Epilogue Wraith
Iadjust the straps of my face cage with my scarred fingers, checking the fit without checking the mirror for help.
I've spent my entire hockey career changing with my back to the mirrors along the wall in the locker room, and I'm not about to change that tonight.
Even if I am slightly curious.
Other than goalies, alphas don't usually wear headgear on the ice. We heal quickly. We don't need as much protection as betas, and the suits that own our teams think it ruins the aesthetic, but Thane's father managed to pull some strings since it's disability accommodation.
And my aesthetic is fucking ruined anyway.
It was Ivy's idea first, and Plague agreed. She said we needed to protect my "cute" face.
She's insane.
But I stopped questioning it a long time ago.
Whiskey came up with the design when I was worried it would end up feeling like a muzzle. He drew so hard on the napkin at the diner the pack has been to every night for the past week, the pen went through and into the table, which is now permanently etched with the word BADASS.
The server wasn't happy.
"Bro. brO." Whiskey appears behind me in the mirror, already in full gear, eyes huge. "You look sick. You look like the final boss of hockey."
I huff and adjust a strap.
"You gonna look?"
I glance warily at him.
He bats his fucking eyelashes at me.
I've never looked into one on purpose. The river was different. It was dark, the water moved, there wasn't a giant overhead light on it.
My heart thuds hard enough that I feel it in my teeth.
When Whiskey gives up and screws off across the room to try to sneak up behind Plague to smack his ass, I turn slowly and lift my eyes.
A monster looks back at me.
I wait for the punch to the gut.
The urge to put my fist through the glass.
It doesn't come.
I stare at myself, and the monster stares back, and my stomach stays put.
Huh.
I'll never like what I see.
I'll never see whatever the fuck Ivy sees when she looks at me and smiles. But standing here, in a face cage shaped like a wolf's jaw, in my gear, about to play my first game in weeks…
I can live with this.
That's new.
The face cage is fine. I'll give Whiskey that, at least. It's matte black, lightweight, with thin curved bars that follow the line of my jaw without touching it, sweeping forward into two points and then building up from there, stopping just below my eyes.
It doesn't hide anything.
"Welllll?" Whiskey asks, sidling back up to me.
It's okay.
"Fuck yeah!" He holds his glove up for a fist bump. I reluctantly nudge my glove against his. "Plague owes me fifty bucks. I said you'd like it, he said you'd tolerate it."
I tolerate it.
"FIFTY. FUCKIN'. BUCKS."
Plague doesn't look up from taping his stick. "He doesn't like it."
I do, I relent, if only so Whiskey doesn't get sad. I like it.
"FUCK YEAH."
Valek, lacing his skates in the corner, glances up at me. "It suits you. Very 'do not pet.'"
"I would pet him," Whiskey says. "Watch. He lets me." He reaches up and pats my head. "See?"
Because you don't stop, I sign.
"Damn right I don't."
Coach bangs on the door and yells a two minute warning for warmups, and Thane jolts, adjusting his pads and body armor. He's been in a quiet mood today. He's stressed. Worried we'll lose our first game back out on the ice as a complete pack in a long time.
The stakes are fucking high tonight.
I step up to him and tap his shoulder. You okay?
He manages a tight smile, pushing his hair back from his face. "Yeah," he mutters. "You?"
I nod. We're going to win.
His smile loosens up a little. "You think so?"
I tap my chest. I feel it.
He stares at me for a second, then finishes adjusting his armor, nodding. "I feel it too, brother."
He claps me on the shoulder on his way past me as the buzzer sounds.
We skate out.
The noise hits first. It always does, a wall of pure excited sound thundering out over the ice, and I brace myself as my eyes adjust to the lights.
I hope to fuck I'm not on the JumboTron, but I risk a glance up anyway in hopes of getting a glimpse of Ivy as I skate by the designated family section.
She's pressed against the glass, jumping.
Her hair is fully auburn today for the first time.
She had the brown dye stripped and restored her hair to its true shade yesterday, and she's kept it under a knit hat the whole time, saying it's a surprise.
She's so beautiful.
The most beautiful thing I've ever seen.
For a moment, all that exists is Ivy, Ivy and her shining auburn hair and the silver marks shimmering where they poke out under the collar of her sweater.
And I almost fucking wreck into one of our rookies.
When I've finished repeatedly apologizing with relentless circles of my fist on my chest, which the rookie doesn't seem to understand at all, or he's too busy staring in horror at my face, I turn on the ice to look back up at her and wave.
Then make a heart with my gloves at her.
She makes it right back.
The crowd goes crazy for some reason.
And that's when I see what they're wearing.
Black gaiters pulled up over noses and mouths, and printed across every single one, sharp white teeth.
Jagged, grinning teeth.
A kid in the front row presses both hands against the glass, gaiter up, shark teeth grinning at me from his face. He points at me, then at his own teeth, then gives me two thumbs up.
I lift my hand and point back.
He loses his entire mind.
I signed up to be stared at in horror for the rest of my life. That's how most people react, when I'm outside and not on the ice. Sometimes I have a bad day. A really fucking bad day where I want to lock myself up forever again.
But this…
Nobody warned me about this.
Whiskey sidles up to Thane on my other side, jerking his chin toward the stands. "Bro. Be honest with me. Is Wraith why you had that shark phase when you were a kid?"
Thane shoves him. "The fuck, Whiskey? No. How did you even know about that?"
"Ivy."
"Oh, for fuck's sake…"
Warmups are a blur of laps and stretching and Whiskey trying to flip pucks at Plague from across the ice. When it ends and we file off, I take one more look at Ivy before the tunnel, skating by close on purpose.
She presses her hand flat against the glass.
I glide closer, pulling my glove off to press my palm against hers on my way past, and her whole face lights up.
Yeah.
Okay.
Let's fucking go.
The Soldiers win the faceoff.
Thane's glove snaps the puck out of the air thirty seconds later, and the whole arena comes up off its seats.
I forget about the noise after that. I always do. Once the game starts, there's only the ice and the puck and my brothers around me, and for the first time in weeks, everything's in place.
The bond makes it better.
When Whiskey cuts across the blue line, I know where he's going before he does. When Plague pulls back to cover the gap I leave, I don't have to check.
They work in tandem with each other. Always have, even when they're fighting.
So does Valek now, but more with Plague.
And I've always been able to feel Thane.
Plague feeds me a pass six minutes in, and I take it up the boards with a Soldier winger hanging off my shoulder. The guy is big. I lean into him, shrug him off, and hear him hit the glass behind me.
I shoot.
The goalie gets a piece of it. The rebound kicks out into the slot, and Valek comes out of nowhere, already swinging, and buries it.
1-0.
The roar from the stands makes my ears ring.
But all I care about is making eye contact with Ivy. I can hear her screams of joy even over the rest of them. My heart isolates it easily.
Valek skates past me with his glove up and I smack it, and he grins at me through his mouthguard.
"Thanks for the easy goal, brother."
Show-off, I sign at him.
Whiskey gets the second one. It's a garbage goal, a scrum in front of the net, bodies piling up everywhere, and somehow, he's the one who pokes the puck in while sitting on a howling Soldier's bent legs.
He celebrates by sliding into the boards on his knees, arms out, screaming at the crowd.
The crowd screams back.
The Soldiers get one back before the period ends. Thane's pissed. I feel him taking it personally in the spike of irritation through our bond and shoot him a look on the way to the bench.
We're fine, I sign.
"Yeah," he grits out. "I know."
I bump my shoulder into his. Ivy's watching. Win it for her.
He nods, jaw tight.
The next goal's mine.
Then the next.
And the next.
I told my brother the truth.
We fucking win.