first halting chords of a favorite song long forgotten. Like smelling the faintest fragrance that brought back a happier time, a bright memory.

It was summer and sunshine and warm, drowsy starlit nights.

It thrummed in my chest, telling me this, this was someone I needed. Someone I could not turn away from.

I wanted to stay here, by her side, forever.

Mine, the wolf whispered. Ours.

And as that truth hit me, all the bits of who I was, how I was, settled and fell into place.

I never knew I was a puzzle until I was staring right there at the one piece that would make me whole.

And wasn’t she something? Wasn’t she beautiful? Wasn’t she brightness, and sass, and grace, and caring?

Wasn’t she the most amazing person I’d ever seen?

A sharp pain raced down my nerves as all my arm hairs were pulled out in one strong yank.

“Ouch!” I yelped.

“This might hurt,” she said blandly about a minute too late. She held up the tape that had kept the tube in place. Red hair prickled from the edges of it like some kind of hairy caterpillar.

“Sorry,” she added.

She didn’t look sorry at all.

“A little warning next time?” I asked, even though I was still grinning. I probably looked drunk. I didn’t care.

“What did you think was going to happen, genius? You were pulling on the tubes.”

“I thought I was going to walk out of here with less injuries than I came in with.”

She stared at me for a second and something shifted on her face. It was a subtle thing, just the slightest twitch of her nose, and something soft about her mouth.

“Oh, my Gretzky,” I said. “You’re a cat.” I knew it was true. Could see it in the arch of her throat, could see it in the tip of her head and the glitter of her gaze.

She blinked once, slowly. Very slowly. As if I’d gone from something to be ignored, to prey.

“Am I now?”

“Yes. Yes, you are. A cat.”

I didn’t know if I was more shocked or more…no, it was shock. I was shocked.

I’d dated lots of girls. Marked, unmarked. But I’d only dated one fourth-marked, a Felidae shifter, and I swore I’d never date a cat again.

What had started as fun and teasing, dissolved into something borderline vicious. Neither of us had been able to resist the instincts of our inner beasts. Our relationship wasn’t the only thing that had been damaged.

A flush of heat smacked at my neck, cheeks and ears, and the old scars on my back suddenly itched and pulled.

“Now, now, Starpower. You make it sound like being around a sweet little kitty is a bad thing.”

I swallowed hard and licked my lip.

“I…we can’t.”

“We can’t what?” She taped a cotton ball to the inside of my arm, not that I needed one. I was a wolf and whatever hole that needle had left in me was already closing.

“Hey,” she said. “Are you okay, Duncan? I was just kidding around with the kitty thing. Maybe you should stay here until you feel up to going? There’s no rush.”

“I can’t.” It came out mostly wheeze.

“Sure you can. It’s okay. I got you.”

And didn’t I want to hear those words? Didn’t those words wrap gently around the jagged, frightened corners of my mind?

But she was a cat. And I knew how this would end. I couldn’t do that to her. Couldn’t let her do that to me.

Mine, the wolf insisted.

But the fear was as real as my racing heart.

“No,” I said. “Wait.”

To her credit, she stopped and went still. The kind of still that only a marked could pull off. Nothing in her was at motion, but somehow everything in her seemed hyperaware, fully alert.

And my heart caught at how quickly she responded to me. I didn’t want her to step away and become someone who would hurt me.

Who would leave me.

Whoa. Hold on. This was all too…it was confusing.

No one had left me. I was the one who had walked away from my team. I’d left my brother, my family, my friends behind. I’d lost them.

Pack. The wolf keened.

Yeah, that too. I’d left all of that. And one person, even if she was the best, shiniest person I had ever seen, was not going to fill that gap inside me. It was unfair to even ask that of her.

“What do you need?” she asked. Even that was perfect. The concern I could hear beneath the words, the warmth that reminded me of sunshine in spring.

“To…” I cleared my throat, worked to get rid of the sourness that coated it and threatened to bury me like a sandstorm in the Mojave.

Her fingers tightened gently where we were still joined, hand in hand.

I could lose myself to this. Her hand, her touch, grounding me, making me more than I was, making me all that I was.

Reminding me I was not alone.

“You are dismissed, Mr. Spark,” Doctor Jerkwad said from just outside the room. I wondered how long he’d been there, watching us.

“Bernadette, stop throwing yourself at him and let him go.”

She pulled her hand away like someone had sprinkled fire ants on it. Her face did this most amazing thing. She was pissed off, and that put a crease between her eyebrows, which I found adorable.

I opened my mouth to tell Dr. Jackoff exactly what I thought about him trying to whore-shame Netti, when she turned toward him.

“Dr. Sheridan, I know we haven’t been working together for very long, but I can assure you I do not throw myself at patients, and I do not date hockey players. I take my professional behavior very seriously and if you accuse me of anything like that again, I will not just consider it demeaning, I will take it to higher ups.”

Holy, shit. So much for riding to the rescue. This girl could handle herself. A warm surge of pride filled my chest. I leveled a lazy glare over her shoulder at the doctor.

Dr. Sheridan flushed an ugly bluish red, but he pressed his mouth into a thin line and refused to meet my eyes, or Netti’s.

“I said you are dismissed, Mr. Spark,” he said, striding into the room and taking over the desk like it had personally offended him and he was going to teach it a lesson.

“Remember to hydrate, Mr. Spark,” Netti said.

“Got it.” I started toward the door. She walked with me, showing me the way out. I wanted to ask her to stay beside me, her presence so needed, it knocked me off my feet.

It wasn’t love at first sight. It couldn’t be.

That kind of thing only happened in movies.

And comic books.

And probably novels.

But not in real life.

Not in my life.

And not now of all times. Being here, a part of the Tide, was no place to fall in love.

If I were going to survive this team, however long I was here, with the hope that there would be a home to return to, people to return to, I had to remember one thing.

This wouldn’t last forever.